ESRI (UK) Product Life Cycle Support Policy (October 2008)
The Product Life Cycle Support Policy is designed to help communicate to ESRI (UK) users the technical support resources available during a product’s life span and to provide advanced notification of planned changes to available support options. This document outlines the 3 different Support phases of ESRI (UK)’s Product Life Cycle. This information is intended to help you develop your product plans including migration and transition strategies with the knowledge and understanding of our Product Life Cycle Support plans.
The Product Life Cycle Support Policy does not impact a user’s right or ability to use any of the software products; it only applies to support availability.
Product Life Cycle Support Phases and Definitions
ESRI (UK) Product Life Cycle Support Policy has 3 phases:
- 1. General Availability
2. Mature Support
3. Retired
1. General Availability Phase
A product is in General Availability phase as soon as it is released to ship. General Availability products are the currently shipping products. General Availability products are fully supported. Support includes:
- Phone support between 9:00AM and 5:00PM (GMT) Monday through Friday – excluding UK Bank holidays
- 24 x 7 email and web support for call logging
- Software patches and hot fixes when warranted
- New environment certification – when a major new release of an operating system, database, or web browser is released during the General Availability phase of an ESRI (UK) product, ESRI (UK) will test this new environment with the General Availability release and provide test result information on the ESRI (UK) website
2. Mature Support phase
The Mature Support phase starts when a new major release of the product becomes available. For example, now that LocalView Internet v2.1 is shipping and in General Availability, LocalView Internet v2.0 is in the Mature Support phase. This general rule does not apply to all products. In particular, products that do not have frequent updates (e.g., ProTerritory) may enter the Mature Support phase even when no new version has been released.
Once a product enters Mature Support, a user can expect the following support:
- Phone support between 9:00AM and 5:00PM (GMT) Monday through Friday – excluding UK Bank holidays
- 24 x 7 email and web support for call logging
ESRI (UK) will not provide any further Patches and hot fixes for products that have reached the Mature Support phase. New environments will not be certified for Mature Support phase.
The Mature Support phase will last for at least 12 months from date of announcement unless otherwise stated at announcement time. Customers with Mature Support products should consider migrating their applications to General Availability products.
3. Retired phase
Once a product enters the Retired phase, the product will no longer be available for purchase and support will be withdrawn. The product can continue to be used.
Users will no longer have access to technical support through direct phone, fax, or email request. No new patches or hot fixes will be available and ESRI (UK) will not certify any new environment. ESRI (UK) will not make any attempt to determine whether a Retired product will work in a new environment or to actually make it work in a new environment.
Announcements will be made as to when a product will enter the Retired phase. These announcements will be made with a reasonable notice period, depending on the age of the product.
Announcing Transition
ESRI (UK) will announce Product Life Cycle Support transitions on its website. At each new release of a product, ESRI (UK) will re‐evaluate the Life Cycle phase of the product’s previous versions and will announce the status of the previous versions in the “Product Life Cycle” section of the web site. ESRI (UK) may also announce transitions outside of a specific release event.
Getting the Life Cycle Support status for each ESRI (UK) product
To view the Product Status for each ESRI (UK) software product please click here.
