Overview
Telestax provides support and maintenance over stated time periods for the major versions of RestcommONE products (i.e., versions 6.1). The published life cycle calendars for RestcommONE products allow customers and partners to effectively plan, deploy, and support RestcommONE products.
The life cycle associated with a RestcommONE product identifies the various levels of maintenance for each release of that product over a period of time from the initial release—or general availability (GA)—to the end of the maintenance phase. RestcommONE product life cycles are generally three, five years in length, depending on the product. For certain RestcommONE products (as described below), an optional add-on Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) subscription may be purchased to extend the life cycle by three (3) additional years.
Software updates to RestcommONE products, if and when available, are delivered via software patches. Patches can be released individually on an as-needed basis, aggregated as part of a Cumulative Patch (CP), or included in a minor release (e.g., version 6.1). Patches may contain security and/or bug fixes. Feature enhancements are generally introduced in minor and major releases—not as patches or in CPs. Telestax’s goal is to maintain compatibility across the full life cycle of a product family (e.g., JAINS SLEE 6.x patches, JAIN SLEE 6.x CPs, and JAIN SLEE 6.x releases are in the same JAIN SLEE 6 product family). Patches, CPs, and minor releases are tested and qualified against prior releases for a given product family. Telestax will use commercially reasonable efforts to provide compatibility with the initial major release (e.g., 6.0). Where incompatibilities arise, they will be documented in the release notes or may be reported as bugs.
RestcommONE life cycles are designed to reduce the level of change within each major release over time, increasing predictability and decreasing maintenance costs. Released patches, CPs, and minor releases will remain accessible to active subscribers for the entire life cycle of a product family. Telestax publishes product life cycle calendars in an effort to provide as much transparency as possibly but may make exceptions from these policies if unforeseeable conflicts arise (such as the end-of-life (EOL) of a dependent component or platform) that are outside of Telestax’s control.
Every major version of a RestcommONE product is maintained and supported independently during its life cycle. For each major version of a product, patch updates, if and when available, will be issued serially and will be applicable incrementally to previously released patches and CPs. Minor releases will aggregate the contents of prior patches and CPs, and they may add additional new functionality. Subsequent patches and CPs will be based on and require the installation of minor updates that precede them. During the entire life cycle, Telestax makes commercially reasonable efforts to maintain API-level compatibility across all minor releases and asynchronous patches (e.g., JAIN SLEE 6.1 will maintain API-level compatibility with JAIN SLEE 6.0, the parent of the JAIN SLEE 6 family). Possible exceptions to this rule could include fixes introduced to address critical security issues. Furthermore, major versions of RestcommONE products endeavor to maintain significant backward-compatibility with previous versions (e.g., JAIN SLEE 6.0 endeavors to maintain significant backward compatibility with JAIN SLEE 5.x) to aid with the migration of applications from one major release to another.
Life Cycle Phases
The life cycle for a major release of RestcommONE products is divided into three primary phases: the Full Support Phase, the Maintenance Phase, and the Extended Life Phase.
Phase 1: Full Support
Start Date: General Availability
Full Production support is provided according to the Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement. Likewise, Development Support is provided according to the Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement. All available and qualified patches will be applied via periodic product updates and CPs, or as required for qualified security patches.
Phase 2: Maintenance Support
Start Date: no less than one (1) year after General Availability.
Production support is provided according to the Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement. Likewise, Development Support is provided according to the published Scope of Coverage and Service Level Agreement. During the maintenance phase, qualified security patches of important or critical impact, as well as select mission-critical bug-fix patches, will be released.
Phase 3: Extended Life Support (Optional)
As an optionally available add-on to a RestcommONE subscription, Telestax offers an Extended Life Cycle Support (ELS) subscription. ELS delivers critical-impact security fixes and selected urgent-priority bug fixes, if and when available. For ELS subscribers, Telestax will generally continue to proactively provide the Critical Impact security fixes if and when available independent of customer requests.
The following table details each type of software maintenance performed during a typical life cycle:
