Supporting customers is our primary goal! Actian Support Services provide the services required to:

• Maximize the availability of your systems
• Minimize disruption caused from change management
• Optimize performance
• Ensure stability and security
• Fix problems quickly and effectively

An Actian Support Subscription includes access to knowledge and technical expertise with direct access to our expert Actian Support Engineers. All of the features of an Actian Corporation Subscription allows customers to architect, manage and operate a much more efficient, high performing and a scalable infrastructure.

• Support Features
• Support Policy
• Support Lifecycle Dates
• Supported Platforms

Actian offers products that help drive on automated business actions and offer a number of technologies such as Vectorwise, Ingres Database, OpenROAD, Versant Databases and a number of additional add-on products to facilitate a customer’s environment.

Product Availability at a Glance

Actian makes these products available on an extensive range of platforms/operating systems. While many of these platforms are seldom used for new deployments, Actian continues to support nearly all product deployments on their original platforms.

Actian Products; Vectorwise, Ingres Database, OpenROAD, and other Products

Actian Versant Databases

If you have any questions, feel free to email products@actian.com

Product Support Lifecycle Policy

This policy explains Actian Corporation's product support lifecycle policy. Whether purchased directly from Actian, or from Actian partners or resellers, these policies are designed to standardize product lifecycle expectancies and assist you in developing your internal release implementation and migration plans. Actian Corporation strives to provide the best quality Software and Support Services. In order to provide best-in-class software solutions, Actian has defined a predictable Product Support Lifecycle Policy to give you plenty of lead time to plan and manage your upgrade and release processes. The detailed product support lifecycle policies can be found at our support policy.

Right to Accelerate Product Support Lifecycle

Actian may shorten the term of Enterprise support for certain products and versions at its discretion. Actian will make commercially reasonable efforts to announce any change in lifecycle length at least 12 months in advance. These notices are subject to change, and will be updated as necessary.

Automatic Notifications

If you would like to be automatically notified of future dates when support ends for the Actian Corporation product line, you can subscribe to the End Support Dates email list.

DBMS Versioning Policy

Actian follows a general versioning methodology for the creation and management of our software which drives our Lifecycle methodology.

Current Planned Dates

Specific Details by product, date, release, and platform can be found in Customer Portal.

Vectorwise
Ingres
OpenROAD
Versant
Other Products

To ease the transition to OpenROAD 6.0 Actian has prepared a Migration Guide to assist you in the planning and execution of a successful upgrade of OpenROAD.

* NOTE: Dates given apply to Tier 1 platforms only: Windows, Solaris and Linux. Please consult support for other platforms.

Actian Corporation utilizes an open source business model that provides customers the flexibility of a subscription service with enterprise ready products. The subscription model allows customers to only pay for the product support and services for the time they use the product versus a more legacy license approach to software purchases. This business model allows Actian to be more responsive to customer needs and provides faster product and service innovation to the marketplace. One such example is the Actian Service Network. Actian Service Network is an innovative way to provide value added services and support to our customers.

Thank you for choosing Actian Support. This document is here to help our customers to better understand the Actian Support Policies and better utilize Actian Support. These policies apply to all Actian product lines, unless otherwise noted.

General
Actian Support Levels
Actian Versant Support Levels
Scope of Hot Standby/DR, Test and Developer licenses
Scope of Versant Named User, FTS, VAR and High Availability Backup
Severity Definitions
Information Customers Need When Requesting Support
Contact Information
Updates and Changes

General

Support Fees

Support Fees are due and payable annually in advance of a support term, unless otherwise stated in the relevant ordering document.

Support Period

Support is effective upon the signature of your Order unless stated otherwise in your Order. Once ordered, all Support Services, and Support Fees, are non-cancelable and non-refundable. Actian is not obligated to provide Support Services beyond the end of the term indicated in your Order unless you renew your Support Services on or before the expiration date by agreement between Actian and you.

Subscription

An active subscription includes the use of the licensed product and Enterprise Support during the term. A subscription that is not renewed at the end of the term will be considered expired, and customer will discontinue all use of the software and Support Services.

