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The Maintenance Man

June 16th, 2015 - Posted by Ben Thomson, Director of Operations

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So I was sat tinkering with my washing machine at the weekend because it had a leak. It’s by no means brand new, however having bought it only 4 years ago I wasn’t expecting to be spending time cleaning it and running through its maintenance programme. I was thinking to myself “it’s a WASHING machine, used on a daily basis with water and a CLEANING agent, why would I need to clean it manually?!”

It got me to thinking about modern life in general… being a fully-fledged member of the “geek fraternity”, I do tend to buy into new technology pretty early. The trend I have noticed over the last decade however has seen each new iteration require more and more maintenance, culminating with me sitting on the floor cleaning the washing machine to stop a build-up of gunk that is causing a minor leak. I value my weekends with my family as much as most people do, so this seems like a step backwards to me!

With evolution, and new generations of ever more impressive tech, surely LESS maintenance would be more appropriate? I mean, when did spending MORE money on a product ever justify the extra hassle to keep it working?

Take a look at mobile phones for example, being an Android fan has many positives, however when it comes to maintenance and updating I have to plan for downtime so it doesn’t affect my daily life. With each new version of the firmware, I seem to be allowing more and more time to install updates! It hasn’t improved with a new phone either, the endless cycle of updating seems to keep rolling on.

I could spend much of your time here talking about other everyday items – operating systems, TV’s and even vacuum cleaners (to name a few) – all need maintenance of some form, no matter the brand or even quality. However I concede that would be ironic based on the subject matter.

So I ask you this – wouldn’t it be refreshing if this maintenance was fully automatic, with little or no downtime and no affect to our daily routine? I would jump at the chance of my washing machine cleaning itself from time to time!

When it comes to choosing web to print software this wish should form part of your criteria for choosing a provider. How much downtime will I face? Do I have to opt-in for all updates? Will I be needed out of hours so as not to affect my customer base? Do I have to spend my weekend cleaning the software with a wet towel?! With RedTie you can sit back. You can relax safely in the knowledge that maintenance of your own software is a thing of the past. You can be satisfied that upgrades happen with little to no downtime, and with as little or as much involvement as you wish. Ultimately, you will not be asked to spend your weekend running through a cleaning checklist.

Here at RedTie we pride ourselves on our update processes. We have worked tirelessly over the past decade to remove the issues normally faced by such requirements. We have a powerful platform that can cope with all updates we throw at it, even down to the operating system (usually resulting in downtime as you will probably know if you have ever updated Windows or iOS). The end result? Hopefully you can spend more time using the software for its intended purpose and spend less time worrying about how it works underneath.

Now, isn’t that refreshing?