Are you one of those who think, "Why do I need to spend money on something that I already have paid for? I mean, it's developed, I have the product, now what else is left?" Then you, my friend, have landed on the blog that will change your perception by 360-degree.
It is often believed that the software development life cycle begins at coding and ends at delivery! It turns out that this is the half-baked truth. In reality, software maintenance and support post-delivery are equally important. Just like us, software lives in a dynamic world too.
Every day rises with innovations and technology upgrades, so do you think you can ace your game with outdated software? It's like choosing a bicycle to win a race where your competitors are riding a Tesla!
Monitoring, maintaining, and having intelligent support for your software are the only things that will help you adapt to the new changes and also give you maximum return on your development investment. It allows your solution to be athletic and thrive in a fluctuating business and technology environment.
Conventionally, software maintenance and support services are opted to attain the enhanced and steady performance of the system. Few other reasons to keep it running are; upgrading the features, migration to the cloud, and all the other micro and macro reasons that keep the heart of your business up and beating.
Now, since we have established that software maintenance makes the advancements in the existing solutions and beats the curve as the market shifts, let's get to the What, How, and Why of it.
What is software maintenance?
Software maintenance is a vast management process that comes after software delivery. It includes the aspects like optimizing the software performance with advanced development, minimizing the error, eliminating the unnecessary development elements. Unlike software development, software maintenance is an ongoing activity.
What are the types of software maintenance services?
Adaptive Maintenance
Adaptive maintenance is the concept where conversions in the system are made to enhance the software compatibility and empower it for the changing business needs along with technical evolution. Adaptive maintenance is intentionally designed to tackle the new operating systems, upgrading platforms, and hardware to maintain the progression with the software. It focuses explicitly on software frameworks.
You can witness the adaptive maintenance in one of our case studies.
Perfective Maintenance
Perfective maintenance is the process that revolves around the recasting of the elements, functionalities, and abilities to improvise the performance of the system operations. With this type of maintenance, one can alter the existing software by enhancing, eliminating, or introducing new features or functions.
Corrective Maintenance
Corrective maintenance is where the errors in the existing solutions are identified and corrected. This application maintenance process aims to eradicate bugs along with software issues. It is usually down with frequent and minor updates.
Preventive Maintenance
As the name suggests, preventive maintenance is done to save the system from any anticipated weaknesses. It defines the software improvements and future-proof your solution. Besides, preventive measures simplify the maintenance of your code and monitor your legal system.
Why are software maintenance and support essential?
Better Performance
The most renowned way to enhance the system performance is to detect issues via testing and fix them. However, data and coding restricting, along with reengineering, falls under software maintenance. It is not a functionality that works in operations, but it saves your software from malicious attacks like hacking. It keeps your solution from being vulnerable. Besides, software maintenance and support empower your system to meet the new requirements.
Bug Fixing
One word that can give sleepless nights to the software developer and owners is 'bugs.' It is an inevitable enemy that can pop up at any given time. It disrupts the software workflow and results in unexpected software behavior.
Now, who wants that?
Hence, to have software that works without any problem, correcting bugs must be your priority task. In this process, the testers seek out the errors and correct them. The errors could be anywhere, including software, hardware, and operating system. This must be done in a way that other functions of the software are not disturbed.
Adapts to a changing environment
Can you guess what are the fastest-changing or rather evolving elements of the world? Its technology and business ecosystem. In order to succeed, the business has to make the very best of the functions that software offers. Besides, your software also needs to match all the business demands at the right time. This is the reason why software service providers stress on maintenance and support. It keeps you up with the market trends and makes your business a robust and efficient one.
Predictive cash flow
Having control over your software expenditure is the most securing feeling. When your software bugs are taken care of, the software routine upgrades are in line; then your overall IT expenditures are bound to get down to one time monthly or annually fee. This eliminates the chances of any hidden cost or the guessing games of IT expenses.
Some software aspects that influence the maintenance cost are,
- Structure of Software program
- Programming language
- Dependence on the external environment
- Staff reliability and availability
Note: If you are looking for an innovative firm with great experience check out all about it here.
Conclusion:
Software maintenance and smart software support are the two things that keep your solution hale and hearty. Hence, it is essential to have an experienced tech partner that provides you with reliable and authenticated maintenance management. We at Clarion Technologies practice agility, and our technology agnosticism helps our valuable clients use the technology with utmost precision. We excel in offering cost-effective, flexible, and customizable solutions.
So, do you still believe that software development life cycle ends at delivery? Or are you already looking for a tech partner that offers software support and maintenance services?
