A slight personal caution from me.... I find the IBM Software Lifecycle pages to be quite accurate, but there are rare occasions when some nuances aren't reflected in the Lifecycle summaries. The few rare occasions I've found have been along these lines:
1. End of Service for Version X.Y.0 but not for Version X.Y.Z. The Lifecycle page might say "End of Service Version X.Y" without an obvious/visible indication that X.Y.Z is still supported. IBM has caught the MQ for z/OS examples -- MQ 7.0.0 and 7.0.1 had different lifecycles, for example -- but there might be some weird exceptions otherwise. 2. End of Service for elements of a major product but not for all elements. For example, if a compiler is withdrawn from marketing on a particular operating system but not on all operating systems, the Lifecycle summary page might not reflect that level of detail. 3. If the product name and/or packaging changes substantially enough, you might not see a successor version listed. Ordinarily the Lifecycle summary page links to the relevant product announcement letters that detail these nuances, but you have to click through and actually read that information if you want it. Anyway, like any other sources of summary information, if you critically depend on some piece of information you should double check it, that's all. As always, if you see an error or omission then please "call it in" (report it to IBM through the Web site feedback channels). Please also remember that IBM's general policy is that the lifecycle is tied to the "headline" product offering. Using a fictitious example, let's suppose you license a product called IBM Bouncy Castle Version 6.5, and that Bouncy Castle 6.5 happens to include restricted use licenses for WebSphere Application Server 8.0 and MQ 7.0.1. Unless IBM says otherwise, the only End of Service date that matters is the EoS date for Bouncy Castle 6.5, the whole product, even if/when WebSphere Application Server 8.0 and MQ 7.0.1 reach their End of Service dates if they were separately, independently licensed. The reverse is also possible: Bouncy Castle 6.5 could reach End of Support earlier than the included products if they were separately licensed. Also, you should not treat End of Service dates as limiting in the sense that you should avoid installing and using newer versions. There is no more Single Version Charge (SVC) countdown clock -- that's gone, and good riddance. Go right ahead and order every new release for products you're entitled to, install them (at least in Development), and get going. New releases are almost always better, so routinely installing new releases promotes faster "time to value." In the rare cases when the new release isn't better, it's best to have faster "time to discovery," so you have more and better opportunities to remediate such problems. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Sipples IT Architect Executive, Industry Solutions, IBM Z & LinuxONE -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: sipp...@sg.ibm.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN