InformationWeek

March 22, 1999

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The Microsoft Middle-Man (A talk with Chili!Soft CEO Charles Crystle)

By Jason Levitt

Related links:

Scaling Up Web Apps

And from our sister publication:

Computer Reseller News Chili!Soft

n the early 1990s, Charles Crystle was just another aspiring folk-rock musician with a record deal before he gave it up to indulge in the joys of Internet startups. These days, as CEO of Chili!Soft, his company is doing well by porting Microsoft's Active Server Pages environment to other platforms and Web servers.

Chili!Soft, and a few other companies, are in a unique position. They help sell Microsoft's technologies on non-Microsoft platforms, such as the combination of Solaris running Netscape's Enterprise Server, all with the blessing of Microsoft. Of course, Microsoft would like nothing better than to have everyone in the IT world using Windows NT, which comes bundled with their Internet Information Server Web server and its integrated Active Server Pages environment. But if there's one thing the explosion in Internet server activity has made clear, it's that Windows NT 4.0 is a poor platform for high-volume server traffic. It simply doesn't scale and isn't reliable enough. What does make NT 4.0 attractive, though, is its rich software development environment, largely based on Microsoft's excellent Visual Studio 6.0 and Visual Interdev development tools. All of these facts work well for Chili!Soft, which is finding that customers like to develop their Component Object Model objects and scripted server applications on NT, but often would rather deploy them on platforms such as Solaris and AIX by using Chili!Soft's ChiliASP.

In a recent stopover in Austin, Texas, during the South by Southwest multimedia conference (where, incidentally, Crystle's former band, Blue Parrish, got its first record deal), I snagged an interview with the Chili!Soft CEO.

IZONE: Your company is in an unusual place since you are selling Microsoft technology, essentially, to its competitors, yet, also indirectly evangelizing for Microsoft. Is Microsoft getting much out of licensing deals?

Crystle: There is some financial benefit that flows back to Microsoft, but it's not significant enough for them to call it a market.

IZONE: What parts of ChiliASP do you license from Microsoft and other parties?

Crystle: We license the scripting engines from Microsoft--the Jscript and VBscript engines. The COM layer is Mainsoft's Win32 libraries. The database drivers are from Intersolv. We currently offer our product under Solaris and AIX. The really value-added aspect that we bring is that, regardless of which supported operating systems and Web servers you use, you can build your application on NT and run it on Solaris and AIX without any changes.

IZONE: No changes at all are required?

Crystle: You have to recompile any COM objects that you are using, and we include Mainsoft's Win32 libraries for Solaris, so that you can recompile your COM objects under Solaris. Mainsoft originally ported the Win32 libraries with the idea that they were going to be supplying them for GUI applications, standalone apps--they really weren't sensitive to server application issues. But in the past year, working with us, they've really improved it.

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