Support for Perpetual Licenses

When acquiring Support Services for a perpetual license, all licenses of the same product must be supported under an active Actian Support contract. You may not support only a subset of licenses of the same product; those licenses left unsupported must be terminated. With respect to Actian Support Services in relation to perpetual licenses, you hereby represent that you have the appropriate licenses to the Software that is subject to the Support Services. Perpetual Licenses are to be utilized for customers that have not yet upgraded to the new Actian subscription model.

Reinstatement of Actian Support for Perpetual Licenses

When Support Services lapse on a perpetual license, it can be reinstated by paying all of the back support due for the unsupported period, plus support for one year going forward, unless agreed otherwise between Actian and you. Unsupported licenses are not eligible for Updates, Enterprise Support, or any other Actian services.

Product Updates

"Update" means a minor update to the Software which Actian generally makes available to its supported customers, bug fixes, patches, and service packs.

Right to Accelerate Product Support Lifecycle

Actian may shorten the term of Enterprise support for certain products and versions at its discretion. Actian will make commercially reasonable efforts to announce any change in lifecycle length at least 12 months in advance. These notices are subject to change, and will be updated as necessary.

User

As used in Actian's price list, "User" is an individual with the appropriate license rights, and authorized by customer, to use the Actian products which are installed on a single server or multiple servers, regardless of whether the individual is actively using the products at any given time.

Processor

As used in Actian's price list, "Processor" means the individual processor (whether it has one core or multiple cores) within a particular socket. All processors on or with which the Actian Software is running or installed must be licensed.

Cores

In an environment having multi-core processors, as determined by counting the number of individual physical processor cores within a single Processor, those systems will be priced on a per-core basis. Cores that are in single-core per processor configuration are not eligible for multi-core pricing. Core count is based on the total number of cores and processors in the particular hardware system.

Machine

As used in Actian's price list, a "Machine" shall mean the Software is licensed to (a) the entire physical computer or server which has a single unique serial number with no limitations placed on the number of Processors; or (b) an instance of a virtual machine.

Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine is an environment where a Virtual Machine has been implemented either by Software emulation or Hardware virtualization.

Virtual Processor

In a Virtual Machine environment, "Virtual Processor" means an individual virtual processor (whether it has access to one core or multiple cores) within a particular Virtual Machine configuration. All Virtual Processors on or with which the Actian Software is running or installed must be licensed. Where the Virtual Processor count exceeds the physical machine processor count, all additional Virtual Processors must be individually licensed.

Virtual Core

In a Virtual Machine environment, the Virtual Core count is the number of virtual cores that are designated or able to run the Actian Software within the Virtual Machine. In an environment having multiple Virtual Cores per Virtual Processor those systems will be priced on a per Virtual Core basis (and if such Virtual Core count is an odd number, it will be rounded up to the next multiple of 2). Virtual Cores that are in single Virtual Core per Virtual Processor configuration are not eligible for multi-core pricing. Where the Virtual Core count exceeds the physical machine core count, all additional Virtual Cores must be individually licensed (and if such Virtual Core count is an odd number, it will be rounded up to the next multiple of 2).

Source System Data

Is the total size of uncompressed text files containing all data extracted out of the source system(s) to represent the current data in a Vectorwise database.

Actian Support Levels

Product Support Lifecycle Policy

This policy explains Actian Corporation's product support lifecycle policy. Whether purchased directly from Actian, or from Actian partners or resellers, these policies are designed to standardize product lifecycle expectancies and assist you in developing your internal release implementation and migration plans. Actian Corporation strives to provide the best quality Software and Support Services. In order to provide best in class software solutions, Actian has defined a predictable Product Support Lifecycle Policy to give you plenty of lead-time to plan and manage your upgrade and release processes.

Lifecycle Phases

Actian provides distinct product development phases and synchronized product support lifecycle offerings. By understanding these phases, you are better able to plan for your software support needs and your migration timeframes. The term General Availability (GA) is key to understanding each lifecycle phase and starts the clock.

