My name is Angelos Pitsos and I was born in Athens (Greece), on May 25th, 1979. My parents were born and live in Athens too, but my grandparents' origin were from various regions, such as Athens, Cephalonia & Anatolia. I am married and I have two lovely daughters that make me proud.
After graduating from high school and not having succeeded in the general Greek higher education exams, both my parents suggested that I fulfill my military obligations. A few years later, at the age of 25, I realized that that decision had been a mistake and I started thinking that I had to do something about my studies. So I decided to study in a public educational institution, in Greek we call it "IEK". I studied and at the same time I had a morning job, at my father's factory in Athens. Two years later I completed my studies and I acquired a degree in "Computer Applications, network and office automation Technician". As you may understand this degree was IT related, but nothing important.
The key about everything that has to do with me and my education is that I acquired all the knowledge I have mainly because of my interests. I remember that I had an interest in technology since I was a kid. I used to pull apart my toys and use the mechanisms in order to create something new, something mine! By growing up and at the age of 13 (in 1992) I discovered the IT world and the computers. Then I asked my mother to buy me a personal computer. That was a Quest 286/16 MHz with 1MB of RAM, 52 MB HDD and a 14" monochrome VGA monitor. It had also two floppy disk drives, one for the classic 5 1/4" (1.2 MB) floppy disks and the on for the 3.5" (1.44 MB) floppy disks. I still have this computer in my warehouse in the basement of my house, but I think it's a little bit upgraded. One year later my father bought me a new computer, which was an ALTEC 386DX/40 MHz. The RAM was 4 MB but can't remember the rest of the configuration. If this is interesting to you, it might be worth to take a look at the section I have created with all my "IT" acquisitions.
During the first seven years of my professional life (1999-2006) I worked with my father. He used to have a manufacturing company that produced home and professional gas and electric appliances. It was a company initially built by my grandfather in 1959, but we didn't manage to pass it on to me. You know what usually happens in family corporations, right? Then I spent about one more year before I started working in the IT industry and as soon as I started, I realized that that was what I really wanted, but I hadn't realized it earlier. I wouldn't like at this point to divulge my whole professional experience, but if you are really interested to learn more about it, please check out my CV. At that time I also started designing and developing websites as a freelancer, which was something that gave me a feeling of freedom and accomplishing something creative! It was really exciting.
But the most exciting about the story was in 2007 when I had the opportunity to apply for a position of web designer for easyCruise, a company of the Greek-Cypriot serial entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. In 2007 the company migrated to Greece in order to develop cruise business in our country. I was really a lucky guy, when my dear friend Sasha, who used to work for a headhunter, asked me to provide her an updated CV and a small portfolio of websites I had developed. I was shortlisted together with three other web designers, and all of a sudden I got the job! Stelios and the rest of the team who were present during my interview were excited with me. They realized that I could cover not only the position of the web designer that they required, but I could also undertake the whole IT of the company, as it was in its startup phase and it was growing rapidly. I truly believe that this was the real start of my professional experience in the IT industry and not my short TBS experience a year earlier.
Because of my past professional experience and as I used to work with my father in his own company for more than seven years, I never felt like an employee, wherever I worked after that. I always dreamt to have my own job and not just working for others. I never stopped dreaming about a company of my own, which would be innovative and make use always of the latest IT technology, if not even offering technology! Also since I started building websites as a freelancer I never stopped doing it. So one day I decided to make that "business" a little more professional and that was when I thought about pla.NET.gr. The matter of the name of my company was also an apothegm of several thoughts, but it is really worth reading the article of how the idea of pla.NET.gr came along.
From the day I established my own company I am trying to make my dream a reality. pla.NET.gr is a sole proprietorship company which I started running from home, simultaneously with my morning job. Although it's a small company, I'm proud of the superb services we offer in the global web market and for the dozens of happy customers we have! Our customers are a mix of individuals, small, middle and large companies. They are not only Greeks, as we have clients in Holland, in Belgium, in Switzerland, in the United Kingdom, in Luxemburg, in Philippines and in South Africa (Johannesburg)! And as you understand that makes me more than happy. So even if this is not my only job, hopefully for the moment, I really feel successful.
At pla.NET.gr we provide professional web services, such as web design and development based on open-source platforms, web hosting, virtual private servers and much more services. Our hosting services are offered via owned infrastructure, hosted in the biggest datacenter in Greece and our clients enjoy cutting-edge performance hosting services. I could write here tons of words in order to describe what we do at pla.NET.gr and how we do it, but it's not the scope of this article and this website.
The problem with me is that I have several business ideas, most of them extremely innovative, but no time to implement them. At the beginning of 2012 we launched a service called "cloudPC". This is about a unique, innovative, scalable computing platform! The main idea of the project is that "cloudPC" is the most ideal computer, as the users can have access to it from any device (computer, tablet or smartphone). Users can work remotely and store their data on it. Nothing safer than that! One of the most innovative characteristics of the service is that users can install anything they want and customize their cloudPC, exactly as they would do with their computers. But this time they just don't depend on the hardware! This was one of the ideas that I made reality! If you are really interested to learn more about this exciting idea I had at the very first stages of the Virtualization technology you may read the relevant article. If you would like to learn more about the service itself, feel free to visit the website cloudpc.gr.
And that's just the beginning. As mentioned above I have several business ideas and I hope that in the near future I will have the ability to make them come true! And I believe it, because...
Anything can be achieved!
PS: When I was working at easyCruise I met several people of different levels, each one had something to give me. All of them helped me acquire experience for my career. So, once, during one of those nice team-building away-days I noticed someone's motto, which I liked very much and also expressed me! I am sorry David Lynn, I am stealing your motto from those days of July 2007 when I met you. It really represents me. I hope you don't mind.
