10.8 support Support costs include software maintenance, internal resources, and contracted external resource. Software maintenance fees, typically annual charges of about 20 percent of the purchase price. are simply a cost of doing business when using many closed code program which you will escape by using open source software. The essential step in managing support is to analyze what we really need. One meaning of support is primarily hand-holding helping people do something with the software-or training-reaching people features or how to use documentation and so on. Another meaning is developing code, fixing errors, or adding or extending features of the software to meet needs. These two different requirements interact Often, reports on problems and missing features in software must be resolved into user or software error. Specifically, we can resolve support into three levels, as follows:
Level 1: Report and identify issue, assign ID, triage and resolve if possible.
Level 2: Get the issue to an expert in the problem area and resolve without development request.
Level 3: A bug is filed. and a patch developed in the field and incorporated or the problem is worked on by a developer.