My two previous posts about the Application Services Library (ASL) covered Applications Cycle Management and Organization Cycle Management. The Application Services Library (ASL) is currently on version 2.0.
ASL 2.0 is usable for all application management organizations, i.e., application management organizations that deliver application services (management and maintenance) and application management organizations that realize the integration of underlying services. Application management comprises managing, maintaining, and renewing applications, drawing up policies for the application management organization and the application portfolio under management and directing the activities required.
To refresh your memory, I’ll show you below figure again, the Application Services Library (ASL2.0) Framework with the following pillars:
- Organization Cycle Management
- Applications Cycle Management
- Maintenance
- Enhancement & Renovation
This post will be about the bottom right corner of the ASL2.0 Framework: Maintenance.
Significance and role of Maintenance inside ASL 2.0
Maintenance is a series of coordinated activities enabling an existing sustainable, operable, and usable system according to agreed rules and procedures.
Within the ASML 2.0 framework, the best-known parts of maintenance activities are continuous activities aimed at optimal and faultless use of your applications. Maintenance usually does not comprise the most significant part of the application management process within an organization. Once working as intended, maintenance gets little attention; however, maintenance is vital for user satisfaction. Over time, neglected maintenance activities can impact the quality of an application. This subject will get the attention it deserves by distinguishing maintenance from project-wise enhancement activities.
When changes are made to applications to enhance them, everyday maintenance activities tend to get too little attention because everybody focuses on improving the application. Because you forget maintenance, the ability to maintain and run the once-finished enhanced application gets too little attention, leading to applications dumped inside business processes without any technical management processes in place. If you forget application maintenance processes, the depreciation time of an application is shorter, hurting the total value of an application over time and speeding up the legacy/obsoleteness of an application.
To maximize the lifecycle of your applications, it is essential to properly execute the five strategies of maintenance within the ASL framework:
- Incident Management
- Availability Management
- Configuration Management
- Capacity Management
- Continuity Management
Incident Management
Incident Management is the process that provides for the settlement of incidents or service calls. A service call is a question, a wish, a disruption, etc., concerning the existing application(s). Incident management provides a service desk process that bridges communication between functional managers and/or (end) users. The service desk also informs users about the implications of (changes in) their ICT services. In the incident management process, you take, register, and set actions in motion to deal with the service calls while monitoring the results. Structural analysis of these results is crucial to provide insight into the desired improvement activities.
Availability Management
The management process of your applications that provide, monitor, and guarantee the availability of services and ICT components is called Availability Management. A good availability management structure has the following processes.
Monitoring availability
Once you have defined your availability requirements, you need to monitor the availability of your applications. Monitoring can involve setting up automated monitoring tools to detect issues and establishing manual processes for monitoring and reporting on availability.
Establishing service level
Establishing service level agreements (SLAs) ensures you meet all availability requirements. You may need to establish SLAs with your internal or external customers and suppliers. SLAs define the level of availability that you will provide, as well as the response time for resolving issues. SLAs also apply to your vendors when you outsource applications and services.
Implementing redundancy and failover mechanisms:
To improve availability, you can implement redundancy and failover mechanisms. These mechanisms can involve setting up multiple instances of your applications and implementing load balancing and failover mechanisms to ensure that your application can continue running in the event of a failure.
Disaster recovery and business continuity plans
In addition to redundancy and failover mechanisms, you must implement disaster recovery and business continuity plans to ensure your applications can recover from a major outage or disaster.
Testing availability
Once you have implemented all availability management measures, you must test them to ensure they work as intended. Testing also involves running simulations of failures and disasters and conducting regular performance and stress testing to identify and address potential issues. Setting up an availability management process for your applications requires a comprehensive approach that involves defining requirements, monitoring availability, establishing SLAs, implementing redundancy and failover mechanisms, implementing disaster recovery and business continuity plans, and testing availability regularly. By taking a proactive approach to availability management, you can help ensure that your applications are highly available and reliable, even in the face of unexpected challenges.
