Submit Your Suggestions for Vista

2008 r2 end of life

• Guest
• Jun 21 2017
• Will not implement

• Nov 6, 2017

  Admin response

  Dear Delia,

  Your concerns are definitely heard.  We at Viewpoint strive to ensure that your investment is protected, and your business is our most critical concern.  That said, there are times with tough calls must be made: software development is often a balancing act between supporting existing capabilities and developing new enhancements, or even security improvements.  We thought long and hard about how to handle this situation, and here's the logic that we used:

  • Our customers were reporting a significant number of issues tied to SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 that were corrected with later versions of MS SQL
  • Microsoft ended mainstream support for SQL 2008/2008R2 in July of 2014, with extended support (security patches only) ending in July of 2019
    • Here is the link to the Microsoft notice on SQL 2008/2008R2 EOL:  https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlreleaseservices/end-of-mainstream-support-for-sql-server-2008-and-sql-server-2008-r2/
  • Remaining on SQL 2008/2008R2 takes time that can be used to support later SQL versions
  • There are significant security and performance benefits to SQL 2016.

  To that end, at the beginning of 2016 (Q1), when the decision was made, published our intent as follows:

  • Release notes, user’s guide, installation manual and other documentation for 6.12
  • Release notes, user’s guide, installation manual, and other docs for Vista 6.13 in the fall of 2016
  • Publicized at the user conference in 2016 in several venues, including the Platform What’s Next session

  By the time that version 6.14 of Vista was released, in May of this year, we had been pushing out information of this impending change for around 18 months.  To complete the process, we recently distributed an email to notify customers whose records indicate that they are currently running on older Vista versions with SQL 2008/2008R2.

  Given all of that, we know that your core need still remains, so I’d like to assuage some of your specific concerns if I can:

  1. Vista Tax updates for 2017 will still be provided for customers who are on 6.13, the last version of Vista to support SQL 2008/2008R2, as well as Vista 6.12.  This will change in 2018, but for 2017, you’re OK.
  2. Vista regulatory updates will be provided for customers on Vista versions 6.14 and 6.15.  This will also likely change though with the updates we create in 2018.

  If you have any specific concerns about tax and regulatory updates, I’d recommend reaching out to support.

  You also referred to our cloud strategy.  A key value of Viewpoint Enterprise Cloud is that your organization would no longer have to worry about remaining current on Vista or the underlying IT software, such as SQL.  In addition to the associated performance and security benefits of VEC, are measurable cost savings: a recent analysis showing that our cloud customers save a median amount of 20% over their contract period as opposed to on-premise. Given these benefits, off-loading the burden of maintenance and management of servers and systems from our customers only makes sense. VEC really does help simplify things, save money, and provide a more secure environment than on-premise. Please feel free to send me a follow up via private message, or if you’d like I can reach out to you directly.

   

  All the best to you!

   

  Best Regards,

  Eric Vasbinder, Sr. Product Manager for Platforms