App Dev for MSPs: Tips on Using Copilot — Redmond Channel Partner

App Dev for MSPs: Tips on Using Copilot

Microsoft partners are beginning to realize that the new opportunities they have only dreamed of have been created!
When the cloud arrived and became widely marketed with connected services, many partners began trying to figure out what to do next. One of the obvious opportunities was to get into app development.

But let’s face it, many said, “Nahhh”, as soon as the thought occurred to them. There was no way they were going to be able to develop coding skills fast enough to build a business around it. Others who might have thought they could hire that skill instead said no. The world still has millions of job applications open for developers, but there are a few great candidates out there.

For me, I remember many times explaining to customers that we could provide a canvas, but we didn’t make a picture. “We can advocate for someone!” So, it seemed that AppDev was not our future.

What happens when Coders no longer code?

A recent study in TechXplore says, “AI is already writing about a third of new software code” with some reports citing higher percentages and everyone agreeing that the trend is on the upswing.

One of the leading experts in AI, OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla scientist, Andrej Karpathy, recently said, “I quickly went from 80% handwriting + and 20% on agents to 80% coding and 20% edits + touchups.

When even the first coders are no longer registered, the opportunity for Microsoft Partners to expand their capabilities to include application development is changing completely. Some partners realized this during the low code / no code period as well, who could create applications with these tools. With AI-enabled coding assistants, their ability to create applications for customers is suddenly more accessible.

What Do Producers Know That You Don’t?

When was the last time you entered commands into the command line interface (CLI)? What was the last batch file you wrote? When did you get and fix the API key? Customer IDs? Application IDs?

The most important answer to all of these questions is “the next time I do one of these, I will learn or relearn how to do them,” and you would be right. Many experts agree that the easiest way to learn anything about working with AI is to work with AI. Learn by doing.

Where Does Microsoft See Copilot Fit Into This?

The story Microsoft is telling about Copilot and developer productivity is less useful and useful to MSPs than the headline “55% of developers are fast.” It’s really about changing where developers’ time goes, how fast new people are, and how teams feel about their work.

Beyond the 55% headline.

If you talk to customers about Copilot, the first number they probably hear is that GitHub Copilot makes developers 55% faster. That comes from a tightly controlled experiment: developers were asked to build a small HTTP server in JavaScript. Half had a Copilot, half didn’t. The Copilot team finished in about 71 minutes; the control group needed 161.

That is a great testimony, but it is not real life. In the real world, developers juggle meetings, reviews, research, production issues, and ever-changing disruption. Microsoft’s latest work, including manual studies, telemetry, and the Copilot Usage Report 2025, tries to understand what actually changes once Copilot is used on a daily basis.

What they found is that the pieces of the “speed” story make up several different dimensions that MSPs can sell: saving time for repetitive work, higher perceived productivity, better flow and faster flow for new hires.

What Exactly Are the Changes to Producers?

So where does Copilot come in? The copyist appears first and often in the boring parts of the job. In Microsoft and third-party studies, developers report that AI assistants save time on boilerplate, repetitive patterns, testing and glue code. As Copilot progresses, they spend less time hunting Stack Overflow, less time writing clean code and more time on problem areas that are really business-specific.

Second, theirs experience of changes at work. Microsoft and GitHub consistently see developers say they feel more productive, satisfied, and able to stay “in the flow.” In surveys, many people say that Copilot helps them get started faster, reduces mental fatigue and keeps them in the IDE instead of jumping between browsers. That’s not as immediate as most pull requests in a day, but it shows if people feel like they’re going somewhere.

Third, boarding curves are bending. Microsoft’s internal research suggests that it takes 11 weeks of daily use before hard productivity metrics start moving. In an unplanned three-week trial of Copilot’s use within Microsoft, telemetry (time coding, PR statistics) did not change much, but participants reported that Copilot was already helping them work faster, especially on boilerplate and unfamiliar APIs. What MSPs mean is simple: if you send Copilot and leave after 30 days, you will lose most of the value.

What Does This Mean for MSPs?

For MSPs, the fact that “AI improves productivity” is not a one-note promise; it is a service opportunity. Someone has to do the hard work of converting Copilot from a shiny license to a new operating system. Microsoft’s usage data confirms this: Copilot appears in about half of developers’ workdays, and mostly in code-intensive tasks where it is intentionally woven into the workflow.

That creates a mentorship path that is almost tailored to you. You can help customers identify high-level applications, boilerplates, tests, API testing and documentation, then redesign the process around them, integrating Copilot with code review methods, validation and secure code standards. You can also design advertising programs that last long enough for groups to learn 8 to 12 weeks, rather than waiting for a purchase.

There is also an aspect of governance that businesses are beginning to understand. Microsoft’s three-week study highlights an important tension: AI allows you to generate code faster, but that code still has to be verified. Developers have reported that some of the time saved is consumed by the extra testing effort, especially when Copilot generates code that “looks right” but actually isn’t. When the MSP brings in methods that have feedback here, such as what is produced automatically, it is always evaluated by people and where the tests are used as a judge, they do not just sell seats, they reduce the risk.

The bottom line for your customers is this: Copilot is already changing the way Microsoft engineers and millions of developers work, but the benefits are not constant and depend heavily on how teams embrace it. Your role as a developing MSP is to turn that messy reality into a controlled process that your customers can rely on, with clear use cases, to save time on the right tasks and culture where AI is more powerful than a source of subtle bugs and false hope.

Must be. AppDev is definitely available for MSPs.

Written by Howard M. Cohen to March 30, 2026