This document communicates the product lifecycle policy for VIPRE. The policy allows customers and partners to plan regular technology updates to keep systems secure, reduce errors, and ensure support availability.
Introduction
In many cases, VIPRE provides product updates and patches for our products as part of an active subscription or other maintenance contract(s). These patches and updates, including security patches, may not be available to customers without active contracts. Many VIPRE products also receive non-code content updates, usually designed to improve the accuracy of malware detection for that product. Similarly, continued access to Content Updates may require an active contract with VIPRE.
VIPRE believes strongly that our products should be kept as up to date as possible to ensure that the latest and greatest features are available, and to ensure that any potential security flaws and vulnerabilities are minimized. We endeavor to make the update process as simple and transparent as we can to minimize the cost and risk associated with any software update. At the same time, we recognize that many customers must update software in their environments according to strict change control processes, and that these processes take time. Hence our lifecycle policy provides for a reasonable time period for these processes to complete.
The overall intention of this policy is to balance the spirit of innovation, promote customer and partner system stability through a reasonable rate of change, and fulfill the duty of all to keep technologies up-to-date.
Definitions
| Term | Description |
| Software | Programs and other operating information used by a computer. |
| Hardware | Physical tools, machinery, and other equipment. |
| Service | Network or cloud-based software delivery. Examples of this include management consoles, anti-malware definitions, URL blacklist updates, or threat-intelligence services. |
| Appliance | A hardware or software (virtual) package that bundles the application software along with an operating system and any other necessary extensions. |
| Product | A software, hardware, or service offering. |
| Content | Non-code components within a product including rules, signatures, reports, definitions, and so forth. Content is read and interpreted by the product's code to perform specific functions - detecting malware, for example. |
| General Availability | The date at which a product is released for sale. |
| General Support | The period in which customers with active subscriptions or maintenance contracts are eligible for product support, including software updates and content updates |
| Assisted Support | The period in which customers with active subscriptions or maintenance contracts are eligible for product support related to configuration and content updates, but software updates and patches are no longer supplied. |
| End of Life Trigger | The event or date that initiates End of Life activities. End of Life activities slowly scale back support for a given product over many months. |
| End of Sale | The event or date after which a product is no longer available for sale. |
| End of General Support | The event or date after which a product is no longer fully supported with software updates and patches without an extended support agreement. |
| End of Assisted Support | The event or date after which a product is no longer available for any kind of support including configuration assistance and content updates. |
| Extended Support | A support model after the General Support period has ended. Such an offering is optionally offered by VIPRE for certain products only and may involve additional fees. |
| Update | New product version that supersedes a previous product version, for example ThreatSecure Network 2.2, which is an update to ThreatSecure Network 2.1. Also, the process of applying an update to bring installed software to the new version. |
| Upgrade | The migration of product from one product edition to a more full-featured edition, for example, VIPRE Antivirus Business to VIPRE Endpoint Security. |
| End of Life | The event or date after which a product is no longer supported - calls to our Support team will result in being asked to upgrade. In many cases the product will cease to function after this date. |
Figure 1 illustrates the lifecycle terms used over time, an abstract example.
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Additional Info and Exceptions
A product release lifecycle matrix highlighting the current lifecycle status of each product is available at the VIPRE Product Lifecycle Matrix. This document is the sole source of updated lifecycle information. Should your product be missing from this list, please contact ProductMgmt@vipre.com for details.
A given product release may override policy statements as defined in this document at any time. If required, such changes will be reflected in the product release lifecycle matrix or other executive-authorized materials.
Software or Service Release Types
| Release Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Major | Updates that may introduce significant new features such as major user interface changes and architectural changes to the product including its database schema, other configuration artifacts, or other data model elements. |
| Minor | Updates that have enhanced functionality and possibly new modules. Major architectural changes are generally avoided, and generally the user experience should be mostly familiar to users of the prior version. |
| Service Release | Updates that address software errors or enhance performance. Generally the user experience will not be significantly altered. |
| Hot Fix | Updates representing a temporary fix to resolve a software error that critically inhibits the software’s operation where no reasonable workaround is available. |
| Content Update | Updates to the content within a product, e.g. rules, signatures, reports, or other non-code content. Content is not software, but is read or consumed by software to provide functionality. |
| Update Mechanism | Description |
| Manual Update | An update process whereby the user downloads an update file and manually executes a process to apply that update to existing software. This mechanism is more often used for major updates that might require some special preparation or decision-making by the user. |
| Auto Update | Through facilities provided by a product and configured to do so by a customer or partner’s authorized user, software updates that occur without user intervention or are done so after asking for authorized user credentials. |
Note that Release Types are often associated with version numbers (e.g. a "7.x" release is Major etc.) but there is no explicit relationship.
