SUPPORT

Support An application deployed on a server for the first time is like an airliner parked at a boarding gate — both represent a large investment for their owners, and neither can address the problems that motivated their owners to make that investment by themselves. Even the simplest applications need someone to be accountable for their operation — to start the services, respond to alerts, and ensure that they are and will continue to play their part in a solution to your real world problems. In more complex environments IT Operations departments can employ thousands of people in these tasks, dwarfing the number of developers working on new software solutions.

Ignoring the distinction between solution development and operations is a common and yet false economy, resulting in poor application availability, distracted development teams and limited management visibility of solution performance. RocketBoots understands operations support, with a core team of people experienced in large enterprise computing departments. As more is expected of Internet and mobile application services we are happy to present a suite of services that allow our clients to benefit from our combined experience, cherry–picking the core elements of enterprise–level operations support processes into three streamlined packages:

Flight Deck — Log Monitoring and Operations Manual Development

Problem:

  • You rely on your users to tell you when there are issues with your live ColdFusion/J2EE applications;
  • Your data centre organisation does not offer application-level support;
  • Your development team spends their time supporting existing applications instead of implementing new features, reducing their productivity;
  • The knowledge required to keep your applications operating is not documented and relies on a few key personnel, increasing risk, and
  • You don't know how well your application is supporting your business goals, and where you can best invest development time to improve ROI.

Solution:

  • RocketBoots monitors your live applications remotely by forwarding your application logs to our monitoring server;
  • RocketBoots support staff collaborate on an ongoing basis with your development team to develop and document a set of instructions for operating your applications:
    • regular tasks,
    • responses to particular events (ignore, escalate) and
    • contact lists (stakeholders, developers);
  • RocketBoots support staff monitor your logs during business hours and carry out documented tasks, freeing your development team to concentrate on development work;
  • Where it has been agreed to do so, RocketBoots support staff will escalate issues to you or your development team;
  • RocketBoots will provide a weekly report on service availability, site usage and production issues, and
  • RocketBoots will consult with you to determine additional KPIs you would like to monitor that support your business goals, and arrange with your development team to add the logging necessary to collect and report on these KPIs.

Black Box — Incident Investigation and Analysis

Problem:

  • A lot of developer time is spent isolating application bugs. Once located, the bug fix is relatively straightforward.

Solution:

  • Extend the “Flight Deck” responsibilities of RocketBoots support staff to bug investigation or testing, freeing your development team to concentrate on fixes and development work. Investigation tasks can be scheduled to fit in with your development lifecycle.
  • Our staff will require access to a development environment for your applications. Tickets will be allocated to our staff using either your own ticketing system or alternatively RocketBoots can host one (Trac) for you.
  • The service is offered on a retainer basis covering ten hours of investigation per week, with additional time on an hourly rate subject to availability.
  • In addition to the Flight Deck weekly reports RocketBoots will supply reports on the investigative tasks undertaken for the week and any issues that have been identified.

Hangar — Development Environment Support

Problem:

  • Your development team spends too much time setting up tools, ticketing systems, code repositories and other elements of the development environment, or
  • Your development team's productivity is limited by the lack of a best-practice development environment, and you don't have the time or expertise to implement one.

Solution:

  • RocketBoots provides hosted ticketing, configuration management and continuous integration services and a help desk with expert support staff for your development team.
  • The service is offered on a retainer basis covering ten hours per week and based on the number of people in your development team.