Windows Phone 7 Application Support Service

Providing support for your business at the coal face

 

Overview

Readify is at the leading edge of developing enterprise applications for the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform. We're pleased to offer the Windows Phone 7 Application Support service for our clients. Indeed any organisation that interacts with their customers, partners, suppliers, or employees, via their WP7 applications.

Whilst specifically for WP7 Applications, this service is borne of experiences from our decade of developing leading edge .NET applications for Australian clients:

• 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.

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.

Unlike any other software in your business, customers will use your Windows Phone 7 application more than any other, at the strangest times, and the remotest locations. The "Any time, any device, anywhere" philosophy brings with it unique support challenges.

Additionally, unlike a website, code can't be updated instantaneously, but needs to go through the Marketplace approval process.

Added there simply are no other organisations in Australia offering WP7 code support. 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 .NET expertise, skilled in the latest developments
4. Integration with strategic and operational business processes

How the Service Works

Continuous Feedback

Once your code is securely managed in the Readify environment, we monitor the feedback and crash reports from users in the field. We collate this information; replicate the issue within the lab environment, then provide a fix that is included in the next update.

We work with the client organisation to determine the severity of the issue according to a number of criteria. This feeds into the priority for testing and deploying an update to users of the application.

Sustained Engineering

In addition to resolving issues, our team works with the business to add features. These may be to resolve an design issue, rather than a bug, or simply to add functionality to the application.

These features are tested and included in the update along with any required fixes.

This service ensures that your application remains dynamic and continues to meet your business objectives.

Flexible Options

Whilst you can engage the Readify 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

We recommend that the Bronze Service, due to the built in delay in deploying updates to client devices.

Live Code Environment

Our support service maintains your code in a secure, cloud-based environment; provides industry proven, deep Sharepoint 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 Readify WP7 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.