The Best-Run Businesses Run SAP

Lately, we’ve gotten a few inquiries on what the standard SAP support process is for major product releases. Is it 7 years of standard support or 2 years of support? Here is some information that will hopefully shed some light on how the support process works.

The Release Family: Major and Minor Releases

A major release and the minor releases that follow it are referred to as a release family. For example: SAP BusinessObjects XI3.1 was the final release in the XI3.x line. Enhancements may be delivered in both major or minor product releases. Major releases contain new functionality and architectural platform changes are possible. Minor releases include new and improved business functions that can be implemented and adopted quickly. The interfaces remain stable between major and minor releases.

Maintenance for the Release Family

The following maintenance durations apply for every release family of the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence platform:
• Seven years of mainstream maintenance
• Two years of priority-one support

7 + 2 support

Mainstream maintenance begins with the release-to-customer (RTC) date for the major release and covers any subsequent minor releases in the release family that might be shipped. Each release in a release family has a maintenance period of at least two years after the start of restricted shipment for that release. As soon as a new release enters unrestricted shipment, the previous release is maintained for at least one more year. At the end of the seven years of mainstream maintenance, priority-one support begins for the last shipped release within a release family. The last release closes the nine-year maintenance cycle for this release family.

Customer support will accept support messages for all releases of a family during the 9 year supported lifetime of the family. Corrections will only be delivered for the currently supported releases of that family. So, for example, if an issue is discovered on 4.0 after the support period of 4.0 expires, then that issue will be corrected on the currently supported release in the family (eg. 4.1 or 4.2).

Each specific release (eg. 4.0) is supported for a minimum of 2 years when measured from the start of restricted shipment (ie. start of ramp-up) of the first release of a family. After the next release of the family (ie. 4.1) becomes generally available, the end-of-life dates of the prior release (4.0) will be updated if necessary to ensure a minimum 1 year overlap during which both releases are fully supported. When end-of-life dates are updated, the change can only increase the supported lifetime.

What about the 4.x Release Family?

The BI 4 release family will follow this same process. Inside the BI 4 release family there will be several minor releases with the final release in the family closing the nine-year maintenance cycle for the release family. While we continue to develop BI 4 and new minor releases such as 4.1, 4.2, etc. each of these minor releases are supported for 2 years from the date of RTC.

Delivery Vehicles and Frequency

• Frequency: Every 2 weeks
• Lifetime: Until the next patch is released

Definitions

Urgent customer corrections. When a customer finds a bug in an SAP BusinessObjects product and reports it to SAP support, SAP develops a correction for the bug. For SAP BusinessObjects this correction is then delivered in the form of a patch. Patches are cumulative. For example, BI 4.0 SP02 Patch 02 will contain all of the corrections in Patch 01.

In addition to all of the above, support packs also address:

• Priority 2 Customer issues
• New Platforms Support
• Exceptionally small customer Enhancements

In addition to all of the above, minor releases also address:

• Priority 3 Customer issues
• Complex Customer issues
• New Language Packs and New platforms
• Feature Enhancements

FAQ

We’ve experienced a lot of regressions when installing support packs.  This makes it costly for us to adopt new support packs.  What is SAP doing to address this?

We track both customer-identified and internally-identified regressions.  Internally-identified regressions are corrected before the support pack or patch is released.

Recent data show a slight decline in the number of customer-identified regressions.  We continue to work to reduce all types of regressions, with initiatives such as:

• Tightly restricting the new features that go into a release post general availability.
• Ongoing investments in test automation.
• Tracking and sharing of the regression metric internally.
• Investigating the root cause of regressions and continuously improving our quality control processes and systems.
  

What is involved in migrating from 4.0 to 4.1?

Installing the next release within the same family (ie moving from 4.0 to 4.1 or 4.0 to 4.2) does not require any repository migration or security model changes.  It’s an incremental install over top of your existing installation.  It is similar to installing a support pack which delivers new features.

What is the current support end-of-life of 4.0?

December 31, 2014.

This provides a supported lifetime of over 2 years and 7 months since the start of restricted shipment (ie start of rampup), and 1 year and 9 months after general availability.

This may be extended depending on the general availability date of 4.1 to ensure a minimum of 1 year of overlap between the 4.0 and 4.1 support lifetimes.

What is the difference between this model and the old BusinessObjects support model?

Prior to the acquisition, Business Objects supported its major releases for only 5 years.

Business Objects delivered both new features and corrections in service packs.

How frequently will patches and support packs be released?

Patches will be released roughly every 3 weeks during the minimum 2-year supported lifetime of a release.

Support packs will be released every 4 months for the first 4 years of the family, then every 6 months for years 5-7.  They will be released for the currently supported release within a family.

More Information

See pages 39-45 of SAP’s Release Strategy for Large Enterprises for an even more thorough explanation of SAP’s 7+2 support model in general and the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform 4.0 PAM for specific dates.

See SAP’s Maintenance Strategy site for an even more thorough explanation of SAP’s 7+2 support model in general and the SAP BusinessObjects BI platform 4.0 PAM for specific dates.
Legal Disclaimer

SAP’s strategy and possible future developments are subject to change and may be changed by SAP at any time for any reason without notice. This information is provided without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.