Product Lifecycle Stages

NOTE: The above product lifecycle stages do not apply to the Vectorwise Scale product and HVR product.

HVR Product Lifecycle policy is; support of a major HVR version (such as HVR 4.4) for 3 years after release date, and a specific minor version (such as HVR 4.4.1 or HVR 4.4.1/3) for 2 years after release date.

Product Support Offerings

• GA status is:
  • Achieved when a product is available for purchase or production upgrade
  • The most current release of your Actian product

Any policy exceptions to the duration would be provided through additional notification through Actian support service delivery infrastructure.

Standard Support

Standard Support includes:

Standard Support is available for a limited group of Actian product release(s) during the General Availability lifecycle phase. This offering does not include any 24X7X365 access to Actian Corporation Technical Support staff and does not include 24 hour commitment and response guidelines for severity 1 incident requests as defined in the ‘Severity Definitions’ section below.

Enterprise Support

Enterprise Support includes:

Enterprise Support is available for every new Actian product release during the General Availability lifecycle phase.

Extended Support

Extended Support is available from year 5 after a major version is released to year 10 after GA release. There is an additional charge (1.5X) for this level of support. Extended Support is the same as Enterprise Support with the following exceptions:

• No certification with new third party products/services
• Code fixes/patches will no longer be developed for non-critical problems

Obsolescence Support

Years 11 and beyond: This phase indicates that the standard support offering has expired and as such, code fixes will no longer be developed. Best effort online support and access to existing releases and their software updates is available for 5 years through Obsolescence Support. There is an additional charge (2x) for this level of support.

Post-Obsolescence Support

Years 15 and beyond: Actian Corporation at its discretion will offer continuation of Obsolescence Support upon review of each account accordingly. The costing for this option remains the same as Obsolescence Support.

Third Party Dependencies and the Product Support Lifecycle

As operating systems and technologies are retired by their respective vendors Actian will provide an IT planning roadmap as soon as possible to help you plan your next move. Actian will continue to provide Incident Management, Change Management and other support functions to the best of our internal capabilities, but issues concerning Problem Management and Configuration Management around new components will be restricted to the current knowledge and known work-arounds. Actian reserves the right to announce a discontinuance of maintenance and support on platforms and database applications to coincide with the vendor's standard support policy.

Actian Versant Support Levels

Product Support Lifecycle Policy

This policy explains Actian Corporation's product support lifecycle policy. Whether purchased directly from Actian, or from Actian partners or resellers, these policies are designed to standardize product lifecycle expectancies and assist you in developing your internal release implementation and migration plans. Actian Corporation strives to provide the best quality Software and Support Services. In order to provide best in class software solutions, Actian has defined a predictable Product Support Lifecycle Policy to give you plenty of lead-time to plan and manage your upgrade and release processes.

Lifecycle Phases

Actian provides distinct product development phases and synchronized product support lifecycle offerings. By understanding these phases, you are better able to plan for your software support needs and your migration timeframes. The term General Availability (GA) is key to understanding each lifecycle phase and starts the clock.

Product Lifecycle Stages

* GA status is achieved when a product is available for purchase or production upgrade or the most current release of your Actian product. Any policy exceptions to the duration would be provided through additional notification through Actian support service delivery infrastructure.

Product Support Offerings

* If mission critical deployments are a part of your business, Actian Versant Emergency Response Support Services are there to help you make it happen and fulfill your Service Level Agreements. This support option extends Standard by providing access to our technical support engineers outside of regular business hours, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is available to support deployed applications experiencing a critical problem resulting in production downtime.

Standard Support

Standard Support includes:

Standard Support is available for all currently licensed Actian Versant products. This offering does not include any 24X7X365 access to Actian Corporation Technical Support staff and does not include 24 hour commitment and response guidelines for severity 1 incident requests as defined in the ‘Severity Definitions’ section below.