Configuration Management
Configuration management identifies, organizes, and controls changes to an organization’s hardware, software, and related documentation. Configuration management aims to maintain consistency and stability in the organization’s IT environment, minimize downtime, and improve IT operations’ efficiency.
A Configuration Management Database (CMDB) can be of great value in this. A CMDB tool helps you manage your ICT assets, including hardware, software (your applications), and related documentation, including information about how they are configured, related to other assets, and how you use them in the organization.
A CMDB can help with configuration management and provides one single source of truth for all ICT assets and their relationships. A Configuration Management Database can help the ICT team to identify and track changes to assets and quickly determine the impact of changes on other assets in the environment. Additionally, a CMDB can help with change management by providing a record of all changes made to ICT assets, including who made the change, when they made this change, and why they made the change. A well-maintained CMDB can help you maintain the quality of your applications by providing greater visibility and control, enabling them to make more informed decisions about changes and improving their ability to respond to incidents and problems.
Capacity Management
Capacity management provides the optimum deployment of resources: right time, place, quantity, and realistic price.
Implementing scaling mechanisms to ensure your applications can handle varying demand levels would be best. Setting up scaling mechanisms involve setting up auto-scaling groups to automatically adjust the capacity of your application based on demand or implementing load-balancing mechanisms that can distribute traffic across multiple instances of your application.
Another essential part of capacity management is optimizing resource utilization. To make the most efficient use of your resources, you may need to optimize the utilization of your infrastructure. Optimizing infrastructure capacity can involve identifying and addressing performance bottlenecks and implementing caching mechanisms to reduce the load on your application. By implementing a method of application rationalization, you secure an efficient application landscape that will also help you manage your application.
Continuity Management
Continuity management relates to the range of measures you need to take to guarantee the continuity of the services in case of a calamity. During these kinds of events, you need fallback facilities and backup arrangements, and fraud prevention is also an essential part of your continuity management process. Like availability management, continuity management requires a thorough, step-wise approach that you can implement based on the below steps.
Step 1: Conducting a risk assessment
The first step in setting up continuity management is to conduct a risk assessment for your applications. A risk assessment involves identifying potential risks and threats to the availability and functionality of your applications and the potential impact of those risks and threats on your business.
Step 2: Develop a continuity plan
Once you have identified potential risks and threats, you need to develop a continuity plan to mitigate those risks and ensure that your applications can continue operating in the event of a disruption. Setting up a continuity plan can involve developing plans for backup and recovery and restoring functionality in case of a major power outage or disaster.
Step 3: implementing backup and recovery mechanisms
It would be best if you implemented backup and recovery mechanisms to ensure that you can recover your applications during an outage or disaster. You do this by setting up regular backups of your data and application configurations and implementing disaster recovery mechanisms to ensure that you can quickly restore functionality in the event of significant disruption.
Step 4: Establishing service level agreements (SLAs)
I already mentioned this in the availability section of this post, but also, for your continuity management, you need to establish SLAs with your internal and external customers and suppliers. You can combine the SLA process for both availability management and continuity management. You should periodically evaluate your SLAs during your periodical customer and vendor evaluation. The SLAs define the level of service that you and your external suppliers will provide and the response time for resolving issues.
Step 5 Testing continuity
Once you have implemented a continuity management system, you must test them periodically to ensure they work as expected. This testing process involves running simulations of failures and disasters and conducting regular performance and stress testing to identify and address potential issues.
Step 6 Reviewing and updating your continuity plan
Continuity management is an ongoing process, and you need to review and update your continuity plan regularly to ensure that it remains effective. Reviewing and updating your continuity plan involves conducting regular risk assessments to identify new risks and threats and updating your plan in response to changes in your application architecture or infrastructure.
Final Thoughts
Application maintenance is critical for ensuring the ongoing reliability, security, and performance of your applications and ensuring that they continue to meet the evolving needs of your business. By taking a proactive approach to application maintenance, you can help to reduce costs, minimize downtime, and ensure that your applications remain effective tools for supporting your business operations while securing business continuity.
Feel free to contact me if you have questions or in case you have any additional advice/tips about this subject. If you want to keep me in the loop if I upload a new post, subscribe so you receive a notification by e-mail.
