What are Application Maintenance Services?
Application development is a part of software development cycle process, which includes planning, designing, developing, testing and deploying an app that automates certain business operations, resolves challenges or acts as information renderer. The main strategic aspects of business growth usually involve application development and maintenance, which includes value-added services such as developing future-proof innovative app development and improvising user-experience to increase customer retention and business revenue. Thus, every business looks forth to tailored app development solutions which are easily scalable, deployable, market-ready, meet users’ needs, and are built with advanced technologies. For this purpose, application maintenance and support are required, which include continuous update and modification of the developed app via thorough and periodic re-evaluation and sustainability analytics. This process fixes existing and emerging defects with time, identifies areas of improvement, corrects issues, and augments performance of the app.
The average revenue of the application development market is projected to be US $179.9 billion in 2024. This is expected to increase at a CAGR of 6.87% ultimately reaching a value of US $324.7 billion by 2028.
Market revenue of application development & maintenance in USA from 2018-2028
Best Software Application Maintenance Practices
It is necessary to follow certain practices to deliver the best maintenance post-development such as resolving issues, thoroughly testing software updates and providing continuous support to users through a pro-active user-centric approach. These steps are discussed further in detail as below:
Structured Schedules
In order to develop exceptional applications, an application development and maintenance partner with extensive experience, cost-effective solutions and plausible communication protocol must be selected. Structured maintenance scheduling with minimal disruption in user operations is the key to successful app enhancement, for example, inclusion of a new payment gateway in e-commerce app development. Updating the app must be conducted during off-peak hours and planned beforehand by pro-actively informing users through emails, messages, notifications or system alerts keeping in mind the difference in time zones and between production and testing environments. The impact of maintenance must be assessed continuously for user experience, operational efficiency, stability and security measures.
Issue Addressal
Firstly, all the associated members must document the application journey and related strategies around maintenance must be communicated frequently with internal team and external partners. Many times, businesses receive support requests from customers around various types of glitches, issues etc. which must be taken as priority and immediately resolved. The internal or outsourced maintenance team needs to assess reported issues and rank the same with a focus on the ones that affect daily operations and user experience. Prompt actions will help in building up customer loyalty and satisfaction.
Best practices for application maintenance services
Streamlined Maintenance
Modern application development strategies include test creation prior to coding for ease of maintenance and functionalities, a process called Test-Driven Development (TDD). A few alternatives may include Behavioral-Driven Development, where the application’s or its features’ behavior is focused upon, and Acceptance-TDD, where behavior is defined initially, and precise requirements of the end user are taken into consideration. TDD utilizes Version Control tools like Git, SVN, Mercurial etc. for code history maintenance, enforcing compliance, enabling rapid rollbacks and collaborative development. It streamlines maintenance and optimization, ensures code quality and efficient management, assists in meeting user demands and supports seamless operations.
Update Validation
Testing and validating from an end-user’s point of view is vital to the whole process of application maintenance services. A baseline is established, upon which the update is applied, then the tests are re-run during maintenance via internal users to detect new issues and confirm the effectiveness of resolution. This step ensures precise tracking, maintenance reliability, seamless user experience and minimal disruptions.
Compliance Checks
It is of utmost importance to keep the developed applications at par with regulations and policies for better security measures and minimal bug interruptions. At the same time, applications must be flexible and adaptable enough to fit current market needs and changing organizational standards. The compliance check must review and verify that the app adheres to legal and organizational standards related to data security, user privacy and operational protocols to avoid penalties. Regular audits and updates are essential to maintain alignment with evolving regulations and industry standards.
Benefits of Mobile App Maintenance Services
Given below are the key benefits of application maintenance:
- With sophisticated custom application development services and maintenance, businesses can easily manage existing and newly developed product and service offerings as they are flexible, expandable and secure in nature.
- These applications are developed as per industry standards and advanced technologies of changing times to safeguard throughput and assure return on investment.
- In most cases, by leveraging various outsourcing services, businesses gain access to flexible development and app lifecycle models, which may or may not include quality assurance, and other enhancements as per their requirement.
- These services help in fortifying businesses and persistent value returns with continuous IT-based improvisations of legacy and newly developed solutions.
- Businesses can gain direct access to varied talent pools across industries with deep-domain expertise in application development and maintenance.
- Companies can also expand their portfolio with quality assured app development across verticals such as retail, banking, medical technology, manufacturing, security and surveillance etc.
- Overall increase in operational efficiency, faster delivery, customer satisfaction, device agnosticism (web app development services or mobile), cost-effectiveness and revenue.
- They also provide assured greater outreach to different markets around the global village and their subsequent regulatory standard adaptation.
Benefits of mobile app maintenance services
Future Trends in Application Maintenance & Support
It is becoming a common notion for security measures to be embedded within the application code instead of post-development implementation. Cloud-based Android application development is likely to become the need of the hour, given its numerous benefits and scalability. Surging importance of virtual assistants, Large Language Models, Generative AI etc. that enable automated deployment is likely to amalgamate different tools used as of now. Given the competitive landscape, more and more innovative technologies would be available as cost-effective and open-source solutions, causing businesses to shift towards newer and better technical advancements. AI-driven predictive maintenance for software application maintenance would make strides in system failure predictions via AI pattern recognition-based data analysis and proactive insights ensuring minimal disruptions and smoother running of applications. Microservices, which are independent, flexible parts of applications and scalable containerization tools such as Docker, can easily cater to the evolving business needs of the future. Software development and IT operations (DevOps) coupled with Agile techniques can effectively streamline mobile app maintenance services through responsive strategies and faster development cycles.
Retain App Efficiency with KritiKal
So far from the discussion, we observed that post-application development, apps need to withstand the test of time and retain their efficiency throughout regularly emerging technological advancements via software application maintenance services. Even prior to mass deployment, maintenance services address initial glitches and bugs through continuous updates for a seamless user experience and regular patches for enhanced security against cybersecurity threats. We also observed that as new platforms and user requirements arise and global data surges, maintaining functional versatility and overall performance optimization with evolving regulatory adherence render app maintenance as a necessity.
KritiKal Solutions can be your partner in this relentless pursuit of bug-free user experience. We provide custom application development in Dallas as well as maintenance services at every stage of software lifecycle to ensure reliable performance, intuitive user platforms, operational efficiency and eventually sustained app longevity in the competitive landscape. Our easily scalable architectures and flexible UI/UX across web and mobile apps, IoT and cloud-based apps, data processing and management apps etc. developed and maintained using advanced tools and programming languages such as C#, SQL Server, .Net, Git, Selenium, JIRA, Python, Swift, Ruby, JavaScript, OCaml, jQuery, Kotlin, Java, and C++ etc. can be enhanced as per user requirements. Please mail us at sales@kritikalsolutions.com for your specific needs and let us assist you with our state-of-the-art app development and maintenance services.
Siddaramappa N N currently works as a Senior Software Developer at KritiKal Solutions. He has over 8 years of experience in software development and is extensively skilled at HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery UI and many more technologies and platforms. He has assisted KritiKal in delivering various projects to some major clients.