At Appsfactory, we believe this is a must, and so should you! During the various stages of product development, you will eventually come to a point where budget cuts will affect maintenance and support. Having seen this many times, we have recognized the need and now offer three different support and maintenance packages per platform — tailored to your needs.
Authors: Dr. Rolf Kluge, Waldemar Barbe, Nedim Hozic, Torsten Kretzschmar, Henry Kursawe, Mario Streubel, Peter Werner
Our solution for a well-known problem
Before we dive in, we want you to think of your digital product as a living organism that needs ongoing support and care to avoid threats, adapt to new circumstances, and stay on top of its game. This is where our maintenance and support packages come in. For each platform — Mobile, Web Frontend and Backend — we offer three flavors: Standard, Premium, and Ultimate.
The Standard package covers the basics, such as updating the build toolchain, responding to support requests during business hours, and recording and presenting a log once maintenance is complete.
If you need more help, our Premium package includes everything in the Standard package, plus library and dependency updates, proactive security assessment, and proactive quality assurance.
Finally, our Ultimate package includes everything in the previous packages, plus proactive architecture assessment and proactive privacy and compliance. This package takes the support you receive to the next level by giving you 24/7 support with our on-call engineer offering.
These are just general examples — we offer much more platform-specific support. Read on for a deep dive into the platforms and their respective packages.
Getting back to your living organism, if you do not take care of it, your product will wither, fall victim to viruses and bugs, and most importantly, sink into obscurity.
“Appsfactory Maintenance & Support Packages ensure security, reliability and readiness for future development.” — Dr. Rolf Kluge, CTO Appsfactory
Appsfactory presents: The packages for Mobile
Our Standard package for Mobile covers all the basics, such as testing the app on new operating system betas, updating the app itself, and performing quality assurance on the new operating system. For iOS, we update provisioning profiles and push certificates. Updating and analyzing the toolchain is another important part of our package, which includes updating the DevOps pipeline and static code analysis rules. Reactively, we monitor messages and policy updates announced by Apple App Store Connect or Google Play Console about important changes and prepare an analysis and further steps if necessary. We provide support during business hours and are available via email or our ticket system. To keep customers up to date, we present innovations, adjustments and implementation details to them. And most importantly, we document our analysis, planning, implementation and results.
Of course, the Premium package includes everything the Standard package offers. In addition, the Premium package includes library and dependency updates and more extensive quality assurance. Our proactive crash log monitoring includes a criticality assessment, based on which we propose a solution with a cost estimate and either fix it or escalate the issue to development. This upgrade enriches the reactive support with additional phone support and a log of the updated libraries and security assessment.
As you may have guessed, the Ultimate package includes everything the Standard and Premium packages do. We proactively perform an architecture and technology assessment that identifies potential problems or vulnerabilities, makes recommendations for improvement, and provides guidance. We also perform a privacy and regulatory assessment.
If you wish, we can also provide app store management. A more in-depth look at this topic calls for another article, doesn’t it?
Do you need a package for Web Frontend? We got you covered!
Our Standard package for Web Frontend focuses on analyzing and updating a framework version as well as the toolchain. Regarding the framework version, this also means quality assurance after the update. We offer our support during business hours and are available via email or ticket system. To keep you up to date, we present innovations, adaptations and implementations. And most importantly, we document our analysis, planning, implementation and results.
The Premium package adds the analysis and update of libraries and dependencies to the bundle and emphasizes proactive security assessment as well as proactive quality assurance. For you as a customer, this means that we scan for code security, analyze password and credential implementations — and change them if necessary — and deploy patches.
The Ultimate package includes everything in the other two packages, plus a proactive architecture assessment that identifies potential vulnerabilities and issues and provides remediation recommendations. Moreover we concentrate on data protection and regulatory compliance, such as maintaining quality in accordance with ISO 9001 processes or risk evaluation.
The backbone of applications: Our packages for Backend
Our Standard package for Backend focuses on analyzing and updating a framework version as well as the toolchain. Regarding the framework version, this also means quality assurance after the update. We also analyze and update the infrastructure such as certificates and credentials. We offer our support during business hours and are available via email or ticket system. To keep you up to date, we present innovations, adaptations and implementations. And most importantly, we document our analysis, planning, implementation, and results.
By upgrading to our Premium package, you get all the benefits of the Standard version and much more. We take care of analyzing and updating libraries and dependencies, as well as deprecated services. We proactively monitor the runtime environment, including logs, alerts, costs, and resources. We also perform security assessments and proactive quality assurance such as API health checks and API plausibility checks.
Of course, the Ultimate package includes everything in the other packages. It also focuses on incident management, disaster recovery and backup, as well as privacy and compliance, which is key to a secure and robust backend. What else is important? Proactive architecture and SLA assessment!
Are you still not sure if your digital product needs a maintenance and support package?
Get in touch with us — all of our socials are linked below.
Or just continue reading and learn about the Why behind.
Our reason behind it
During the development cycle of a product — in our case apps, web frontend and backend — a fixed budget is used and while going through the different phases of development, we also take care of maintenance and support. Once the budget is used up or cut, we have to stop the support and this is where the risks and threats come in.
Digital products which are not actively maintained pose a threat to you and your customers
Updating and maintaining a product is crucial to keep users safe from threats such as viruses, but also to keep up with the latest technologies and versions of devices and licenses. As a full-service agency, we realized that we needed to address this issue at the root and now offer different packages for you to choose from depending on your needs.
About Appsfactory
Appsfactory is Germany’s leading agency for digital products and applications, with over 700 realized projects. Our diverse range of clients includes companies such as Axel Springer, AOK, Bertelsmann, BMW, Condé Nast, DKV, DER STANDARD, F.A.Z., Mercedes-Benz, Police Saxony, RTL, SMA Solar Technology, SwissRe, Vattenfall and Vonovia, who benefit from our full-service expertise throughout the entire lifecycle of technological offerings. We place particular emphasis on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. With the acquisition of Peak Performance Apps GmbH, we have expanded our portfolio to include highly scalable digital real-time interactions.
As one of Europe’s fastest-growing multimedia agencies, we employ over 380 staff at five central locations in Germany. Our Quality Management System (QMS) is certified according to ISO 9001, ISO 27001, TISAX for the automotive industry and for the development of medical products according to ISO 13485. Awards such as the Red Dot, the German Digital Prize, iF Design Award and the Grand Stevie Award demonstrate our successful and innovation-driven work. Our company has recently been awarded the honor of Top Company 2023 by kununu and certified a Great Place to Work 2023. In addition, we have partnerships with Microsoft (Certified Gold Partner), Brightcove, Livingdocs, and certifications in the Google Agency Program and as an Alexa Featured Agency.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/appsfactory
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/appsfactory.de
GitHub: https://github.com/appsfactorygmbh
Website: www.appsfactory.de/en
