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What are the Sunset Guidelines for SightLine Products? | |
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FORTEL Inc. has adopted the following set of Product Sunset Guidelines to provide clear service and support direction to our customers, distributors, partners, and sales organization. Clearly, FORTEL has a responsibility to communicate and facilitate product planning with all of our customers, distributors, and partners. FORTEL understands the value of customer return on investment, and a key strategy is to ensure that customers continue to utilize and benefit from new releases.
We trust this information will enable you to plan your future SightLine upgrades and implementations.
Terminology
Release Identification and Numbering: FORTEL Software uses a three-place numbering scheme to identify its software releases. The format is VV.RR.SS where V indicates the Version level number, R indicates the Release level number and S indicates the Service Pack (maintenance) level number.
* New Versions contain a number of major and minor new features,
significant architecture changes, and reliability improvements.
* New Releases contain some major and minor new features and reliability
improvements.
* Service Packs contain only reliability improvements.
Example for a 6.2.12 release:
* The Version number is 6, designating a release containing major
new features and development over the previous release architecture.
* The Release number is 2, designating that this is the third release
(we start with 0) in the Version 6 architecture.
* The Service Pack number is 12, designating that this the twelfth
release (we start with 1) of reliability improvements for the 6.2
Version/Release level.
FORTEL example: EA/V 6.2.12
* Version 6 – New Console containing Dynamic Symbol Tables and all
new Views.
* Release 2 – Third release of EA/V, offering enhancement of discover
data sources.
* Service Pack 12 – Service Pack 12, which fixes an event list bug.
Current Release: The Current Release is defined as the most recent Generally Available (GA) Version/Release of a FORTEL product. It is the release that is shipped for new customer orders. In the above example, it would be EA/V 6.2.x.
C-1 Release: The C-1 Release is defined as the latest Version/Release to be GA prior to the Current Release. In the above example, it would have been EA/V 6.1.x.
C-2 Release: The C-2 Release is defined as the latest Version/Release to be GA prior to the C-1 Release. In the above example, it would have been EA/V 6.0.x.
FORTEL Software: Products produced and/or packaged by FORTEL Inc. for sale and distribution to our customer base.
Third Party Software: Software produced by Third Parties with which FORTEL products interact. These may include operating system software, database software, application software, APIs, etc.
Sunset: The Sunset of a product is the term used to describe the cessation of support for that product. That is, FORTEL or a Third Party vendor will no longer provide new features, reliability improvements, or technical assistance for that release of the product.
Policy for Third Party Software
FORTEL will support the FORTEL software that interacts with a Third Party vendor’s software for as long as the Third Party vendor supports its own software. The exception shall be if a still-supported version of Third Party Software will not support new technology introduced in the latest release of FORTEL software. For example, FORTEL introduces software requiring JAVA2 support and the Third Party Software will only support JAVA1.
Upon the Sunset announcement by the Third Party Software vendor that they will no longer support the version of their product upon which FORTEL software interacts, FORTEL will, at the same time, announce the Sunset of support for that FORTEL product on that Third Party Software release level. End-of-Life for the FORTEL software shall coincide with End-of-Life of the Third Party vendor software.
Example: On June 1, 2002, Third Party Software vendor may announce that it will cease to support OS 2.0 on December 30, 2002. FORTEL would then announce, as close to June 1, 2002 as possible, that, on December 30, 2002, it will cease to support the FORTEL software versions that interact with OS 2.0.
If, after the Third Party Software vendor’s announcement, there is less than one year of vendor support for their product, FORTEL will most likely not plan to port the FORTEL software that interacts with that version of the vendor software to its next Version/Release.
FORTEL Example: On June 1, 2002, Third Party Software vendor announces that it will cease to support OS 2.0 on December 30, 2002. FORTEL then announces it will cease to support the OS 2.0 Power Agent release 6.1.x. If FORTEL is to release Power Agent 6.2.x before December 30, 2002, we may not create a 6.2.x version for OS 2.0.
Policy for FORTEL Software
FORTEL will provide full support for its Current Release of software and limited support for two Release Versions back (C-1 & C-2). Full support is defined as defect resolution for all levels (1-4) of SupportWeb Trouble Tickets. Limited support is defined as defect resolution for level 1 and level 2 SupportWeb Trouble Tickets only.
FORTEL Example (1): Using four releases for EA/V, 6.2.x, 6.1.x, 6.0.x, and 5.3.x:
* 6.2.x is the Current Release (GA) and would receive full support.
* 6.1.x is the C-1 release and would receive limited support.
* 6.0.x is the C-2 release and would receive limited support.
* 5.3.x is no longer supported.
Support for the C-2 version of any FORTEL product shall not exceed one year.
FORTEL Example (2): Using the EA/V 6.2, 6.1, and 6.0 releases above, one year following the GA of the EA/V 6.2 release, support for the EAV 6.0 release would cease.
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