Continuent End of Life Policy and Dates : Reviewed and Revised

Just over a year ago, we published our End of Life (EOL) Policy and our target for releases. A year on, we have reviewed this policy, and as a result, today we are announcing a revised policy that we think is much easier to understand and provides more stability and assurances that our customers are operating with a fully supported release.

We still have a number of customers still running on older v2 and v4 releases, and part of this announcement today is to also work with these customers to upgrade them to later, supported, releases.

Continuent Release Schedule (Revised)

Continuent operates a continuous release schedule using the following basis:

• Major release versions (e.g. v7, v8 etc) will be released with no fixed schedule
• One minor (feature) release version every 12 months (e.g. v6.1, v6.2)
• One bug fix release every 3 months (e.g. v6.1.1)

While we may not always be able to achieve these dates, these are the milestones and targets we aim for. Additionally, we may also release bug fix versions sooner if a critical bug is found that is impacting customer operations.

Continuent End-of-Life Policy (Revised)

The standard Continuent End-of-Life (EOL) policy for all product versions is 12 months from the release of the subsequent minor release (e.g. v6.1 EOL date will be set to 12 months from the release date of v6.2).

The policy is used to ensure that we can continue to support our customers with the best and latest version of the software. Throughout the lifecycle of the product we endeavour to help you upgrade Continuent software to the latest version, and to provide you with the most efficient methods and tools to achieve that.

Because there is a new minor version every year, it should be possible to upgrade the product easily. This provides a period of 2 years to upgrade to the next available minor version.

Meanwhile, for a product that is within its support lifecycle, we provide the following:

• Full support for using and addressing, fixing problems with our software
• Bug fixes up until EOL is enacted
• All improvements to existing functionality applicable to the major release version up until the EOL is reached
• Upgrade assistance to keep your version up to date

Once a product reaches EOL:

• Upgrades, and assistance to upgrade to a supported version, will continue to be provided
• Improvements to existing features will no longer be available
• Bug fixes will no longer be available
• Support for that version will no longer be provided

How does this look for existing product releases?

We appreciate that for existing customers the inception of this revised policy may present a problem and uncertainty with the support and availability of the product, bug fixes, and assistance.

We are also aware that based on our previous EOL policy, v5.3 effectively entered EOL on June 7th, 2019 whilst v6.0 has an EOL way into the future in 2022 - This has understandably caused confusion, not only with our customers but also internally here at Continuent, hence the reason for this revised policy.

Yesterday we announced the release of v5.4.0 and v6.1.0, so here are the new, proper EOL dates:

• All releases up to and including v5.2 are, and have been for sometime, EOL
• v5.3.x now has an EOL date of July 31st, 2020
• v6.0.x now has an EOL date of July 31st, 2020
• v5.4.x and v6.1.x has NO defined EOL

We anticipate that v5.4 will be the final minor release of the v5 series, therefore the next expected minor release will be v6.2 (expected to be out in July 2020), at which point v5.4 and v6.1 will be given a 12 month EOL date (estimated July 2021).

For releases and versions older than v5.3, we encourage all users to upgrade. In cases where we know that you are using an older version, we will be in touch to discuss your upgrade process and options.

If you are using an older version and have not yet been contacted by us, please do get in touch with Continuent sales or support. If you are using an older version and do not want to upgrade to a later version, please contact our sales team to discuss your options.

Where to find EOL information

We are committed to making the EOL policy and information about the product availability as transparent and open as possible. For our EOL policy as noted above, visit www.continuent.com/about/end-of-life-policy.

You can also find the exact date when a product release is set to go EOL in the release notes for that particular version. For example, view the Tungsten Clustering 6.0 release notes or visit the EOL Status page at https://docs.continuent.com/eol-status/index.html

Further questions

If you have any further questions about our EOL policy, how it applies to you or how to upgrade, please contact our technical team via the support portal or our sales team.