ESRI has updated their “ArcGIS Product Life Cycle” to indicate that the current release of ArcGIS (the one we all have in our production environments) is now in extended support. It isn’t that big of a difference between extended and general support, but the timing of this is a little weird. Even in ESRI’s product life cycle description it says:
For example, ArcGIS 8.2 transitioned to the Extended Support Phase 3 months after ArcGIS 8.3 started shipping. The 3 months overlap takes into account the shipping time for a new release. It takes about 3 months for the majority of our users worldwide to receive a new release.
You’d think they’d hold off for a couple months, but then they’d have to certify 9.1 on Vista and I don’t think they wanted to do that.
ESRI will not certify new environments for products in this Extended Support phase. If an existing customer is contemplating migrating their environment then they should also consider an ESRI product migration as appropriate.
I think this is a little cheap of ESRI as many users won’t upgrade to 9.2 right away and who knows if any of them might have to run 9.1 on Vista because of their internal company policies. So if that new laptop your company just got you runs Vista only, then you might not be able to run ArcGIS 9.1 even if you don’t get your shipment of ArcGIS 9.2 until months later.
Jei has his own theory as to the why on his blog, but my mind says it is all about Microsoft Vista. Jei might be right, but the only big difference between the two service levels is the “new environment certification”:
when a major new release of an operating system, database, or web server is released during the General Availability phase of an ESRI product, ESRI will test this new environment with the General Availability release and provide test result information on its Online Support Center.
Moving 9.1 to extended support means they can ignore certifying ArcGIS 9.1 on Vista and for many companies that is enough not to run 9.1 on Vista (even if you can).
24 responses so far ↓
1
David E. Wright
// Nov 5, 2006 at 5:58 pm
That does make perfect sense. It’s a shame because it takes many city/county/state and federal departments months to years to complete a migration. This will only slowdown the possible deployment of the new tools.
2
James Fee
// Nov 5, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Not just that, but lets assume your clients don’t upgrade right away. If your company mandates Vista on new computers, you’d have to run ArcGIS 9.1 on a virtual machine. What a nightmare if you ask me.
3
Bill Dollins
// Nov 5, 2006 at 6:07 pm
This can also have an impact in defense areas since, due to accreditation processes, many sites are just now getting around to upgrading from Win2K to XP. If it takes that long to certify Vista, it could impact the roll-out of new tools there, also.
4
James Fee
// Nov 5, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Totally, I wasn’t going to even mention NMCI!
5
GeoMullah
// Nov 5, 2006 at 7:40 pm
NMCI sucks. I remember prepping for the migration three+ years ago when I worked at Intergraph using ArcGIS 8.x.
6
Larry Renolds
// Nov 5, 2006 at 8:25 pm
I kind of understand their logic with this, but I can’t help but feel that ESRI is making their users pay for the delays that 9.2 has had.
7
Gretch
// Nov 6, 2006 at 6:39 am
It isn’t only Vista that will be the problem. ESRI isn’t supporting IE7 with 9.1.
http://tinyurl.com/y5yowh
I’ve had to uninstall IE7 to get my GP working again. Frankly I don’t see how they cannot support IE7 at 9.1 since IE7 was released when 9.1 was in general support.
8
Brian Flood
// Nov 6, 2006 at 6:51 am
IE7 - this is a complete punt on ESRI’s part, IE7 has been around (in beta form) for quite some time. If they are addressing this in 9.2 they should really provide a patch for 9.1, especially if it incapacitates all of GeoProcessing (someone correct me if I’m wrong). if you base your flexible GP UI on an OS feature that changes (e.g. the browser components), it’s your responsibility to keep up with those changes…
Vista - well, that’s a tougher one. Certification on an OS is a lot of work so I can see where they are coming from. according to MS, nearly all Win32 programs will run just fine in Vista so maybe it will only be small issues…anyone try 9.1 on Vista yet?
cheers
brian
9
Michael Tucker
// Nov 6, 2006 at 7:04 am
Brian,
For our city, certification of software against hardware/operating systems is very important. I guess I’m not surprised that they won’t certify/support (see that is the key, they won’t support 9.1 on Vista), but the timing just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
10
Dave
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:10 am
Somehow, I think this is a little blown out of proportion. If an organization is going to drag their feed upgrading their ESRI products, then I’m pretty sure they’ll be foot draggers when it comes to the OS as well.
As for IE7 and 9.1 - totally lame, but that’s pretty much par for the geoprocessing course. Maybe it’s better at 9.2 (I honestly never tried it) and this is a not so subtle push to get users to switch.
Dave
11
David E. Wright
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:16 am
I guess what I have a real hard time understanding is how a change in the Browser can break GP?? I understand the whole coupled system that is WinXP/IE and how they are inter-dependent but I can’t see how any fuction that IE would update should break anything in ArcGIS Desktop.
