Lifecycle Phases

By understanding the lifecycle phases, customers should be better able to plan and prepare for their support needs.

Citrix products progress through three distinct lifecycle phases:

• Mainstream Maintenance Phase: begins on the General Availability date of a product release and transitions to the next phase on the End of Maintenance date
• Extended Maintenance Phase: begins on the End of Maintenance date and transitions to the next phase on the End of Life date
• End of Life Phase: begins on the End of Life date

Citrix will announce the intent to initiate a product line or product release through these lifecycle phases. This announcement is made on the Notice of Status Change date when the Product Matrix Table is updated to include the specific dates for End of Sales, End of Maintenance, and End of Life. For definitions of the various lifecycle dates, refer to Lifecycle Definitions.

Maintenance and Support During each Phase

Mainstream Maintenance Phase
Upon General Availability, products are fully supported and maintained until the End of Maintenance date. Citrix will provide code level maintenance in the form of hotfixes, hotfix rollup packs, or service packs when Citrix determines they are required to resolve issues with the product. The release of a Service Pack or Hotfix Rollup Pack may define a new maintenance baseline for the product. Citrix customers may be required to upgrade to a Service Pack or Hotfix Rollup Pack to receive continued maintenance on the product. Technical support is offered through various avenues as specified in the Software Support Programs and Hardware Support Programs sections of our Web site.

Extended Maintenance Phase
After a product release reaches it End of Maintenance date, it is considered to be in the Extended Maintenance Phase. During this phase, technical support continues as before but code level maintenance will be limited to security related issues deemed critical by Citrix. Security issues will be corrected through hotfixes compatible with the product’s current maintenance baseline. This maintenance baseline is dictated by the current Service Pack or Hotfix Rollup Pack. Security issues could be related to publicly identified security vulnerabilities, other security vulnerabilities, or Microsoft’s publicly released security updates.

The decision to enter a particular product into the Extended Maintenance Phase is intended to balance the need for orderly customer transitions with the desire to provide customers with the most current, functionally superior, and stable solutions available through new products or newer versions of existing products. Customer desires for new capabilities and constantly evolving technologies influence the lifecycle for Citrix products, including enhancements to existing products as well as migrations to newer platforms.

End of Life Phase
Once a product release reaches its End of Life date, the customer may continue to use the product within the terms of product licensing agreement but the available support options will be limited. While there may be historical information in the Knowledge Base or other online resources, it is no longer updated and is provided on an as-is basis. The customer will be using the product within the terms of the product license as-is.

Summary Table

	Mainstream Maintenance	Extended Maintenance	End of Life
Non-critical hotfix maintenance (bug-fixes)
Critical hotfix maintenance (bug-fixes)
Feature enhancements
New hardware support
Product specific information that is available in the online Citrix Knowledge Base
Security-related hotfix maintenance
Paid technical support (per incident, per support plan and others)
Self-help resources

Citrix’s Product Lifecycle Support policy is intended exclusively for the benefit of existing Citrix customers with respect to the products they have already purchased.  It is not intended to apply to other products or to any other third parties. Citrix reserves the right to make changes to its Product Lifecycle Support policy in its sole discretion from time to time as business needs require.  Policy statements on www.citrix.com will be updated to reflect any changes upon their effective date.