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Application Support & DevOps

Here at Ballard Chalmers, part of the Transparity Group, we can take on the ongoing management of your application whether we wrote it or you need to transition from a previous partner. Fully qualified and experienced engineers do the support, not help desk staff. We do everything possible to ensure your initial investment pays off with a fully functioning and stable application fulfilling its business intention.

SOME OF OUR Application Support & DevOps ENGAGEMENTS

ONGOING APPLICATION MANAGEMENT: DEVOPS & SUPPORT

With ongoing application management at Ballard Chalmers, your software gets the benefit of expert engineers who can provide support whenever it is required for bug fixing, routine maintenance, updates and so on as well as ongoing development using DevOps methodologies to push your software to the best it can be.

Application Support:

Our ongoing support service is designed to be flexible and uncomplicated, covering all the technologies in our portfolio. Your Support Manager will utilize an online ticketing system, with registered client contacts authorised to raise support tickets.

Support is available via two services: either fully managed or on-demand via pre-purchased blocks. Find out more about our application managed service here.

On-demand support is typically pre-purchased in blocks of 25, 50, 100, 250 or more hours depending on individual requirements and is called off as it is used up and topped up when the hours run out. Support hours do not lapse and can be used at any time. Our response times are governed by SLAs based on the severity/category of the support request.

  • UK-based engineers
  • Dedicated support team
  • Microsoft MSP Expert Partner expertise
  • Remote or onsite support
  • Support hours that don’t lapse

DevOps:

Though you may not currently be in need of a major project for full development or modernisation, it doesn’t mean there aren’t new features, functionality or enhancements that can be made to your app to continue its relevancy, better the user-experience, expand its usage and more.

  • UK-based engineers
  • Dedicated engineers
  • Add new features
  • Enhance aspects of your app
  • Microsoft Expert MSP Partner expertise
  • Increase functionality

I’ve always had a good experience with them. They provide good support, and recently provided us with the ability to deploy developments weekly.

Project Manager – OVO Energy

They are integrated into our work communications. We have weekly phone meetings with the project manager and the developers, and it’s easy to email or message team members directly. They have their own support portal, but we can run through the budget, admin-related tasks, design specifications, guidance, or other criteria. Otherwise, they manage their internal processes.

Project Manager – OVO Energy

Ballard Chalmers provide us with specialist development, advice and support, and integrate well with our in-house Information Services Team. We find everyone at Ballard Chalmers very personable, professional and highly skilled.

IT Manager – Young Epilepsy

Helpful and highly knowledgeable. Supported many of our systems for several years and continue to do so.

IT Network Supervisor – The College of Richard Collyer

I’ve worked with a number of external companies with regards to support and development, all of whom have been professional, but I can honestly say that Ballard Chalmers have delivered their service to the highest standard of them all.

IT Program Manager – Plastic Logic

This gives us continuity at a reasonable cost and maintains the relationship with Geoff and the Ballard Chalmers team. It’s our software and we have the flexibility to add enhancements when we want, and we are well supported by Ballard Chalmers.

Director of Development – Ipes

Richard has been, and continues to be, a fantastic help with support to our client. He always takes the time to explain things as clearly as the situation allows and is very quick to fix problems when asked. I really appreciate all his help.

Manager – Mason Zimbler

Ballard Chalmers undertook further development to an existing application. They were very quick to understand our requirements, were able to create a complete test environment within Azure in record fast time, fully understood the the existing connectivity solution into our back end systems and provided further enhancements and ongoing support.

IT Manager – Jacksons Fencing

I would like you to convey my appreciation for the professional faultless support we continue to receive from Ballard Chalmers. From installation to the completion of the SharePoint application and subsequent support, they have shown expert knowledge.

IT Manager – Plastic Logic

We had an initial meeting with Ballard Chalmers and were immediately confident that they were the right fit for us. We’ve now been working with Ballard Chalmers for almost a year and a half and they’ve assisted us in several areas including SharePoint Support and SharePoint consultancy to help us migrate from a 3rd party intranet solution to ‘Modern’ SharePoint Online.

CIO – United Living

Application Support & DevOps Case Studies

Featured DevOps & Support case study

Having completed the initial development of the Care Database and with the application stable, CHT was looking to change partners for long-term support and enhancement development of the system. Having taken over the system we have been carrying out ongoing DevOps ever since. Including increased functionality in areas such as:

  • Form building
  • Body-mapping
  • Reporting
The Care Database

HOW WE CAN HELP YOU WITH DEV OPS

The key to an effective DevOps process is that the developers are focussed on the ongoing running of an application.

