The fact that BX.NET is an Internet service provider here in Providence in and of itself is not unique. The founders, however, are working on distinguishing themselves from the pack by forsaking dial-up consumers and concentrating on business customers, helping them figure out what their technology needs are when it comes to using the Internet. The staff acts as sort of technology interpreters for clients, who realize the Internet can help their business but may not know exactly what equipment and programs are needed to take advantage of this relatively new way to reach customers and conduct business.
Customers in the businesses BX.NET targets are “not savvy about the technology, but they understand the technology can help them,” explained Mark Shapiro, the company’s chief executive officer. “Some people have no interest in this. They’ve always run the business their way; their grandfather didn’t have the Internet.”
Shapiro said that he and one of his co-founders struck upon the idea while searching for a business to buy together.
He and Edward Weisberg, an MIT graduate, were dealing with brokers who sell businesses and were having trouble getting a list of available businesses in the areas they were looking, according to Shapiro. When they asked for a multiple listing, such as ones available for residential properties, they were told none existed. Well, wouldn’t that be a great idea for a Web site, they thought? But when they talked to tech people and companies about the idea they got little encouragement or assistance. Which made them think it would be more helpful to have a company that would listen to Web ideas and help make them a reality. (They never actually created the Web site they had envisioned, although another organization has apparently done it.)
”We were trying to start something on the Web ourselves five years ago, it really bothered us that people were talking down to us,” explained Shapiro, who worked for about five years marketing software to banks, then started his own consulting business.
”We’re very straightforward with people about what we feel is in their best interest,” he said. “We’re very responsive to people; we answer our phones live in Needham.”
Needham, Mass. is where they established the company’s headquarters about five years ago. Located on Route 128 and about an hour from Providence, it is also home to BX.COM, which is a sibling company that provides Web design services. BX.NET opened in Providence three years ago and later branched out to Washington, D.C., and San Jose, Calif. There are now 37 employees, with most of the engineering staff in Providence to keep watch over BX.NET’s elaborate system of computer servers.
But it is likely in the near future the company will move its headquarters to Providence permanently, because of real estate and geographic considerations.
”We’re going to end up making Rhode Island our full-time home,” Shapiro said. Providence’s location roughly between Boston and New York makes it attractive to BX.NET and BX.COM, because many clients they deal with and want to attract are based in those cities, he said. “Plus Southwest Airlines (at T.F. Green Airport) flies to many of the places we want to do business.”
WORKER AT HIS STATION is Mark Hamel.
Weisberg, who is the company’s president, said BX.NET is different from other ISPs, “because they’re really focused on the consumer market. It’s a different orientation.”
They began helping companies create more sophisticated Web sites, then got into hosting Web sites, providing other support services, and creating wide-area networks, or WANs, which link together one organization’s computers when they are dispersed in wide geographic locations.
In March, they began actively marketing BX.NET’s three-pronged business focus: WANs, hosting and maintaining Web sites, and Web development, Weisberg said. To do this, they added Kyle Wilbur as sales manager for digital services. Before that, Weisberg said, “it was focused (on those three aspects), but we weren’t selling it that way.”
BX.NET has an elaborate systems of servers and other computer equipment to host and monitor about 350 clients’ Web sites, according to Weisberg.
On a recent Monday morning, two of BX.NET’s engineers headed to the North Kingstown offices of Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing, because a program they use to monitor client systems indicated there was trouble with a network server there, though, Shapiro added, it was likely the staff at Brown & Sharpe hadn’t even realized the problem yet. The program is even designed to page a technician if the BX.NET office is closed when a malfunction occurs, so the on-call person can determine whether an immediate service call is necessary, Shapiro said.
BX.NET’s system was designed by Paul Larkin, who is the company’s chief technology officer, and has backups for pretty much every piece of equipment.
“Everything we do, we do twice,” Larkin said during a recent tour of the control room in BX.NET’s One Davol Square office.
Among their features: each network server is mirrored, meaning there are two of each; and they use two telephone companies, Bell Atlantic and Brooks Fiber Communications, for Internet access. Even the company’s Providence location was selected with the goal of providing reliable service in mind, Weisberg said. Davol Square is located across the street from the Manchester Street Power Station, which should place the server network on one of the city’s most reliable electricity grids.
“In addition to the redundancy, we backup (stored data),” Larkin said. After backing up the data on tapes, they send archival copies to a secure record storage facility. All these precautions are so they can do their best to provide 100 percent up-time for their target clients, who have “mission critical applications,” he said.
Weisberg added they want to avoid technical glitches, such as the one that crippled online auction site eBay for almost an entire weekend two months ago.
“We have people who do e-commerce on the Web. If the store goes down they lose money,” Weisberg said. “It’s very expensive; we spent twice as much as we had to. The odds that this whole place would go down are pretty slim.”
