Information Builders, the Manhattan-based vendor of WebFOCUS and iWay Software, recently announced that they will functionally stabilize the 5.3 release of the products in January 2011. Currently, all 5.2 and older releases have been stabilized.
Here is IBI's formal notice from their TechSupport website:
This announcement goes hand-in-glove with IBI's published release schedule which lays out the plan for their major new architectural change (WebFOCUS 8) someday soon:
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Information Builders supports the most current and past three releases of their products. Releases before that are "functionally stabilized," which means that IBI will no longer provide any fixes for products released that far back.
The old WebFOCUS releases are not "dead" -- they are just in a perpetual state of minimal life-support.
You can still call the Customer Support group and talk about issues related to the stabilized software, but IBI's suggested solution will always be to upgrade to a newer WebFOCUS release.
But that of course means you need to be paying IBI the annual maintenance fee.
If you are running a stabilized release of WebFOCUS (today, that means 5.2 and older) and you stopped paying maintenance fees, then you are out of luck for fixing problems. If you want to reinstate the maintenance and upgrade, don't be surprised if you have to pay for all missed past annual fees.
The moral of the story is pay IBI those annual suppport fees and keep your WebFOCUS releases up-to-date.
Here is IBI's formal notice from their TechSupport website:
WebFOCUS Release Notes
Release 5.3 Functionally Stabilized January 31st, 2011
Applicable to: The Entire Release 5.3 Product Line (iWay, WebFOCUS, DataMigrator and ETL Manager), All Platforms
This advisory provides advanced notification of planned changes in product availability and support.
Effective January 31st, 2011, WebFOCUS and iWay Release 5.3 on all platforms are functionally stabilized. This is applicable to the complete 5.3 line of products including the WebFOCUS Client Release 5.3.x, WebFOCUS Developer Studio Release 5.3.x, WebFOCUS ReportCaster Release 5.3.x and the WebFOCUS, iWay, DataMigrator and ETL Manager Reporting Servers Release 5.3.x on all platforms. Customer support will still be available for this release, however, no patches or fixes for new problems will be provided.
Users on this release level should upgrade to the most current WebFOCUS or iWay Reporting Server release at their earliest opportunity.
DOCID: 1002324
This announcement goes hand-in-glove with IBI's published release schedule which lays out the plan for their major new architectural change (WebFOCUS 8) someday soon:
Information Builders supports the most current and past three releases of their products. Releases before that are "functionally stabilized," which means that IBI will no longer provide any fixes for products released that far back.
The old WebFOCUS releases are not "dead" -- they are just in a perpetual state of minimal life-support.
You can still call the Customer Support group and talk about issues related to the stabilized software, but IBI's suggested solution will always be to upgrade to a newer WebFOCUS release.
But that of course means you need to be paying IBI the annual maintenance fee.
If you are running a stabilized release of WebFOCUS (today, that means 5.2 and older) and you stopped paying maintenance fees, then you are out of luck for fixing problems. If you want to reinstate the maintenance and upgrade, don't be surprised if you have to pay for all missed past annual fees.
The moral of the story is pay IBI those annual suppport fees and keep your WebFOCUS releases up-to-date.
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