Dennis,

it is typically more a matter of the operating system you run, how and if you can convert something to a service. You should be able to start almost anything as a service, provided you can supply the required environment. There might be limitations in Windows with batch file, if you can trust the first search engine hits. In windows you can use 'sc' to create services from executable files. In Linux, you would put this into the init files. Unix has different flavors and you should search for the OS you are using, really.