Support & Maintenance
Solutioneers split the support and maintenance of applications into 3 distinct areas. It's important to do this as each area requires a different approach and operating model to be effective.
Software Warranties (Bug Fixing)
Solutioneers provide warranties to software applications and will fix any bug or issue under the terms of a fixed annual contract. No bug too big, no bug too small as they say! If you have an application that's currently unsupported or nearing the end of it's warranty period with your current supplier, you can reduce your cost of ownership with Solutioneers within one month. The transitioning phase of our support model usually takes at least one month to complete.
We don't base our warranty prices on the original cost of the system as this is often misleading. We price our warranties on the actual size & complexity of the system as this is the only constant and not subject to market pressures.
Factors affecting system size & complexity include:
Size
- Source Lines of Code (SLOC)
- Number of source code files
- Size of assets
- Infrastructure
Complexity
- Decision point counting
- SLOC per method
- Nesting levels
- Data Relationships
- Documentation quality
Capacity
- Number of transactions
- Quantity of data
- Number of concurrent users
- Basically, all non-functional requirements
Industry research and our own experience has shown that high control-flow complexity has been correlated with low reliability and frequent errors. We analyse every line of source code and obtain a breakdown of the most complex areas of the system. These highly complex areas of the system then receive more detailed analysis and more complex test cases are built around them to prevent regression issues.
Our standard contract durations range from 1 year minimum to 5 years maximum. The longer the contract the more discount it attracts.
Operational Maintenance
The operational maintenance of the application is concerned with pro-active measures to keep the application in an operationally healthy state. If an application is left to run without periodic maintenance it runs a high risk of crashing or suffering from performance problems. This service includes:
- Server operating system security patches & updates
- Log file analysis and flushing
- Capacity planning and disk space monitoring
- Operational issue analysis and resolution (excludes bug fixing)
- 24x7 automated application health monitoring
- Adhoc requests (agreed in advance) such as bespoke reporting, or data packaging and shipping
- Helpdesk support cover options such as 9x5 or 24x7 customised to your requirements
- Service Level Agreement.
As part of the setup for this service, the operational parameters are agreed such as maximum number of users and maximum number of transactions per minute, or other measures to gauge "normal" operation. The application is baselined to measure the impact of future enhancements and deployments. The reason for this work is to provide a safety net if the business requirement outgrows the application and hosting infrastructure in the future.
Application Enhancements
When a bug is found in the application, or a change request is required, Solutioneers have a development team in place to handle code refactoring. The process for handling this type of request is as follows:
- Requirements capture
- Risk analysis
- Coding and/or bug fixing
- Regression testing (automated & manual)
- Deployment (see deployment service)
The support process:
Warranty Transitioning Phase
- Code Review
- System Testing (including regression test suite development)
- Development Environment Setup
- Operational Procedures
- Staff Training
- In Warranty
Making a claim
- Log a call with the helpdesk
- Software underwriter assesses the claim
- Code is refactored (on-shore team)
- Regression Testing
- Release cycle
- Full report of changes made is produced