Updating Software Without the Pain

New customers are often wary of software updates.  Other companies’ enterprise software upgrades usually result in extensive downtime, new bugs, and unfamiliar user interfaces.  They often have a slow release cycle – a bug report filed by you may not be patched until months later (if at all). 
 

At Zuercher Technologies, we strive to release new software with minimal downtime, and stagger releases in such a way that users shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by new features.  We also work to fix software bugs within days (and sometimes hours!) when issues are reported.  We do this by distributing daily minor releases, and quarterly major releases to all Zuercher Suite clients.
 

On a daily basis, our System Operations team performs what we call a "minor release."  If you are a current Zuercher Suite client, you have probably noticed an ‘updates available’ notification around noon each day – that is the result of our operations team bringing new software updates to your system.  We gather any code that has been approved by our quality assurance team, compile it, and make it available to the many agencies we currently support. 
 

These minor releases generally include small bug fixes and agency-specific data patches, and do not prevent users from carrying on with their work.  The new software is installed automatically, whenever it is convenient for a user to restart Zuercher Suite.  All software released during our daily minor release goes through a code-review process (where our developers examine one another’s code for efficiency and correctness), and through our quality assurance team, who verify that the new software works as expected before being sent to the operations team for release.  If a bug is reported, our support team will contact the bug’s reporter, and verify that the new software fixed the problem.
 

Major releases are generally installed on training servers first, so that agencies can get accustomed to new features and functionality, and are installed on production servers a couple of weeks later.  Upgrading the complex software that runs a public safety agency is a challenging job.  It involves ensuring good backups, performing major database changes and operating system updates, checking compatibility against a variety of software and hardware, and testing and retesting upgrade compatibility beforehand to ensure those steps will go perfectly and quickly.  It's a major undertaking that many of our competitors push on agency IT departments.  We build, test, and retest that procedure and when the time comes, execute it for you.
 

Our update process is very different from how many enterprise software companies complete updates.  It is normal in the software industry for companies to release updates on a quarterly, or even yearly basis.  With most of our competitors, it is the responsibility of the agency’s IT department to download and install new updates.  If issues arise, the IT department is responsible for calling the software company’s support network.  This update process is costly to the agency, sometimes resulting in significant downtime of hours, days, or weeks.
 

At Zuercher Technologies we are responsible for supporting and maintaining your Zuercher Suite server: including the hardware and the operating system and the database software upon which the Zuercher Suite Software runs. Our Operations Engineers are experts in that operating system and the database software we use, and have optimized software releases, both minor and major, so that any bugs are patched quickly, and users are disrupted minimally.
 

All of us behind your hardware and your software work hard to make the update process something you never have to worry about. Our clients have a job to do that requires that their software operates without disruption. It is our job to make software updates go smoothly every time.