Happen Business' technical director, Paul Berger, has had a fairly meaty history in IT. Entering the industry with an electronic background, he is responsible for building a popular kit computer in the mid-1980s - the Applix 1616 - and the partner he built it with is now a co-maintainer of both the ext3 file system and the Linux kernel. His hardware business was responsible for most Netcomm repairs thanks to Berger's relationship with Netcomm managing director, David Stewart, and his Jim2 software is popular amongst IT shops handling multiple repairs.

We speak with Berger in the lead-up to Happen's 10th anniversary about the Applix 1616, gaining experience while self-employed and the key skills he looks for in up-and-coming IT workers.

Hi Paul, can you provide a brief history of your career in IT?

It literally goes back to the very late 70s and early 80s; back in the day when you really built your own computers. I came from an electronics background and at that point in time, the place to work was Dicksmith Electronics so my first job was there. After that I formed Applix with my business partner, Andrew Morton, where we used to build and design peripheral cards for Apple computers.

Back in those days - around 1986 - for some bizarre reason we decided we'd actually build a computer from scratch, designing the electronics as well as writing the software and the actual operating system. The Applix 1616 was quite popular – we sold about 500 of them – and we had it published in Electronics Today International over about eight months. My partner back then, Andrew Morton, is now the keeper of the Linux kernel.

I sold that company and then I started a very low-level hardware servicing company called P2 Computing, in about 1988. I had that company for about 12 to 13 years and had about 35 engineers. We used to do data recovery and hardware repairs. Back then we were managing 3000-4000 active service jobs at any one time, so it was a real handful.

I wrote some software to handle that. For no particular reason I called it Jim [Job Information Management] and we used that internally for 12 years for all our job tracking, invoice, workflow and business processes. Originally that was a DOS application.

Around 2000, Windows was really making strides, Y2K was about to hit so I had to rewrite the software as a Windows program. I decided to do it in a generic fashion, so it wasn't proprietary, and it really turned out well. I had an opportunity to sell off the hardware company, so I pulled Jim out, commercialised it as Jim2 and created Happen. The software was very service-oriented, good stock control, so we made it much more generic so it would suit different industries but it always had that business process and workflow mentality built in from day one.

We continued to develop the software, and it's become extremely popular in the IT industry, mainly because it handles all the things the IT guys do. A few years back we enabled it for e-business, so you can interface your website or get all the feeds from Ingram and Dicker Data in an ERP package. We had Leading Edge Computers adopt it as their standard platform with 80 computers using it.

Happen has had steady and reasonable growth, but especially in the last two or three years it's really gone through the roof and we're quite literally having trouble keeping up with it. We spend an awful lot of money developing the product, so at least once or twice a year we come out with a pretty significant update.

What caused you to get into IT in the first place?

I was into electronics back then. You couldn't go buy a computer then, but I met this guy who had one and it just kind of clicked – I just got it instantly. There was no motivation in terms of money or career, it's just what I wanted to do.

I guess it was just really a good combination of electronics and logic. It only took me a couple of weeks and I just got it.

Was there much demand for kit PCs like the Applix 1616?

Yeah we sold 500 of them which, back then, was a fair few. It was a pretty powerful computer and they were getting into ANSTO, CSIRO and Conservatorium of Music, where they needed specific software running on it. Then there were the hacker guys who wanted those types of computers as well.

We had a user group running for several years, some guy ported Minix (forerunner to Linux) over to the computer.

Did you use off-the-shelf parts or your own custom pieces?

It used off-the-shelf chips, like a Motorola processor, and we did use a couple of programmable custom chips, which back then was a pretty innovative thing.

We needed a development computer – something to write the operating system with for this thing – and as crazy as it sounds, we actually bought an Apple Lisa (ironically running Unix) until we could actually port a C compiler over to our own opeating system.

Do you see Happen Business as the culmination of your previous experience, or simply as the next step in your career?

Happen certainly wouldn't have gotten to where it has unless I had that benefit of experience behind me, because I still have very low-level technical skills. I can just as easily be sitting in a business showing them how to run it properly; I've done it several times myself.

Just being able to apply both business and technical skills in the right mix is part of the success of Happen. Jim2 is like something in the order of two and a half million lines of code – so it's a serious piece of software – but someone's actually running their business on this thing, so it's got to work. We've been really trying to step back and look at things from an end-user point of view which I think does make a difference.

What was your relationship with Netcomm managing director, David Stewart?

We pretty much started at the same time as businesses, with P2 Computing and Stewart's Banksia Technology; we grew up together. Even back then, David Stewart completely outsourced his servicing to me. I dealt with David Stewart for the entire life of P2 Computing, we grew as his business grew.

He took on Netcomm so we took on Netcomm as well - I can pretty well guarantee we single-handedly repaired more modems than any other business in Australia. If he had a production or manufacturing issues, I'd go to China on his behalf to sort it out.

The thing with David Stewart, he's just one of those guys who says 'I'm doing this and there's no one who's going to stop me'. I can't think of too many successful Australian hardware manufacturers off the top of my head, let alone one that's been around for 20 years, and these guys are still around.

Given that you have been self-employed for most of your life, do you feel you gained most of your IT knowledge through self-experience, or did you align yourself with mentors to get that knowledge?

There's no doubt the trick is to just surround yourself with clever people. At Happen at the moment, I've got some scary smart guys working for me, especially in the R&D family.

As long as you're actually interested in something, you become an expert at it; it's true of anything. Back in the early days, you didn't have a choice, you couldn't go to university and do a computer science degree. I think back then it was called data processing, and they were still teaching punch cards and tape-to-tape type stuff.

The computer user group was where you went, you'd go there and quite literally show off hardware or software you built that month – that's just how it was.

Do you think you would have turned out any different if you had gone down a more conservative career path?

I just don't think I ever would have done it. I like being able to do what I want to do, so I just don't think I could work for a large company.

What are your suggestions for those looking to make it in IT?

I would say by far now days, because IT is so mainstream and highly specialised, having solid business skills and common sense as well as technical skills goes a long way. That's pretty straight forward but it's surprising how many IT guys who are just so technical and want to be the smartest guys on the planet, but just don't have a clue. Especially when you're dealing with clients, you have to try and put yourself in their shoes, they're trying to run a business.

What are you looking for when hiring IT staff?

With all my staff, I'm looking for some sort of business skills moreso than anything else. A knowledge of accounting is useful, but anyone who's got business skills has a basic knowledge of accounting anyway.

The same goes for the technical guys, like in R&D. Most of my guys have been with me for some time now, some have worked with me in previous businesses, so I know where these guys are at, I know what they can do and can't do. But by far the toughest gig in any business is just finding good and reliable staff.