If you had to make a list of some of the most common pain points that a lot of businesses have, simply finding the IT resources necessary to both refactor and improve an ASP.NET application would undoubtedly be right at the top.
Obviously, application maintenance and performance improvements are of paramount importance for any piece of software. As your business needs continue to grow and evolve over time, the technology you depend on has to be able to do the same. If it can't, you'll soon find yourself dealing with more than just a minor inconvenience - you'll be left with something that is actually holding back productivity, instead of driving it the way it's supposed to be.
This is especially true when you consider something like ASP.NET - a technology that has been around for quite a long time at this point. Classic ASP first made its debut in the late 1990s and even though it was replaced by ASP.NET in 2002, there are still opportunities for improvement that you need to be able to capitalize on. As was true with older COBOL programs that are still being used, there are old ASP.NET applications that were written 15 or more years ago that are starving for maintenance at this point. Ignoring the situation is not something you can afford to do.
But thankfully, all hope is not lost. There are a number of critical ASP.NET app maintenance and performance strategies that your organization can start using immediately. They simply require you to keep a few key things in mind so that you can guarantee the results that you're after.
The Factors That Often Complicate ASP.NET Application Maintenance
One of the major issues that often makes ASP.NET application maintenance difficult is the fact that, in a lot of cases, the employees who developed the original application that you're still using have long since left the company. As a result, IT managers are left to find a suitable replacement - something that is far easier said than done.
An example of this would be a rental company that developed an ASP.NET application between 2006 and 2008. The organization didn't actually have a developer for many years, and over that time, the application and database degraded to the point where this mission critical system crashed every day. Maintenance was badly needed. Databases always need maintenance and performance updates are not a recommendation, but a requirement. Oftentimes these older applications can develop memory leaks to the point where they crash frequently - even daily, in certain situations. And if you have 30 employees sitting around, unable to work, that’s a real problem.
Obviously, this creates a situation where a failure to be proactive about ASP.NET application maintenance makes it more difficult for employees to do their jobs, not easier. They spend so much time coming up with frustrating workarounds that they have less time to devote to those matters that truly need their attention - something of a worst case scenario, regardless of how you look at it.
ASP.NET Application Performance Improvements: An Overview
All of this is why it is strategically important to develop a partnership with an outsourced IT company to handle your ASP.NET application maintenance and performance needs moving forward. As employees change and as people in essential positions leave your company, an outsourced IT partner will still be there to make sure that you have access to everything you need and that you're not left in a lurch with technology that is ultimately working against you.
As an added benefit of this, you get to enjoy the scalability of an entire team of professionals who are devoted to your ASP.NET application performance needs, as opposed to relying on just a single individual. Sometimes, what you really need is to grow your application as quickly as possible to meet new requirements - to the point where a single programmer would never be able to get the job done in a timely manner. An entire team of developers could, however - and partnering with an outsourced IT company allows you to tap into this experience without bringing in a host of new employees in-house. Also, a professional ASP.NET development firm will most likely be keeping up with the latest trends and technology in web development whereas an employee may not.
Another major challenge for a lot of businesses stems from the fact that some older ASP.NET applications now need to be made mobile friendly. Your employees need to be given the tools necessary to be just as productive in the field (or while working remotely from home) as they could be in their own offices. There are new software technologies that can help tremendously to that end, with Angular, React and Vue.JS being a few prominent examples. These run in the browser on mobile devices and are inherently lightweight - making them ideal for these types of "work-on-the-go" situations.
Again, this isn't the type of thing that will be possible if you treat your ASP.NET application maintenance as an afterthought - or worse, if you don't ever really think about it at all.
Likewise, older ASP.NET applications that acted as independent silos can now be integrated with other systems. Data silos are particularly disastrous for the modern enterprise, as they mean that the people who need critical information to do their jobs simply don't have access to it. A classic example of this would be how customer-related data obtained by the marketing department can absolutely be beneficial to your sales team. But if that marketing data exists in a silo and cannot freely flow across your enterprise, all the insight contained within it isn't available to those sales employees - creating a potentially frustrating situation where it becomes needlessly difficult to build and maintain those pivotal relationships with clients.
When you bring your ASP.NET applications up-to-date through ongoing maintenance and performance improvements, however, all of these concerns go away. It's absolutely true that in the early days of development, these types of applications were often built to address the needs of specific business units. But that simply isn't how the modern organization operates any longer and your technology needs to be updated to address the challenges of the current climate. As companies grow, so does the need to integrate the business systems of each unit into a comprehensive solution for the whole company. You don't need data silos - you need a single source of truth that can empower all of your people and your processes. That, in essence, is why ASP.NET application maintenance and performance is of paramount importance.
All business applications require regular maintenance
In the end, you need to remember that virtually any business system will always require regular maintenance to continue working its best. You can't afford to be in a reactive position where you wait for something to break (or to grow outdated) and only then act. You need to make an effort to stop small problems now before they have a chance to become much bigger ones later, which is why your ASP.NET maintenance and performance improvement strategies are so essential.
By raising the awareness of this need, businesses equip themselves with a legitimate strategic growth driver for their business. They not only address the challenges of today, but they better prepare themselves to meet the ones that may arise tomorrow, too. It's also why partnering with an ASP.NET development company is an option worth considering - it helps you accomplish this objective in a way that allows you to enjoy all the benefits of the process with as few of the potential downsides as possible.
To learn more about ASP.NET App maintenance and performance Improvement strategies, download our eBook titled "Legacy System Modernization 101 - Your Guide for Success."