Extended Support

Extended Support is available from year 2 after a major version is released GA. There is an additional charge (2x) for this level of support. Extended Support is the same as Standard Support with the following exceptions:

• No certification with new third party products/services
• Code fixes/patches will no longer be developed for non-critical problems

Scope of Hot Standby/DR, Test and Developer Licenses

Hot Standby/DR Licenses

For Hot Standby/DR licenses, the scope is limited to testing and installation of the software ("Standby Software") on a backup system for hot, warm or cold standby disaster-recovery purposes (i.e. where the primary installation of the software becomes unavailable for use), and the Standby Software cannot be used for production purposes unless and only for so long as the primary production copy of the software is unavailable and not in use. The Hot Standby/DR license rights are valid only if you have a concurrent full production use license for the identical software product, product version, and duration as the Standby Software license, and such production software is deployed on and licensed for a system with at least as many cores as the Standby Software.

Test Licenses

For Test licenses, the software may be used only for the purpose of temporarily testing new releases or applications that are planned for migration into the production environment, and not for production use, normal operations, processing transactions, handling workloads for business purposes, or for any other purpose.

Developer Licenses

For Developer licenses, the scope is limited to use of the software only for the purpose of developing, testing, prototyping and demonstrating your applications that interact with the software, and not for commercial or production use or any other purpose. You may not use the application developed under this license with the software for any internal data processing or for any commercial or production purposes, without obtaining a production license to the software.

Scope of Versant Named User, FTS, VAR, and High Availability Backup

Named User Licenses

For Named User licenses, the scope is limited to use of V/OD solely in client/server applications where a user interacts with an application that is directly connected to the database and all data input to the database comes from the user. A Named User License cannot be used for web-based, 3-tier or n-tier applications. Named User License is licensed per user and requires a 10 user minimum.

FTS Licenses

For FTS licenses, the scope is limited to use of V/FTS configured databases on a server. V/FTS (Versant Fault Tolerant Server) enables automatic fail-over and recovery in the case of hardware or software failure commonly known as a Fault Tolerance Server set-up. The FTS Server cannot be used for production purposes unless and only for so long as the primary production copy of the software is unavailable and not in use. The FTS license rights are valid only if you have a concurrent full runtime license for the identical software product, product version, and duration as the FTS license, and such production software is deployed on and licensed for a system with at least as many cores as the FTS Software.

VAR Licenses

For VAR licenses, the scope is limited to use of V/AR configured databases on a server. V/AR (Versant Async Replication) supports both master-slave and peer-to-peer asynchronous replication between multiple object servers. This can be used to replicate data to a distributed recovery site or to replicate data between multiple local object servers for increased performance and reliability. The VAR license rights are valid only if you have a concurrent full runtime license for the identical software product, product version, and duration as the VAR license, and such production software is deployed on and licensed for a system with at least as many cores as the VAR Software.

High Availability Backup Licenses

For High Availability Backup licenses, the scope is limited to use of the High Availability Backup functionality. The Versant High Availability Backup is an add-on software module that enables the Versant Object Database to use the disk mirroring features of EMC Symmetrix or other enterprise storage systems to take an online backup of very large data volumes without impacting availability. A license is required for each server (not CPU) that is involved in the backup process.

Severity Definitions

Support issues may be submitted either electronically or via telephone. To ensure that we treat your issue with the appropriate level of significance, when raising an issue, you are responsible to accurately assign a severity level. The following table provides some guidance as to how the severity should be defined.

Severity 1: Critical Business Impact - Any unscheduled, total loss of a production system, application or service, or any loss of a major business function.

Severity 2: Major Business Impact - Any failure which causes a partial loss or degradation of a production system or service, or has the potential to escalate to a Severity 1 if left unresolved.

Severity 3: Minimal Business Impact - Any non-critical system error or minor service loss which has minimal business impact or risk.

Severity 4: No Business Impact - Any incident which causes no loss of a production service, and which has no business impact.

Severity 5: Reserved for tracking proactive support work done as part of Operational Services engagements.

