Situation 06 / 08 — External pressure

Operating system and custom application support

The vendor moved on. The application did not.

Custom applications routinely outlive both the people who wrote them and the vendors who supported the platform underneath. Salem is called when an operating system has passed end of support with no upgrade path offered, or when a business-critical application built in-house has no owner, no vendor, and no support agreement behind it.

Sound familiar

How Salem approaches it

01 Put a real support agreement behind what is running now

Salem takes on the operating system and the application together, with defined response times. Coverage begins without requiring any change to the platform, which stops the exposure immediately.

02 Make the system safe to change

A test environment, current documentation, and a validated patch process turn a system nobody dares touch into one that can be maintained on a normal schedule.

03 Extend the life or plan the replacement, deliberately

Some applications should run for another decade. Others should be replaced. With support in place, the choice can be made on business grounds instead of urgency.