By Jack Brittle, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Joe Apps Technology Support, a Burlington-based IT company, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, marking a decade of operation in the city.
In September, the business hosted an event with the Burlington Chamber of Commerce, celebrating the anniversary. Mayor Marianne Meed Ward and Burlington MP Karina Gould attended the celebration, held at the company’s office.
Joseph Apps, founder and owner of the company, said that over 250 people attended the event.
“Some days you get down on yourself,” Apps said. “It’s inevitable. But days like that make you think, ‘This is what it was meant for. This is why we do it.’ If you give back to the community, the community gives back to you.”
Apps said that he started the business after a tech shop he had opened in Hamilton didn’t work out.
Apps said that after the Hamilton store failed, he began helping his then-girlfriend’s mother, an accountant, with IT support.
“They had an IT guy who had moved to Paris, Ontario,” Apps said. “He wasn’t able to get there as quickly, and they just had a lot of IT needs. So I started helping her out and did a whole bunch of different stuff at her organization. Luckily, a lot of her clients used him as well, so she started referring me to them.”
Apps said that the business started off with only himself and one other employee working out of his parents’ basement.
“We just continued to grow,” he said. “We ended up going up to three people, in a 600-square-foot office. Then we went up to about 8 people, in an 1800-square-foot office.”
This office burned down in 2022. The business subsequently moved into a 2200-square-foot office with 12 employees.
Apps said that they were “really lucky” that the impact of the fire on their tech infrastructure wasn’t overly detrimental.
“We had an incident response plan ready,” he said. “We had five clients in the building. Some of them had taken our advice and got one ready, and some didn’t. For some it took a couple of days to get back up, some a couple of weeks. But for us, I found out at 11 p.m., and we were back operational by 8 a.m. when we started the next morning.”
He said that after the fire, many people encouraged the business to adopt a hybrid model, but Apps doubled down on physical office space.
In December of last year, Joe Apps moved into its current 5500-square-foot office at 320 South Service Rd. The company currently has a team of approximately 19 employees.
Apps said that it’s “incredibly difficult” to build credibility as an independent business in Burlington.
“Nobody wants to do the hard work, which is to continue to show up,” he said.
Apps said that his company has donated time to speaking at events hosted by RBC and TD Bank, as well as various chambers of commerce to give free insights to clients and members.
He said that trust and integrity are especially important for an IT company.
“Outside accounting and lawyers, we probably have the biggest set of keys,” Apps said. “They have financials and stuff like that, but they don’t have passwords to all your emails. People put a huge amount of trust in us, and it’s been incredibly difficult to foster that, but difficult in a good way.”
He said that unlike a marketing company, a client may not see the benefit of improving their cybersecurity right away. Apps said that ensuring that clients understand “the why” of their recommendations is always a priority.
“We help people realize that the reputation’s on the line,” he said. “And that goes for us too. The biggest thing that gets damaged when there’s a cyber attack is your reputation.”
Apps said that his business tries its best to be active in the community by collaborating with local charities and non-profit organizations.
“We’ve done the United Way Plane Pull a bunch of times, the Halton Women’s Place Walk, among many other different charity events,” he said. “We’ve been partners with Dare to Be Youth since 2020, supporting their programs. There are just all kinds of things that have allowed us to be nestled in the community. We find that a lot of these companies, when stuff doesn’t go well, aren’t there front and centre. We’re putting our names all over the place. There’s no hiding for us.”
Apps spoke about how AI has impacted his business.
“It’s a great tool, but to me right now, that’s all it is,” he said. “It’s not replacing a human. “We’re actually adding more people onto our team. So we’re not jumping in AI to remove them.”
Apps said that his company uses AI agents to handle tasks like billing leakage and license reconciliation, which used to “take hours and hours to do.”
“That saves someone looking in 12 different systems,” he said. “But a human still is in the middle reviewing all of the information.”
Apps said that the business’ future will be impacted by an “intelligence uplift” caused by the proliferation of AI.
“People have all this information at their fingertips now,” he said. “So we really need to stay ahead of that intelligence curve. It’s going to be a tough battle over the next 10 years, but it’s one that we’re ready and excited to take on.”
Apps was also recently honoured by Mohawk College with an Alumni of Distinction Award. He said that the recognition is “incredibly rewarding.”
“They’ve had 200,000 students pass through the program, and only 200 have been awarded this award,” Apps said. “So it’s very significant.”
