As an IT manager you need to know about the product life cycle.
- How long will you have vendor support for your system?
- When will you be forced to “upgrade” to a new different version at some undefined cost?
- How consistently can you source existing specifications?
For Windows, you may be forced to upgrade to the Windows Vista package:
- WinXP will be supported until 2014
- The costs of upgrading to Vista are considered very high.
- WinXP will only be sold until Jan 2008
In some cases your vendor won’t tell you when they will cut off support for fixes and security updates. They often force you to purchase a new “upgrade” version when you are not prepared to do so.
- Webconverger can provide support for current 2.x series to 2011.
- Come 2011 an upgrade option will be provided at no extra cost for the software. There might be a small media/human cost associated to actually performing the upgrade in 2011.
- Webconverger will be available for download until 2011 and beyond.