New role for software maintenance: Break-fix no longer applies

Software maintenance keeps the wheels turning in all the systems that drive ICT. More than fixing defects and meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs), software maintenance can and should support proactive, predictive and even preemptive action to add business value. In today’s challenging economic and business conditions, effective software maintenance is one way to generate value by driving the change from manual people-intensive processes to automated customer-centric operations.

It’s all about readiness

Software maintenance is already moving away from the reactive, break-fix model to a much more business-centric approach to maintaining, updating and developing software. There are implications here to the way the organizations buy services such as software maintenance as decision makers are increasingly interested in the end-to-end business impact.

The growing complexity of the communications ecosystem as new technologies, devices, services and applications are introduced is putting increasing pressure on operator networks. When this pressure results in outages and disruptions, damage is done not only to revenue but also to the operator’s market perception and brand equity in the eyes of their customers.

So, there are good reasons for software maintenance to step up and take a more proactive, predictive and even preemptive role. Instead of just responding to problems, operators can improve their capability to leverage the intelligence coming from networks, services, service usage and experience, perception and devices. Software provides this intelligence and software maintenance keeps the level of visibility high.

Active Software Support from Nokia Siemens Networks

To help operators achieve the transformational advantages of proactive software maintenance, Nokia Siemens Networks has developed Active Software Support (ASWS), a comprehensive service that unlocks the value of software investments by freeing up precious resources from manual processes and improving network agility and performance with continuous active network monitoring of anomalous network behavior.

The service supports customer experience, operational efficiency, and risk management with a fully automated suite for predicting and preventing operational issues. ASWS also comprises a 24/7 online portal for self-help software maintenance, including online application support for collaboration, expert chat, a knowledge base repository, scheduled and priority software corrections, and a comprehensive list of key performance Indicators (KPI) for better network performance measurement.

Major operators in Europe and Asia-Pacific have successfully used and tested ASWS to prevent problems before they occur, reduce the amount of time spent in troubleshooting, and enable better network element quality reports for efficient field maintenance and objective-setting for capacity expansion.

As the industry moves towards LTE, Evolved Packet Core, transport network evolution and new end-user applications, operators are focusing on streamlining network performance and Operations & Maintenance (O&M). ASWS has been designed to address the operator’s software maintenance challenges and contribute to the total value of ownership of their software.

How do you see software maintenance? Is it the unsung hero of today’s networks? Please share your thoughts and ideas about the role of software in running and managing today’s networks.

This post is by Manish Chandra from the Nokia Siemens Network Services team