We plan for the live running of our applications from the very earliest inception stages of development and automate as much of the testing and deployment as possible.

We can build scalable and stable applications for you using techniques like Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD), requirements agreed as human-readable automated acceptance tests and unit testing.

Our DevOps Methodologies

Unit Testing

Applying quality assurance from the first lines of code

Our code is written with a high coverage of testing to ensure that the code is delivering what is expected of it. This allows a very high degree of confidence that changes made to one area of the application will not cause a bug further down the line. We make use of frameworks such as NUnit, Microsoft Unit Test Framework and NFluent.

Automated Acceptance Tests

Creating human readable UI tests

Acceptance tests are written in the Gherkin language so they are easily understood by all users. These tests are supported with Specflow and Selenium to create a set of coded UI tests that perform the same actions as the user would themselves and confirms that the application works from the front-end as well as from the code itself.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment

Increasing the speed from keyboard to running application

Azure DevOps is used to build code from the first check-in, compile it to a deployable format, and then deploy that code to the appropriate servers and serverless services in Azure. Unit tests and acceptance tests are automatically run as part of the deployment to the test environment so we can also be confident that changes made have not broken any functionality.

HOW BALLARD CHALMERS CAN HELP YOU WITH APPLICATION SUPPORT

We can provide custom software support for the systems that we develop and for your existing or legacy systems. Our expert software engineers offer third-line support. Providing you with deep expert support to work alongside your in-house team as a seamless extension.

Once the Service Level Agreement (SLA) is finalised, our dedicated in-house UK support team will be available to help you over the phone or by email, weekdays from 9 AM to 5.30 PM.

You will have an assigned Support Manager to assist you, and direct access to technicians when needed. This gives you consistent and dedicated support to keep your application running smoothly and in optimum shape.

Having invested in building custom software, keeping it running smoothly is vital and worth every penny. With a support package, you get full, uninterrupted help for any issues or queries that might crop up.

We can provide support for:

    • Modern Azure applications
    • .NET Systems
    • SQL Server
    • Xamarin Applications
    • SharePoint Server
    • BizTalk Server
    • The Power Platform
    • Bespoke Enterprise Software
    • Legacy Systems

WHY YOU NEED DEVOPS & SUPPORT

Keeping your enterprise software effective is essential to avoid costly disruptions. Your applications are critical for productivity, and outages or bugs can have far-reaching effects. Maintaining applications in an optimum condition can be complex, and hard to support internally, that’s why many companies choose the cost-effective method of outsourcing to us for application management: software application support & DevOps.

Common benefits from outsourcing software application support & DevOps:

  • Increase products lifetime
  • Free up in-house resources for new software development
  • Avoid in-house time-wastage on legacy systems
  • Increase company productivity with reduced slows and bugs

Without a robust application support & DevOps strategy, you could risk:

  • Needing costly repairs
  • Reduced productivity from slows
  • Reputational damage from outages
  • Business continuity disruption
  • Compromised effectiveness
  • Disrupted routine caused by emergencies

Application Support & DevOps can be used for all purposes, including:

  • Bug fixing
  • Updates
  • Strategy & planning
  • Informal mentoring & consultancy
  • Routine maintenance
  • Background system maintenance
  • Database maintenance and analysis
  • Rolling data back or merging data from previous versions, when needed
  • Adding new features
  • Enhancing aspects of an app
  • Expanding functionality

Why Ballard Chalmers

Ballard Chalmers specialists will work with you and your team to maintain, support and enhance your custom software both efficiently and cost-effectively. A vital requirement for business continuity, effectiveness and productivity.

HERITAGE

We were established in 2005, though our heritage is much longer. We have decades of industry experience used to bring you the right solution in every support ticket.

EXPERTISE

As software engineers, we are technical problem solvers. We bring that expertise to you in every support ticket so your team don’t have to worry.

MICROSOFT PARTNERS

Only the top Microsoft Partners have attained multiple solution partner designations demonstrating best in class — we have five.

EXPERIENCE

We have a long track record of successfully supporting both SMP and enterprise systems. Your support tickets don’t run out, our experience is always available to you.

Our Recent Application Support & DevOps Articles

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