Ascertia is excited to share changes to our Product Availability and Support Life Cycle.
As part of our ongoing plans to streamline our business and increase efficiency, we have news to share with you regarding the frequency and length of time we release and support our products. Having spent considerable time evaluating our processes, and listening to your feedback, the steps we are taking will bring releases to you faster and provide longer support.
For further information, please consult the Ascertia Product Support Lifecycle policy.
Why are we making this change?
Ascertia has spent a great deal of time evaluating the rate of change within its own products and the need to respond to changes in the market, changes to support new and evolving standards, as well as the growing demand from our customers to support new features and use cases.
In order to provide the ultimate level of flexibility and deliver the world’s best products, Ascertia is making positive changes to the length of time we support major versions of products and we are changing the frequency at which we bring new features to the market.
Ascertia feels that these positive changes will help clients bring new product capabilities to the market faster, help to maximise the investment in our technology, and provide a better product life cycle to support customers in regulated and audited environments.
Ascertia is introducing a new approach to supporting its products, the changes look like this:
Ascertia Products will offer a product lifecycle of five years, this will consist of two phases:
General Availability
End of Maintenance Support - Available at the discretion of Ascertia
Effective from ADSS Server 8.3.1, SigningHub 8.6, and Web RA 2.9 onwards, all major releases will now shift to this new product lifecycle.
During General Availability products will be supported for three years, General Availability will consist of two years of standard support, and the third year is defined as the ‘end of support’ period. Once a product enters the ‘end of support’ period, the replacement product or next major version will be made available, this will provide customers with a full year to perform system upgrades and audits where applicable.
General Availability – Year 1 and Year 2
During the general availability phase, all products will be eligible for customers to open support cases, access regular releases, log enhancement requests and receive security releases.
General Availability – Year 3 (‘End of support’ period)
During the ‘end of support’ period of general availability, all products will be eligible for customers to open support cases, access regular releases, and receive security releases. Any enhancement requests logged will be added to the latest major version of the product.
End of Maintenance Support – Year 4 and Year 5
During extended support, all products will be eligible for customers to open support cases, and receive security releases and patches to address P1 and P2 support cases. At the end of the end of maintenance support period, the product is completely withdrawn, and no further support options are available.
For further information, please consult the Ascertia Product Support Lifecycle policy.
Ascertia is excited about this new product lifecycle and will be implementing this in the following way:
With immediate effect, ADSS Server 8.3.1 will be the first release to adopt this new product release cycle. All supported versions – except for ADSS Server SAM Appliance releases - will immediately enter end of life and customers will have until September 2024 to upgrade/migrate to this version. The next major release to follow will be ADSS Server 9.
Ascertia will not be offering extended support for any version of ADSS Server prior to ADSS Server 8.3.1.
With immediate effect, SigningHub 8.6 will be the first release to adopt this new product release cycle. All previous versions. All supported versions will immediately enter end-of-life and customers will have until October 2024 to upgrade/migrate to this version. SigningHub 8.6 will be superseded in 2024 by SigningHub 10. Upon the release of version 10, version 8.6 will enter the end-of-life phase, this will provide a two-year window for clients to migrate. SigningHub 10 will then adopt the new product release cycle and the next major release to follow will be SigningHub 11.
Ascertia will not be offering extended support for any version of SigningHub prior to Signing Hub 8.6.
Upon the release of ADSS Web RA Server 2.9, all supported versions will immediately enter end-of-life and customers will have until December 2025 to upgrade/migrate to this version. ADSS Web RA Server 2.9 will be the first release to adopt the new product release cycle, with ADSS Web RA Server 3.0 serving as the next major release to follow.
Ascertia will not be offering extended support for any version of ADSS Web RA Server prior to ADSS Web RA Server 2.9.
Keep up to date with future releases by following the Ascertia and SigningHub blogs.