Commercial software companies focus spending on research and development because they know that innovative products and services are key to increasing top-line revenue. They also understand it is equally crucial to focus on their installed customer base in order to sustain and maintain existing revenue streams through product maintenance and support. Ultimately, today's software companies are looking for creative ways to reduce costs in order to increase profitability without jeopardizing the quality of the products they deliver and service. Outsourcing these areas allows you to redeploy your personnel to other areas and keep management's attention on how to grow the business for the future.

Symphony Services can take on the entire Sustaining Engineering process, including:

• Enhancements and bug fixing
• Service packs release and patch tracking
• Forward/backward porting to merge enhancements with the core product development efforts
• Coordination with development teams for future releases

Symphony can also take over the entire Sustaining Engineering role, including the Product Management function for both individual products and entire product lines. This is especially beneficial to clients for legacy products.

Closely related to Sustaining Engineering is Level 3 Support. When technical issues get escalated past Level 1 and Level 2 support, certain bug and product enhancement requests need to get implemented into the product quickly. Symphony can manage the entire process and provide other related services, such as:

• Scripting assistance (creation and troubleshooting)
• Assistance during customer migrations to new releases
• Documentation of known solutions for inclusion in knowledge repository
• Performance testing of customer situations
• Support for multiple customer versions, including multi-lingual versions