When you have a Severity 1 incident, we want to work on your Severity 1 incident until it is resolved. To that end, your technical team must also be available 24 hours a day so that any further documentation required to continue work can be obtained, and to provide further information and assistance. If your technical team is not available to provide the required documentation, information or assistance, the severity of the incident may be downgraded to a Severity 2, and shall remain downgraded until all required documentation, information, and assistance is provided. Actian's assistance with resolution of an incident is contingent on your team's cooperation and assistance.

*Standard Support does not include 24 hour commitment and response guidelines for Severity 1 incident requests.

Support Response Times by Severity

Severity 1: 1 hour 24X7*

Severity 2: 2 hours during business hours

Severity 3: 4 hours during business hours

Severity 4: End of business day

Severity 5: N/A

*This response level is only available to customers with an Enterprise Support Services subscription.

Information Customers Need When Requesting Support

The following information should be provided:

• Your company name and six-character site ID for Enterprise Support or Extended Support program:
  • Name of the product
  • Release of the product
  • Service Pack (SP) of the product (e.g. maintenance level)
  • Fixes applied above the base product or Service Pack
• Operating system (OS):
  • OS release and SP
  • Language of the OS (if applicable)
  • Fixes applied to the OS or SP
• Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) software:
  • Name and vendor of OEM software
  • Releases of OEM software including SP
• What were you trying to accomplish?
• What is the business impact of the problem?
• Which environment is affected (e.g. production, test, or development)?
• Describe the incident in detail:
  • Specific steps taken and results
  • Entire error messages received
  • Is it reproducible? If so, please provide the supporting testcase.
  • Is it intermittent?
  • Is there any pattern to when it occurs?
• What else was happening on the system prior to the incident or during the incident?
• Did this ever work?
• Is the incident occurring on one machine or on multiple machines?
• Does this work on any machines in your enterprise?
• Has anything changed recently in your environment that could have triggered the problem?
  • Hardware
  • OS software
  • Application software
  • Network configurations

Contact Information

Contact information by country can be found on our support contacts page.

Updates and Changes

The Actian Support Policies may be updated from time to time and are subject to change at Actian's discretion; provided however, Actian's service commitments per its Support Policies will not be materially reduced as compared to the Actian Support Policies in effect at the start of your support term (typically one year) during the then-current support term.

Actian’s New Online Customer Support Portal

Actian Corporation customers will see changes to the Actian Support Service experience as we upgrade our systems. Improving the support experience is one of our top priorities, and this upgrade is an important foundational step.

Q1: What is changing in the case management system and what does this mean for me?
Actian’s case management system will be upgraded on April 21st. As part of this change, you will experience greater functionality in the following areas:

• Knowledge Base
• Better searching to gain quicker answers to support questions
• Answers to your most pressing questions, 24x7
• Improved feedback loop for documents that need improvement
• Online Case Submission
• Choose preferred Actian support contract when logging a case
• Log cases anytime, anywhere, 24x7
• Request case updates
• Receive automatic email updates on existing issues
• Enhancement Requests
• New Idea Center
• Available to all customers
• Voting methodology to help drive all our customers' most important features into future product releases

Q2: When are these changes taking place?
Enterprise Support Services will be enabled on the new system for all Actian enterprise products starting on Sunday, May 12, 2013. We will commence with go-live in our APAC region first, followed by the EMEA region, and then the AMER region.

Q3: What is the new URL for the customer portal?
The new direct URL will be http://support.actian.com.

Q4: Will my current login credentials work in the new system?
Yes. Actian Corporation is migrating all current Service Desk logins to the new system. You will be asked for an initial password change upon your first login.

Q5: How do I create a login if I don’t have one yet? And, how can I download product and patches?
To get started, you will need your account number.

• Complete initial actian.com registration here.
• An email will be sent requiring you to activate your registration.

• Once your account is activated you can download the software here.

After your initial registration is complete, and you have activated your account, an Actian Online Portal login will be created for you as long as you entered a valid account number in your registration.

Q6: Will there be a delay in password updates from actian.com to the new customer portal, like with Service Desk?
No. Actian Corporation has implemented a Single Sign-on system. Once you are logged in at actian.com you will not have to log in to the customer portal again. For example, if you log in to download a new patch and then want to open a new case, you would simply click on the support page, then on the customer portal, and you are immediately presented with your customer portal interface.

