Software Maintenance Costs
How to Estimate and Optimize
Relying on 15 years of experience in software maintenance services, ScienceSoft helps estimate and optimize software maintenance costs for businesses in 30+ industries.
Software Maintenance Costs in Brief
Making up the largest part of software development life cycle (SDLC), software maintenance entails significant ongoing costs that can make up to 90% of software TCO.
ScienceSoft shares major cost considerations for software maintenance (e.g., team composition, in-house vs. outsourced maintenance, software complexity, the number of users), provides sample software maintenance fees and best practices for optimizing the costs of running software in the cloud environment.
Key Types of Software Maintenance
Since 2007, ScienceSoft has been providing software maintenance services for businesses in 30+ industries. Below, we list four software maintenance types that are the most demanded by our customers:
Corrective maintenance
Fixing errors that affect software logic, performance, design. These troubleshooting activities require urgent implementation to keep the software operational and available to users.
Adaptive maintenance
Modifying software to adapt it to the environment changes, like changing a cloud provider, switching to another operating system, or introducing new software integrations. Changes in industry regulations, enterprise policies, etc. may call for adaptive maintenance as well.
Preventive maintenance
Introducing changes to prevent deterioration of software, avoid disruptions, or make it more stable and reliable. Among the most common preventive maintenance activities are code optimization and updating software documentation for easier future maintenance.
Perfective maintenance
Enhancing software performance and usability. Perfective maintenance activities are typically based on user feedback (e.g., updating UX and UI design), new functional requirements (e.g., adding a new business rule), the need to achieve cost savings (e.g., cloud resources optimization) and enhance software performance (e.g., optimizing the storage use for quicker access to relevant data).
Major Software Maintenance Cost Factors
Software maintenance costs may vary significantly depending on a project’s specifics. Among general factors that influence the total cost of software maintenance are:
- The type of software maintenance (corrective, adaptive, preventive, perfective), the chosen time coverage (8/5, 12/5, 24/5, 24/7), and the scope of maintenance activities.
- Software type, its complexity, availability and fault tolerance requirements.
- The number of application users.
- Availability of comprehensive software documentation (knowledge base).
- The maintenance team composition and the team members’ seniority level.
In addition, ScienceSoft recommends considering cost factors specific to the chosen sourcing model:
In-house software maintenance
- Talent recruitment that might recur in case of high turnover.
- Investments in the in-house staff training.
- Regular payment of salaries and fringe benefits, tax payments, etc.
Outsourced software maintenance
- The chosen pricing model (price per ticket, monthly subscription fee, T&M with a cap, mixed).
Sample Software Maintenance Cost Estimation
Below is ballpark cost estimation for one-month maintenance of two different cloud-based solutions. Depending on the software type, the number of users, and the required maintenance activities, the monthly software maintenance cost may vary from $5,000 to $50,000+*.
Complex custom enterprise application for financial management
Cost: $5,000-$15,000*
Customer portal/vendor portal
Cost: $30,000-50,000*
*The estimates provided are not ScienceSoft's official pricing for the software maintenance services. We estimate the cost of each project individually, based on our customers' specific situations and needs.
How to Reduce Software Costs During Maintenance
As cloud-based software is gaining traction, continuous cloud optimization has become a demanded maintenance activity requested by ScienceSoft’s clients. Below we share best practices we use to help our customers significantly minimize fees for running software in the cloud.
Rightsizing computing resources
We analyze the cloud infrastructure utilization and performance metrics to get a clear picture of software demand for computing resources. With the help of cloud rightsizing tools (e.g., AWS Compute Optimizer, Azure Migrate), we identify the underutilized resources that can be downsized, and make appropriate modifications.
ScienceSoft’s best practice: Using visual tools like heat maps helps get a better understanding of the ups and downs in the computing demand.
Terminating unused resources
Timely spotting and terminating the unused resources prevents you from being charged for the resources your software does not rely on any more.
Updating instances to the latest generation
During our maintenance projects, ScienceSoft always stays tuned with the updates of the leading cloud providers’ products. As a rule, new-generation instances offer enhanced performance and functionality. By updating the existing instances and rightsizing them according to the clients' needs, we help achieve the desired performance at a lower cost.
Evaluating the viability of reserved instances for your business
Reserved instances can help you reduce up to 75% of cloud fees, if your software demand for computing resources is unlikely to decrease within the commitment period. To make sure this is a viable investment, ScienceSoft analyzes our clients’ current usage of instances, and conducts a feasibility study for implementation of reserved instances.
Deleting obsolete snapshots
Although snapshots are efficient for restoring data, there’s no need to store all of them. In most cases, only latest snapshots are needed to recover the lost data. We can help our clients remove obsolete ones to achieve greater cost-efficiency.
Why Choose ScienceSoft for Software Maintenance
- 15 years in software maintenance and 10 years in cloud services.
- 700+ experts on board.
- 76% of revenue is from long-term partners (~10+ years of cooperation).
- A Microsoft Gold Partner with 9 Gold Competencies.
- An AWS Select Tier Services Partner.
- ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications to ensure mature quality management and security of the customers’ data.
- Listed in The Americas’ Fastest-Growing Companies 2022 by Financial Times.
ScienceSoft’s Agility in Software Maintenance
Sourcing Models for Software Support and Maintenance
In-house software maintenance
- Full control over the maintenance process.
- Possible lack of talents needed to perform specific maintenance activities.
- Expenses on in-house staff’s training, licensed maintenance tools, etc.
- Low team scalability & the need to establish the software maintenance process from scratch.
Fully outsourced software maintenance
- A fully managed team of software maintenance professionals with required skills.
- Cooperation based on the fitting pricing model.
- Transparent KPIs.
- Exposing your IT infrastructure to a vendor.
A mix of in-house management and outsourced support resources
- Sufficient control.
- Access to a quickly scalable number of outsourced experts with the needed competences.
- Extra time and efforts to set up smooth collaboration between the in-house and outsourced teams.
About ScienceSoft
ScienceSoft is a global IT service provider headquartered in McKinney, TX. With 33-year experience in IT and 15 years in software maintenance services, we help customers retain and improve their software performance and availability, as well as optimize underlying infrastructure costs. Holding ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications, we employ robust quality management and guarantee the security of our customers’ data.