Azure Application Support Service

Providing enterprise support for your cloud based applications

 

Overview

One of the hidden costs of porting code to Azure is the support challenge. The nature of cloud based applications almost by definition increases the scale as well as the time the application is accessed. Your application is always on, accessed from anywhere, with fluctuating computing loads. Readify is pleased to offer Australia's first specific Windows Azure Application Support Service to cater for these particular needs.

Readify has always been a dedicated Microsoft partner, from the days of .NET 1.0; we pride ourselves in being early adopters of technology; and we employ some of the smartest developer minds in the industry. Our internal applications are cloud based, and we work with the clients deploying the biggest instances of Azure today.

We developed the Azure Application Support Service because of our experience developing innovative applications for our clients. We learned that:

• Over time, applications we had developed for clients lost business relevance without code level support
• Clients found it prohibitively expensive to support applications by diverting their own developers, not to mention invest in multiple lab environments.
• Traditional support centres who provide "warm bodies" could not enhance or extend applications to meet changing business needs or technology trends
• The internal systems we developed internally provide us with a significant ROI. Our consultants are free to do what they do best, develop innovative solutions for clients; and our internal applications benefit from rigorous continual enhancement.

Additionally:

• There are no current organisations offering support that understand the implications and management considerations of Windows Azure

Application Support Strategy

The Maintenance Challenge

Supporting software as technology platforms evolve, and the business ecosystem changes is challenging for most organisations. What begins as a "game changing" application soon begins to lose relevance, and often becomes a business disabler as new changes take too long, or are too costly to implement.

This is especially true with cloud based applications. As they scale, and user behaviour adapts to "work from anywhere, at any time," support becomes imperative.

Diverting developers within the organisation reduces your ability to innovate and remain agile. Furthermore it becomes difficult to retain staff more motivated to creating new applications than to supporting existing code.

Meeting the Challenge

Organisations need to consider, and budget for a number of strategic imperatives to ensure longevity, hence maximum ROI, and overall IT agility:

1. Accessible and well documented code
2. Affordable production lab environments
3. Deep Windows Azure expertise, coupled with actual experience
4. Integration with strategic and operational business processes

How the Service Works

Support When You Need It

Once your code is securely managed in the Readify environment, you are no more than a phone call or email away from in-depth support. We replicate your Azure code onto the Readify cloud instance, so can quickly focus on troublesome code, replicate an issue, and test multiple solution scenarios, without impacting your production environment.

We provide rapid response, and transparent resolution timeframes.

Flexible Options

You can engage the Readify Azure Application Support Service in in one of three options:

• The Bronze Service provides phone and email response during standard business hours (9-5, Mon-Fri)
• The Silver Service provides phone and email response from 7am-7pm Mon-Fri
• The Gold Service adds 24x7 hour phone response to the Silver Service

Depending on the application, we generally recommend the Gold Service for cloud based applications. But this is by no means compulsory, simply choose the option that most suits your organisational requirements.

Live Code Environment

Our support service maintains your code in a secure, cloud-based environment; provides industry proven, deep Azure expertise; case triage and support processes honed for our own applications; and leverages tools from the Microsoft ALM platform. The same tools and processes we use when developing applications for clients.

Full Service

When you engage the Azure Application Support Service you have the full resources of Readify at your disposal including: Our expert .NET support team, access to specialist consultants, our hosted development infrastructure, best practice ALM processes and tooling. Over time our team develop a rich knowledge base for your application. This allows us to propose enhancements in line with your usage patterns and technology evolution.

How to Engage Readify

Please call your Readify Account Manager, or our hotline, 1300 666 274, which will direct you to the local Readify team, to arrange a no obligations, free consultation to determine your particular needs.