Product lifecycle
A product’s life cycle phases define how we introduce, release and phase out product features. By setting out these phases, we aim to help you plan your use of our products and features.
Our Terms of Use govern your use of centron and set out details regarding authorisation, content, use, payments and billing, as well as warranties. This document does not constitute a contract. Any use of centron’s services is subject to the Terms of Use.
| Life Cycle Phase | Customer Availability | Support | In Production | Fees | End of Life |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beta | By invitation | No formal support | No | Variable | May be discontinued without notice |
| Early Availability | All or selected customers | Full | Partial | Standard terms (except SLAs) | Follows the EOL process |
| General Availability | All customers | Full | Yes | Standard terms | Follows the EOL process |
centron Product Lifecycle Stages
Beta
Beta releases are initial versions of potential future products or features. Customers who take part in our beta programmes have the opportunity to test and validate future features and provide feedback. This helps us to focus our efforts on what brings the most benefit to our customers.
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Customer availability: Participation in beta releases is by invitation only. Customers may choose not to take part. Beta invitations may be public or private.
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Support: Beta releases are not supported.
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Production readiness: Beta releases may not be suitable for production workloads. We encourage users to use simulated test data and to avoid running sensitive workloads on beta products.
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Regions & platforms: Beta offers may only be available in selected regions and on selected platforms.
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Fees: Beta services may be subject to a charge or free of charge. However, free access to beta services may be withdrawn at any time.
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End of Life: At the end of a beta release, centron will decide whether to continue offering the product or service. We reserve the right to change or discontinue the scope of a beta product or feature at any time and without prior notice.
Early availability
Early availability releases are fully functional products and features that are made available to specific user groups as part of a phased roll-out strategy.
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Customer availability: Early availability features can be introduced for all customers or specific user segments, either in addition to or instead of existing features.
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Support: Early access offerings are provided with the same level of support as generally available features and products.
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Production readiness: They are expected, but not guaranteed, to be suitable for production-ready workloads. We encourage users to use simulated test data and to avoid running sensitive workloads on EA products. Where appropriate, SLAs are defined and measured, but are not supported by a credit issuance process.
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Regions & platforms: Early access offers may not be available in all geographical regions or on all centron platforms.
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Fees: Early availability offers follow our standard pricing and billing procedures and are (or are not) charged in the same way as generally available offers. SLA refunds are an exception to this.
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End of Life: Should we decide to phase out an early-access product before it becomes generally available, we will endeavour to follow the phase-out procedure described below.
General availability: Regional and global
Generally available offerings are fully functional products that are available to all centron customers for production use.
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Customer availability: All centron users have access to generally available services.
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Support: All generally available features are fully supported.
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Production readiness: Generally available offerings can be used for production-ready workloads.
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Regions: Generally available products and features fall into one of two categories:
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Products with regional availability are not yet available in all regions.
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Products with global availability are available in at least one data centre in all centron regions.
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Fees: Generally available offers are subject to our standard pricing and billing procedures
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End of Life: Generally available products follow the decommissioning procedures described below.
End of Life
The decision to phase out or deactivate features follows a rigorous process. This process involves understanding demand, usage, the implications of phasing out a feature and, most importantly, customer feedback. Our aim is to invest resources in areas that deliver the greatest benefit to the most customers.
We are committed to being clear, transparent and proactive in our dealings with our customers – particularly when it comes to changes to our platforms. To this end, we will endeavour to follow the guidelines set out below when deprecating features:
Advance notice
In the case of minor changes that result in features being phased out or deactivated, we will endeavour to proactively inform customers at least one month in advance. Where key features or products are being phased out, we will endeavour to inform customers at least three months in advance.
Feasible alternatives
centron will endeavour to offer viable alternatives when features are phased out. These may be alternative offerings from centron or recommended alternatives from third-party providers. Where possible and appropriate, centron will automatically migrate customers to alternatives for EOL features.
Extended Support
centron undertakes to continue providing support for selected features until the end-of-life date.
In exceptional circumstances, such as where significant changes are necessary to protect the integrity of our platform or the security of our customers and others, it may be necessary to bring forward the timetable for phasing out features. In such cases, it is important that changes are implemented as quickly as possible.
Similarly, integrated software or third-party services may need to be phased out due to a third-party provider’s decision to change or discontinue its solution. In such situations, the pace of the phase-out is beyond our control. However, even in these circumstances, we will give as much notice as possible.