When App Dev Makes Sense

By Joe Pannone

In this mini-autobiography of Joe Pannone, detailing his journey from Atari gamer/ programmer to CEO of a thriving MSP and application development company, we trace the roots of a hybrid MSP/app development enterprise, see just how intertwined IT services and app development really are, and realize how accessible — and profitable — app development can be for MSPs.

The year was 1982. I was 13 years old and got my first computer: an Atari 400 with a whopping 8-bit processor and 16kb of RAM. At that time, we computer novices taught ourselves the BASIC (Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Code) language and typed code from magazines into our massive computers. Mine was connected to my black-and-white 13-inch television. Of course, turning the computer off was not advisable since we would lose all of our code until we had our first floppy disc drive. Eventually, our high school had NEC computers with floppy disc drives. It was there that we were able to spend more time programming and deepening our skills. As we spent more and more time in the “computer world,” we also began to help support the systems with hardware issues.