Software Maintenance
How systems are kept current, who owns maintenance, and how change is managed over the lifetime of an application.
Participate in the 2026 Australian Software Maintenance & Reliability Study and receive insights into maintenance practices, operational risks, and reliability trends.
About the research
The 2026 Australian Software Maintenance & Reliability Study exists to build a clear, evidence-based picture of how Australian businesses maintain their software systems, cloud infrastructure, automations, data pipelines and emerging AI-enabled workflows.
We are speaking with business and technology leaders across a range of industries to understand where operational risk concentrates, how teams approach technical debt and modernisation, and which practices most improve long-term reliability. The result is a benchmark the whole industry can learn from.
Research areas
The study examines the full surface area where modern systems quietly degrade.
How systems are kept current, who owns maintenance, and how change is managed over the lifetime of an application.
Where debt accumulates, how it is tracked and prioritised, and its impact on delivery speed and operational risk.
How cloud infrastructure is managed and monitored, and how reliability is engineered into deployment and operations.
What automations run the business, how failures are detected, and how silent breakages are caught before they cause harm.
Whether AI systems are in use, and who maintains the prompts, models and workflows they depend on over time.
How data pipelines are monitored and recovered, and how teams ensure the data feeding decisions stays trustworthy.
Why participate
Participation is confidential and takes 15–20 minutes. In return, you gain a privileged view of how your maintenance practices compare across Australian industry.
Participate in the StudyReceive the report before public release, with the headline trends that matter to your sector.
See where the market sits on monitoring, technical debt, automation and AI maintenance.
Understand how your reliability practices compare against peers of a similar size and industry.
Services informed by research
Our services are grounded in what the research reveals about real operational risk.
A structured review of how your systems are maintained, where risk concentrates, and what to prioritise.
A pragmatic modernisation plan that sequences technical-debt reduction against business priorities.
An evaluation of monitoring, infrastructure, backups and scheduled jobs to surface silent failure points.
Retainer-based maintenance across software, DevOps, automation and AI workflows for long-term reliability.
Research process
A confidential conversation about how you maintain your systems today.
An optional benchmark review of maintenance, reliability and technical debt.
A prioritised plan to reduce risk and improve long-term reliability.
Continuous maintenance to keep systems healthy as they evolve.
The annual report
Drawn directly from the 2026 study, the annual report sets the benchmark for how Australian organisations maintain software, infrastructure, automation and AI systems — and what separates reliable operations from fragile ones.
Every participant receives early access to the full findings.
Participate to receive the reportParticipate & enquire
Share a few details and we'll be in touch to arrange a confidential 15–20 minute conversation — or to scope a maintenance assessment.