What is application management?
Application management involves the management of software applications throughout the development lifecycle; first by identifying specific software requirements, and then using those requirements to assist through software design and deployment. A lifecycle is generally defined by six phases—requirement gathering; designing; building, integrating and testing; implementation and deployment; operation and optimization.
During the requirements phase, functionality is determined and business process requirements for a new application are identified and defined. The application team then translates these requirements into an application design before any application coding and testing is done. It is followed by an operation phase which addresses any uncovered application flaws, regulatory requirement changes, missed service levels and performance measurement, before final application function and performance optimization.
Application management can be executed internally or externally by either individuals or teams with expertise in software development. Organizations often look to application management services or companies with the expertise needed to design, host and run their applications. Looking to managed services provides companies with tactics, technologies and protocols to realize gains in business and technology and improve brand awareness.
What are the business benefits of application management?
- Increase productivity. Organizations consistently look application management to deliver enhanced user-end experiences that improve overall productivity and free-up their own development teams so they can spend more time on new applications or technologies.
- Improve reliability. Effective application management processes result in more reliable business applications that are less prone to failure, significantly reducing downtime and creating greater continuity across an organization.
- Promote innovation.Application management modernizes business functions with well-designed, resilient applications, allowing companies to innovate to bring business solutions to market quickly and efficiently while reducing overall operating costs.
- Measure performance.One valuable byproduct of application management is hard numbers. Managed services generate data on applications such as performance per transaction, or the number of users impacted by performance issues related to an application, to help optimize performance.