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
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
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:
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- 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.