If the two are so tightly intertwined(IE & ArcGIS), it sounds like they need to do a little refactoring to clean up some bad app architecture.
12
critter
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:16 am
Two things Dave. One our company is slow on the migration to 9.2 (we took almost a year to get from 9.0 to 9.1) because of some of the mission critical tools that we have that have to be tested. That said, our company buys new laptops all the time and while it is possible to order WinXP for at least the next year, who the heck wants to be limited by their GIS software.
I think James’ point was that this is somewhat bizzare that they have moved a production product to extented support before anyone has received their copy of 9.2. To me that is a slap in the face.
At least support the existing software and give people time to migrate.
13
critter
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:17 am
That response was to Dave, not David E Wright.
14
AVUser
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:19 am
Depressing is all I can think. Forcing people to upgrade to a product that was delayed for years is a kick in the crotch IMO.
15
James Fee
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:21 am
OK guys, lets not get too negative here. I’d like NOT to repeat that ESRI support thread again.
16
Brian Flood
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:22 am
IE and GP - the underlying GP components will work but the UI depends on the IE rendering components. I’ll check on a machine that has IE7 and 9.1 but the more I think of it, it’s hard to believe they would just ignore their 9.1 user base when it comes to something as large as GP, it’s kinda mindboggling. if it were something small, I guess I could see but its an *entire* section of the ArcMap UI that doesn’t work. that seems wrong in my book.
also, I don’t think the GP UI in 9.2 is radically different from 9.1 so a patch to fix 9.1 should be possible…maybe they have a patch planned already?!?
17
James Fee
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:25 am
Brian, I agree. I can’t believe that they wouldn’t have a patch for the IE7 problem considering that 9.1 was under “General Support” at the time IE7 was released. That said someone above posted a link to a technical article that seems to say you need 9.2 if you want to run IE.
It is interesting that an old patch exists for 9.1 and IE7, but I’m not sure if it still works.
18
anon
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:34 am
Why does ESRI release these weird PDFs for ArcGIS Product Life cycle. Couldn’t they just have a website where we could look at this stuff?
Also, I didn’t see any ArcIMS product life cycle stuff. What is the current status of 4.01?
19
David E. Wright
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:37 am
critter, I couldn’t agree more.
Brian, but this type of dependency is the same type of issue that allows a webpage to take over root access to a box, that level of interdependacy is just poor architecture.
20
Brian Flood
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:51 am
IE7 and GP Update - I asked someone else at our office about this and they have IE7 (final) and 9.1 on their machine. The patch James points at above seems to fix any issues with using GP so it seems my complaints were a bit premature. We’ll do a little more testing but eveything we clicked on seemed to work
sorry about that and good to see ESRI has addressed this in the past
David - the IE components are used by a lot of software products for dynamic UIs in compiled applicaitons. Is that a good idea? in concept yes, in practise maybe not. YMMV.
21
David E. Wright
// Nov 6, 2006 at 9:56 am
Brian, I understand that, but when you create that kind of connection you open up potential problems.
Wouldn’t it be fun to see a malicious MXD file mailed around that would launch a macro virus using VBA?? That kind of thing is all I am thinking about.
22 ArcGIS 9.1 not in Extended Support….Yet | James Fee GIS Blog // Jan 31, 2007 at 11:30 am
[...] we all got our ArcGIS 9.2, ESRI posted an updated ArcGIS Desktop Life Cycle PDF that showed that ArcGIS 9.1 had entered “Extended Support”. I guess they changed their minds because it appears that 9.1 is still in “General [...]
23
Guillermo
// Mar 28, 2007 at 7:54 am
I couldn’t help but read in to this blog and participate. I am the US Regional Rapid Response Coordinator for Latin America. Our agency is being forced into the windows Vista world on the international side. We use GIS for our emergency response operating plans and Incident command system for the region. We are almost floating dead in the water at the moment due to the support issues and LM issues with any ESRI products. I am seeking advice on two issues related to this topic. How can I license ArcGIS 9.1 (Not Arcinfo) for my user groups and teams on the Vista platform? Or should I have my IT tech’s wipe the Vista OS clean from the dells XPS M1210 that we receive and install the XP 03 operating system so that we may maintain functional emergency preparedness status for the upcoming Hurricane, wildfire, and flood seasons. If there are any suggestions out there I would appreciate them.
24
Ramki
// Oct 30, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Hi, I bought a new laptop with Microsoft Windows Vista Home edition as OS. When I installed ARC GIS 9.2 the License Manager Server is not starting. I even unblocked this from the windows firewall but the server is still not starting. Can any one tell me what can be the reason for this. Does there any solution for this.
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