A question that comes up regularly is “what does restricted support mean”?
To start let’s remind ourselves that the maintenance agreement is applicable to the licensed IFS Application and not a specific version. Customers with an active maintenance agreement have access to the latest version available and maintenance is delivered in full for that version (standard support phase). Support is always delivered for the version a customer has in productive use however, if this version is under restricted support, there are limitations in the maintenance deliverables.
In order to explain the details a bit more we need to look at two of the many objectives of a software maintenance agreement.
Firstly ‘support’ is the reactive engagement to receive, accept and handle a case where a customer has encountered a problem. This problem is investigated and analysed, assistance to service restoration is provided and path to resolution is determined. In cases where the cause of this issue is an error or malfunction in the software, the maintenance objective comes into action.
Under ‘maintenance’ a fix or a patch for a specific issue is developed and made available. Typically, at regular intervals, a collection of these deliverables is made available as a package. However, maintenance delivers more than that. It also ensures that the software remains relevant for the changing customer business requirements. This means adding features and functions, technologies, industry specifics, regulatory requirements, legal changes, localisation changes, closing security vulnerabilities and technology updates to cater for new operating systems, browsers, databases and other technical innovations.
Then, over time, typically a completely new version of the software is made available, however still under the same maintenance agreement. This contains all the latest and greatest from the previous version and also new architectural, technological and data model updates etc. As part of the ongoing maintenance agreement a customer has the entitlement to access and deploy this new version for usage. It is normal practice in software that, if such a new version is available, an older version at some point in time goes out of ‘development support’ or into ‘restricted support’.
During the restricted support phase, ‘customer support’ (as described above) is always delivered for the version the customer is using. It must be noted that errors and malfunctions are not really expected anymore. Reason being that after a prolonged period of this version being the standard version the chance of new bugs and errors still being present, is rather slim. At the same time changes in the environment such as adapting business processes, data model changes, transaction volume increases, added integrations etc. can bring unexpected behaviour to the surface and most importantly, all the new innovations are being missed out on.
It goes without saying that, since the maintenance agreement is for the application and not the version, the right to the newest version always remains valid regardless of the version the customer is using. However, the maintenance deliverables (as described above) are no longer included for the old version. The deliverables that were available before the milestone remain available, even if not adopted by the customer yet.
It is however not as if the maintenance deliverables disappear altogether, they are now delivered as part of the new version to which the customer has access and is paying maintenance for. When a customer adopts this latest version, they get the full benefit of these maintenance deliverables that were made available during the period of their active maintenance agreement.
So, what does this mean in concrete terms for IFS Applications that are part of the maintenance agreement however the version in use has entered the restricted support phase?
- Logged cases related to the old version will be accepted and handled
- Raised problems will be investigated and analysed.
- If it’s caused by an issue known from before the restricted support milestone the customer has access to the existing fix. The merging effort of this fix will be at a fixed price.
- In cases where the cause of this issue is an error or malfunction in the software that was not known before, possible paths to resolution will be investigated and if feasible offered to the customer. The development and merging effort of this fix will be on a T&M basis.
- For the old version, no further investment in making new features and functions available is made.
- Industry specifics, regulatory requirements, legal changes and localisation changes are no longer delivered for the old version.
- Technology updates to cater for new operating systems, browsers, databases and other technical innovations etc are no longer delivered for the old version.
- New security vulnerabilities are no longer closed in the old version.
In summary: a customer’s maintenance agreement is applicable to the licensed IFS application and not a specific version. Under this agreement customers have access to the latest version and maintenance is delivered in full for that version (standard support). Therefore, it is always recommended that a customer moves to the newest version available under the agreement.
The time overlap between versions is typically to allow for the business readiness as well as planning and execution of the upgrade. For some versions extended support may be offered as an additional service. Please read more about that here.
Other objectives from the support and maintenance agreement such as tools, best practices, enablement etc. will be discussed in a separate blog in due course.