Good times for cobblers, but what about application management?

HintTech: 'Investing in application management and maintenance produces substantial cost savings'

31 March 2009 - Parool recently reported that repairers are doing well during the economic recession. Tradesmen such as cobblers, furniture restorers and seamstresses, according to the article, are finding their customer numbers growing in these adverse economic times. Consumers are having to watch the pennies nowadays, and businesses too are being forced to postpone investments. The ICT field is no exception. This means that sound management and expert maintenance of existing applications are becoming increasingly important, according to HintTech, specialists in the field of eBusiness technology and IT projects.

‘Application management was neglected at many companies for years,’ says Patrick Dekker, Director of HintTech. ‘I think this was partly out of a desire for convenience, as these things take time; the investments in new applications came in quick succession, making sound management of existing applications less important. But you can see that we have now reached a turning-point. Businesses are no longer investing on a large scale in new applications, but are relying more on the management and maintenance of existing ones.’

The Parool article also reports that cobblers are being given a lot of shoes and boots which have clearly been stored away for a number of years and have become dusty and dried out. This is not the right approach, according to Dekker: ‘Sound management of your applications in fact means that you get started as soon as the applications have been implemented. Because the longer you leave it, the higher the total management and maintenance costs will be. What’s more, if your applications receive insufficient or inappropriate management, the risk that they – and hence your business processes – will fail rises disproportionately. So you really can say that investing in proper management and maintenance of your applications will deliver substantial cost savings in the long term.’

HintTech has a Development Center (HDC) for both bespoke software development and management in the field of Java, Microsoft .Net and packages such as Tridion, ADAM and Hippo CMS. The HDC offers development paths with a standardised development environment, and a continuously equipped high-tech infrastructure for system development. The applications developed by the HDC are managed and maintained by the same engineers and project managers at the HDC who were involved in the application’s development. According to Dekker, this has a number of advantages: ‘Our people are familiar with the applications and the clients. They have grown with them, you might say. What’s more, the lines of communication are already there. As the icing on the cake, the HintTech Development Centers uses resources in the Netherlands, the United States and Serbia. Thanks to good collaboration and 24-hour availability, we can respond quickly and deal flexibly with our clients’ planning and capacity questions.’

In order to leave nothing to chance, HintTech uses the Application Services Library methodology (ASL), clients’ applications are continuously monitored and the applications’ life cycle is managed. Applications can also easily be phased in and out, and extra features can be added. The success of this approach is endorsed by CIO Berry Verhoeven at Malmberg, one of the largest publishers of educational books and magazines: ‘The HintTech people have a great deal of experience to draw on. The management of our online products is in safe hands with them’.

About HintTech

HintTech is a specialist in e-business technology (.Net, Java platform, Tridion) and IT projects. The company was started in 1997 and works with innovative and proven technologies and methods. HintTech provides qualitative custom solutions for its clients. For Tridion, Microsoft, Sun J2EE and IBM WebSphere, HintTech is an advisor as well as partner. HintTech counts Shell, Nuon, Fortis, ING and KLM as clients. It currently employs 113 people and has offices in Delft (Netherlands), San Francisco (US) and Novi Sad (Serbia).