CloudBlue Product
Lifecycle Policy

Product Lifecycle Policy

Scope

This document defines CloudBlue’s lifecycle policies for any of its platform product (including CloudBlue, Odin Automation, Ensim Automation Suite; however not including Shared or Dedicated PaaS) released and supported by the CloudBlue business.

Version Methodology

Every version is defined by 2-3 digits in the format of X.Y.Z where Z is optional (e.g. 2.3 or 2.5.1). Releases with a change in the first digit X are major releases (e.g. 1.0 or 2.0), releases with a change in the secondary digit Y are minor releases (e.g. 2.1, 2.2, 2.3), and releases with a third digit are updates. The last minor release of each major release is defined as an LTS (Long Term Support) release and will receive longer maintenance than other releases, to ensure that customers who prefer to upgrade less frequently can remain on LTS releases.

Product Lifecycle

A product lifecycle consists of five major phases: Sales, Maintenance, Extended Maintenance, Support, and End of Life (EOL). A standard platform release has a support span (all phases until EOL) of fifteen (15) months, whereas an LTS release has a support span (all phases until EOL) of twenty-one (21) months.

Sales Phase

The Sales Phase begins when a product first becomes available for purchase, also known as General Availability (GA). General Availability for a new product version occurs when it is released to the CloudBlue IT Operations team. During this phase, CloudBlue Technical Services offers a wide range of services to assist customers with the planning, design, implementation, and management of the product. Incident management is also available during the Sales Phase. When an incident is discovered that may affect our customers, CloudBlue will make reasonable efforts and work diligently to provide a software hotfix or update to resolve the defect. The Sales Phase ends and the version transitions into the Maintenance Phase either when the next product version is shipped (GA) or for a maximum of twelve (12) months, whichever comes first.

Maintenance Phase

A product enters the Maintenance Phase at the end of the Sales Phase, also known as End of Sale (EOS). During this phase, CloudBlue Technical Services offers full support in the areas of planning, design, implementation and management. In the Maintenance phase, CloudBlue provides hotfixes to resolve critical defects only, and only to those customers with whom CloudBlue has an active and effective support and maintenance agreement. The hotfixes may be customer-specific. Non-critical defects or feature requests may be addressed on a time and materials basis. The end of the Maintenance Phase marks the beginning of the Extended Maintenance Phase; CloudBlue defines a strict timeline for the Maintenance Phase. For regular releases, the Maintenance Phase is three (3) months; for LTS releases, it is extended to nine (9) months.

Extended Maintenance Phase

A product enters the Extended Maintenance Phase at the end of the Maintenance Phase (EOM). CloudBlue ceases fixing product defects, releasing new software updates, or performing product testing during this phase. Hotfixes for critical security issues may still be released. CloudBlue Technical services will assist customers with an active and effective support and maintenance contract to resolve their issues by recommending solutions and previously released patches and updates that have worked for other customers with similar issues. In critical impact cases CloudBlue product engineering may still be involved for troubleshooting. If a problem cannot be resolved, customers should consider upgrading to the current GA version of the product. The Extended Maintenance Phase ends after three (3) months for both regular and LTS releases and marks the beginning of the Support Phase.

Support Phase

A product enters the Support Phase at the end of the Extended Maintenance Phase (EOEM). CloudBlue ceases releasing any hotfixes in this phase, and instead CloudBlue Technical services will assist customers with an active and effective support and maintenance contract resolve their issues by recommending solutions and previously released patches and updates that have worked for other customers with similar issues or to upgrade to the latest release. If a problem cannot be fixed using known recommendations, customers should consider upgrading to the current GA version of the product. The Support Phase ends after three (3) months for both regular and LTS releases and marks the End of Life of a product.

End of Life

A product reaches End of Life (EOL) at the end of the Support Phase. CloudBlue Technical Services has no responsibility for an End of Life product, however at CloudBlue’s discretion, CloudBlue may refer a customer to previous patches, updates, or knowledge base articles. Further extended support for an EOL product is available with a contractual agreement on an individual customer basis. A customer may continue to use an EOL product provided all license fees are paid as per the terms of their license agreement.

Example of a lifecycle with multiple consecutive releases

Service Levels by Phase

1 – CloudBlue determines the impact of security issues and may back port these issues to all supported releases if deemed critical enough.

2 – Contact your CloudBlue Account Manager or your Technical Account Manager to discuss upgrading a product to the latest version.

3 – All tickets are opened with severity 3 only.