Q7: Can I now download software and patches from the customer portal?
Yes. The new customer portal has integrated key components from the support pages on actian.com and you will have direct access to software downloads, support policies, product compatibility matrixes, and contacting support via phone, if required (always on a severity 1). You can also easily access other areas of the Actian Corporation website. The new system has a much improved interface, which acts as a page on the website instead of a separate URL.

Q8: Will I be able to get to the customer portal directly via a URL or will I have to go to actian.com to log in?
You will be able to create a shortcut directly to the URL link for the new customer portal. The added benefit is that you still have new capabilities from this link available on actian.com. You will have to log in the first time you go to the URL if you haven’t already logged in somewhere else on the actian.com pages.

Q9: Why don’t I see my enhancement requests under “My Cases” in the customer portal?
Enhancements are no longer managed as individual cases in the system but as “Ideas” in the new Idea Center. The Idea Center is available to all customers on a support subscription or contract. It lets you see the ideas that all Actian customers have posted, vote on an existing idea, and add any clarifications. This allows us to better understand what our customers want and to make future plans based on the most requested and voted on topics. You still can view and maintain ownership of these ideas but they reside in a different location.

Q10: Will I be able to submit an email to open a new case?
To provide the best support experience, Actian customers can use either the Actian technical support portal or phone to open a technical support case. The Actian technical support portal offers customers an efficient, seamless process for submitting and managing cases by requesting the information the technical support expert will need to resolve the case. Please note that if you send an email request, you will receive an automated email reply redirecting you to the technical support portal and the technical support phone lines.
Note: You can respond via email to an existing issue as long as you do not change the subject line so the system knows what issue to post the updates to.

Q11: I don’t recognize the account name listed. What should I do?
Actian records may include account identification information (for example, account information relating to a legal entity that your company is associated with) that differs from account information that customers may typically use in the course of business. For questions regarding your account name, please contact Pamela.Fowler@actian.com or, sales at sales@actian.com, or call.

Q12: If I do not see my support contract data when I try logging a case, what should I do?
All active entitlements should be displayed. If you do not see the Actian support contract you want to use when logging a case, you will have the option to provide additional information (such as Technical Contact ID, Support ID, support contract address) about your support contract while creating the new support case. Actian will use that information to reference the correct support contract for your case. If you have questions regarding expired entitlements, please contact sales at sales@actian.com or your Account Executive directly.

Q13: Can I now open a severity 1 issue via the new Customer Portal?
No. We have not made any changes to our process for severity 1 issues. You must call us if you experience a production outage so we can engage a support engineer to assist you immediately. Call us immediately via contact support.

Q14: I am having trouble logging into the customer portal. What should I do?
You can email communityadmin@actian.com for assistance or call us to report the problems you are experiencing.

Q15: Can I still attach files to my cases?
Yes. You can attach files by clicking on the Attach Files button. You can attach files through the section called Case Files by clicking Upload File(s).
Note: If you have multiple files, you can create a folder by clicking Create Folder, and then put the files in there.

Q16: What browser is recommended for usage with the customer portal?
It is highly recommended that use the most recent and stable version of Mozilla® Firefox® or Google Chrome™ . If you choose to run Microsoft® Internet Explorer® you must be on IE 9 or higher noting the compatibility view feature in Internet Explorer is not supported nor is the Metro version of IE 10.

Q17: I am having problems with the customer portal display using IE?
You need to be running IE 9 or higher. As well, you need to ensure IE7 compatibility mode is turned off. Do an alt/T, click on Compatibility View Settings, make sure the ‘Display all websites in Compatibility View’ is unchecked.

• Vectorwise, Ingres and OpenROAD Standard and Enterprise Support
• Vectorwise, Ingres and OpenROAD Operational Support
• Versant Object Database, FastObjects and db4o Standard Support
• Pervasive Support
• ParAccel Support