TMA (Third-Party Application Maintenance)

Third-party application maintenance

The term third-party application maintenance (acronym TMA) refers to outsourcing the maintenance of applications, i.e. entrust all or part of the maintenance of applications to a third-party computer service provide for consideration by defining the levels of availability, deadlines, and quality.

Application maintenance consists in ensure proper operating conditions of software, which includes, in particular, the correction of bugs, adaptation for a new environment or new cases of use or even the assurance of scaling of the application.

Development maintenance, in turn, which is not covered by TMA consists in adding new functionalities to an application.

Usefulness of TMA

Designing computer projects is generally a part of the core business of enterprises, and it is therefore difficult to entrust this type of activity to a third party. Maintenance of computer applications, on the other hand, can be outsourced, even more so since:

• This permits controlling costs
• This permits to improve internal satisfaction to the extent that the service provider has the necessary competences and is able to meet deadlines for completion;
• The complexity and heterogeneity of computer systems make application maintenance difficult.
• This type of activity is hardly stimulating for inhouse teams.