Software Release Type Policies
- Software defect resolution, in the form of Service Releases or Hot Fixes, is available at any point during the General Support phase for a given product.
- Enhancement requests will be accepted at any time but implemented only in a future Major/Minor product release.
- Migration tools are typically provided for any architectural changes in major software updates to ease the migration process. In some cases the user may be asked to make certain decisions relating to the deployment of the new architecture.
- Hot fixes are made available at VIPRE’s discretion.
- Migration tools are provided for customers taking advantage of an upgrade where a user is replacing one product with another.
- Software errors or enhancements addressed via Hot Fixes are implemented cumulatively, and will always be consolidated into the next Service Release or other update.
- Content Updates will typically be continued after the end of a product's General Support cycle to support continued use of a product in a customer environment, but users are encouraged to explore upgrading at their earliest convenience.
End of Life, Break Fix, and Support Policies
| Software | Hardware | Appliance | Service | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
End-of-Life Trigger
End of Sale |
Earlier date of a superseding product update, or formal announcement of replacement software or planned end of life, or 3 years | See product terms at point of purchase | Earlier date of a superseding product update, or formal announcement of replacement software or planned end of life, or 3 years | Earlier date of a superseding product update, or formal announcement of replacement software or planned end of life, or 3 years |
| End of General Support | End of Sale + 1 Year | See product terms at point of purchase | End of Sale | End of Sale |
| End of Assisted Support | End of General Support + 6 months | See product terms at point of purchase | End of General Support + 6 months | N/A |
| Extended Support | By Request |
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- Customer Support will accept calls for and attempt to resolve issues within any product that is within the General Support or Assisted Support timeframe.
- Customer Support will accept calls for and attempt to resolve issues within any product that is within the Extended Support timeframe only for customers that have established an Extended Support contract.
- For customers using any but the latest release Software, it if often the case that the most recent release addresses issues that are found. Support may recommend that the customer perform an update to the most recent version as a first step in any troubleshooting. For environments where an immediate update is not possible (due to change control, hardware/OS limitations, etc) Support will continue to assist in resolving any issues to include troubleshooting, configuration support, root cause analysis, engineering escalation, and optionally development of custom workarounds or Hot Fixes.
- Appliance or Service - For customers using an Appliance or Service offered by VIPRE, the release of an update to that Appliance or Service represents the current supportable product. Customers contacting Support with issues related to an Appliance will be asked to update any Appliances to the latest released build as a first step in troubleshooting. Support for non-updated Appliances will be limited to troubleshooting, configuration support, and root cause analysis only. Any software fixes to Appliances or Services required to address customer issues will only be made on top of the latest generally available release for that Appliance or Service.
- Appliance or Service - If an Appliance or Service distributes additional Software components as part of the service provided (such as a downloadable agent or utility), then only the most current available Software component is supportable: customers will be expected to update any such components. If there are exceptions to this rule, then the Appliance or Service will make this clear in the user interface (for example, VIPRE Endpoint Security - Cloud Edition supports running older agent versions during a temporary user acceptance testing period).
- Extended Support requests must be made no less than six months prior to the End of General Support to ProductMgmt@vipre.com. VIPRE endeavors to respond to such requests within a one-month period.
Certification of Third Party Products
VIPRE products run in an environment requiring a number of products from third parties including operating systems, databases, application servers, browsers, etc. VIPRE products are tested with many third party products to ensure compatibility. A product is only certified for use with the specific releases of the products it is tested with unless explicitly stated otherwise. Details of the release versions of third party products that a particular release has been tested with may be found in the product’s Supported Environments documentation.
A new release will only be tested against and certified for releases of third party products that are generally commercially available and that are in the vendor’s general support phase. VIPRE will reasonably endeavor to provide Helpdesk support for releases of its products once the vendor’s general support phase has finished. VIPRE will not address defects on platforms involving a third party product if the general support phase of that product has finished.
Where VIPRE software has a dependency on a third party product to enable its use on a platform, VIPRE will endeavor to support that platform no later than two quarters following the quarter that the dependent product was made generally commercially available.