FW Editor: I'm sure you have big plans to extend BozTeck. What shall we expect from this company in the near future?
Steve Bostedor: VNCScan is always improving and innovating. The competition is constantly looking at our product for ideas so I can't reveal specifics of what is coming next. I can assure you that cool things are happening at Bozteck, though.

FW Editor: VNCScan is your core software. What inspired you the most in creating the code for this application?
Steve Bostedor: I wrote the first version of VNCScan in 1998 and released it in the summer of 1999 as a personal tool to manage numerous VNC connections on my LAN. After an overwhelming response to that initial version, I decided to create a company around the product so that I could give it the resources required to meet the wants and desires of the users. Just about every core feature of the VNCScan product came from my own personal needs from such a program as the Network Administrator of a growing company in Dexter, MI. To date, there was no software that had the combined functionality that I desired so I decided to mold my VNCScan product into that "Swiss Army Knife" admin tool. The rest of the features in the program came from user feedback. At the completion of each release, I tally up the feedback and feature requests in order to determine what will be core features in the next upgrade.

FW Editor: Can you tell us more about BozTeck? What is the history of this company? How everything begun?
Steve Bostedor: When I first started writing VNCScan, it was just me. Later, I partnered Philippe Green to form TGCS (Two Guys and a Compiler Software), then officially released VNCScan as a commercial project. I believe that our web adress was http://tgcs.d-a-v-e.com. (Internet Archives at http://goo.gl/Yyue) In about 2002, I moved the website to vncscan.com. Phil went on to form a company called web-it, then a great anti-spam company called spamstopshere.com. I stayed with VNCScan and formed a new company named Bozteck. Since then, people have come and gone but I still remain at the helm writing most of the software ad directing the creative flow of the product. I respond to 90% of the support requests directly, Nobody knows the product better than I do, so who better to support it, right?

FW Editor: VNCScan is maybe the most popular Network Administration tool. However, the differences between a single license and a full license is huge (I'm talking about price). Why this difference?
Steve Bostedor: When VNCScan was released, all of the other network administration software was charging per-computer licensing fees that sounded really cheap on their website but quickly added up to thousands of dollars for even a small network. As a Network Administrator, I hated that pricing model and looked at it as disingenuous. It meant that only the richest IT departments could have the great administration software. When I first released VNCScan, it was free. I believed that even the smallest IT departments should be able to benefit from software that saved time and enabled them to do things that they couldn't do on their own. As the demand grew out of control, it started consuming an enormous amount of resources and time. Because of this, I came to a decision that I had to charge something for the program or I would go broke supporting and publishing it. I also didn't want to break from my core value that great software should be affordable by all. I decided that I would have nothing to do with a per-computer model and released an unlimited node version of the program for only $50. Instead of charging for each computer, I'd only charge for each administrator using the program. In most small companies, it was only one or two. Those few administrators could manage thousands of computers if they wished with only their $50 per-administrator license. This low price allowed me to stay in business while staying true to my code pricing values. As the product grew even more, I was contacted by huge corporations, the US military, and government agencies who wanted to deploy the product to hundredds of thousands of administrators. I didn't feel comfortable charging them the per-admin pricing as that would have been a huge burden on their budgets. Instead, I created the additional site license model that covered all administrators at a site under one license for $995. That allowed unlimited computers AND unlimited computers. As long as I control things at Bozteck, that will always be our core pricing model. I believe that software doesn't need to cost a lot of money if it works properly and meets the needs of it's users.

FW Editor: VNC comes with multiple versions: Legacy Ultra VNC, Ultra VNC, Real VNC, Tight VNC and Legacy Real VNC. Shall we expect even more versions in the future or are you going to focus on a completely new application?
Steve Bostedor: Some of the legacy versions will eventually die out with time. They only exist currently to supply remote control to really old versions of Windows. I would look for them to phase out within the next year, leaving only the modern versions of UltraVNC, TightVNC, and RealVNC. There is a new application coming from Bozteck but, of course, I can't comment on it's functionality just yet. :-) It will not replace VNCScan, but be an addition to the portfolio.

FW Editor: Can you tell us more about VNCScan and what makes this software so powerful?
Steve Bostedor: As I said before, VNCScan started out as just a simple VNC manager. Over the years, I added many great features that makes it the powerful network manager that it is today. After all of the key VNC features such as remote deploment, multithreaded network scanner, password management, version control, etc. were covered, I decided to add general network management tools to the list of features. The first thing that I realized was that there was no way to remote control a computer in safe mode. Microsoft (for good reason) locked down the services and startup programs, effectively disabling VNC from starting. I wrote a tool that could change that behavior on a remote computer so that VNC would start in safe mode. It was the first of it's kind. To make it more of a VNCScan feature, I created the ability to remotely force a computer to reboot into safe mode and the remotely reboot the computer back to normal mode. The combination of these tools created the very first ever tool that could remotely reboot a computer into safe mode, remote control it, then return it back to normal mode. Since it was released, numerous other utilities have reverse engineered my method and created their own tools for this but I take pride in being the first. It was the first affordable graphical tool that allowed administrators to write scripts and run them on remote computers. The only programs that I know of that had something like this in it were huge commercial packages such as Microsoft's SMS and Altiris Express, both costing tens of thousands of dollars. I wrapped that into VNCScan for no extra cost! There are a lot of powerful features in VNCScan to aren't noticed because I don't do a good enough job marketing them. For instance, you can enable or disable Terminal Services (RDP) remotely for computers on your LAN. You can change the Windows passwords remotely, too. In fact, there's a wizard in there that lets you, in mass, change Windows computer names over the network and join them to a domain. All of this together with the ability to create your own custom commands, send Wake on LAN signals, test the speed of your network between you and any other computer, and more, there really is no tool on the Internet that matches it in functionality for even close to its price!

FW Editor: In this software market you need to be one step ahead your competition to win. How can a relatively small company (just like BozTeck) compete against powerful corporations?
Steve Bostedor: I've answered this question a lot in the previous questions but I'll summarize it again. Because Bozteck is small, there is much less overhead. My philosophy that all software should be affordable by even the smallest IT department drives me to keep that price as low as I can afford while retaining my ability to support and continue innovating with it. I have had buy out offers from competitors and have been approached by venture capitalists but they have all been turned down so that I can ensure that my customers will always get what I have promised them for over a decade at a price that they can afford. I can't do that if I sell out or let venture capitalists run the company.

FW Editor: Can you tell us more about your developing team?
Steve Bostedor: Currently, I am the only person developing on the product. I do hire help as needed and contract some other things out. I'm currently looking for an IOS developer if you know of anyone. :-)

FW Editor: How can you characterize BozTeck in just a few words?
Steve Bostedor: Creators of innovative software with great support at a price that everyone can afford.

FW Editor: Is there anything you would like to share with BozTeck customers?
Steve Bostedor: I have been writing and supporting VNCScan for over a decade and I will still be here a decade from now. Your continued support makes this possible and I am extremely grateful. I will continue to listen to feature requests and integrate them into the product as much as possible. I'm not doing this to get rich (although that would be a great side effect); I'm doing this to make your life easier. You can find more about me as a person at http://www.bostedor.com or on Twitter as @sbostedor