I know many have not made the jump from ArcGIS 9.3 to 10 or 10.1 or 10.2. This might be because of custom applications you have which you have not had time or budget to update. It might be simply that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Well now might be the time to consider making the jump. Esri has announced that it will retire ArcGIS 9.3 and 9.3.1 at the end of this year. So what does that mean?

What does product retirement mean?

When Esri retires a product this means:

1.      You will no longer be able to purchase new licenses or extensions.

2.      No new patches or hotfixes will be released for bugs or issues

3.      Esri will not certify it to run with new or updated Operating Systems

4.      Technical support will no longer be available from Esri using phone, email, chat or fax. Only very limited support will be provide through knowledge base and discussion forums.

So the long and short is Esri will no longer be supporting ArcGIS 9.3 or 9.3.1 after the end of the year. If you are planning any big infrastructure upgrades this might cause problems if you encounter any issues getting these older versions to run in a new environment. With the release of ArcGIS 10.2.1 just around the corner combined with Microsoft's announcement that it will be dropping support for Windows XP later this spring, now might be time to start planning an ArcGIS Upgrade.

I should also mention that ArcGIS 10.0 will be moving to the Mature Support level at the end of the year as well.  This means Esri will no longer be releasing any patches or updates for version 10 and will stop certifying it to run in new operating environments. They will however continue to provide support via regular channels.

For more information about Esri’s product life cycles you can download the following PDFs:

http://downloads.esri.com/support/product%20life%20cycle/arcgis_desktop/ArcGIS_PLC.pdf

http://help.arcgis.com/en/shared/product-life-cycle/ProductLifeCycle.pdf

Tripp Corbin, MCP, CFM, GISP | Chief Executive Officer
eGIS Associates, Inc.

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678-710-9710 ext 21 | 866-304-3864 Fax

Esri Certified Trainer | Esri Certified Desktop Associate