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Starting from March 2018 PTC Creo will have a new release every year ....
How Long will each new version be supported?
They've made this statement before. I won't believe it till I see it.
Quality over quantity.
While the product calendar does list expected release dates, it does not yet include any information on the support windows for each:
At LiveWorx there was a discussion from management about every third release being an "enterprise" release and the in between two being "small business" releases. The idea was that since Creo 4.0 is considered an enterprise release, it would remain fully supported (and compatible with Windchill) until Creo 7.0 is released. On the other hand, Creo 5.0 and 6.0 would have much shorter release windows. It is entirely possible that once Creo 6.0 is released, Creo 5.0 will no longer be supported (even though 4.0 still is.) Make sense?
Creo 5.0 and 6.0 and supported as Creo 4.0 and 7.0 would be disastrous.
Are they stating to follow the release cycle that they already use for Creo View and Creo Illustrate? Would Creo 5 and Creo 6 just be point releases of Creo 4 and Creo 7 would be a completely different platform?
I believe they would remain completely separate.
To the best of my knowledge, the upcomming 4.2 release of CreoView is named that way to correlate with the upcomming 11.1 F000 release of Windchill. The '4' part refers to the Creo Parametric version that CreoView is based on and the '.1' part refers to the number of Windchill releases since the CreoView major version release.
For example:
PTC Product Calendar http://support.ptc.com/cs/product_calendar/PTC_Product_Calendar.htm is updated with the following info:
Standard Support End Date of Creo 4.0 is March 2020
Standard Support End Date of Creo 5.0 is March 2019
Standard Support End Date of Creo 6.0 is March 2020
* Creo maintenance builds will continue to be delivered for 12 months after Standard Support End Date, but at a reduced cadence.
1. Creo 5.0 and Creo 6.0 are short term releases (Standard cycle will be one year).
2. Creo 7.0 will be a long term release (Standard cycle will be approximately three years).
How can Creo 5.0 already be at the end of standard support when Creo 4.0 has another year? And why is the support for Creo 4.0 and 6.0 the same?
If you look at Tom's post.
4.0, 7.0, 10.0, .... are going to be "major releases" - Enterprise releases
5.0, 6.0, 8.0, 9.0 are "minor releases" - Small Business Relase - and require you to move from one to the other fairly quick
The part I don't like is they allow for no overlap. Past history of PTC releases says that very few put an initial release into production as soon as it comes out. I usually wait for 3 or 4 maintenance releases before upgrading.
There should be some overlap between initial release of Creo 7 and end of standard support for Creo 4, maybe 4-6 months.
This shows that there will be an "M" release of Creo 4.0 (April 2020) after the "Standard End Support Date" (March 2020).
So it looks like there will be some sort of overlap.
Here is a good article explaining all of this:
Please refer to the following article for detail:
Get talking to upper brass to have PTC change it.
I'm sure PTC already knows in our case, but I can't speak for the others. I know the Windchill Admin here personally, and when he demo'd Creo 4 recently he would have said something if they were going to cut our support off. He and others around and above him are the ones that deal with PTC. I'm sure PTC has the understanding that they WILL support us. I find it reprehensible that they would not support paying customers, since the now FORCE you to buy their overpriced "maintenance" because you can't actually BUY the software anymore.
Me, when I start my business, I'll be looking to buy someone's legit copy as part of "acquiring" part of their business. Creo 3 is good enough for me and what I'll be doing, I'm not interested in "renting" it.
This change in releases is not new in 2019! It was announced at LiveWorx in 2017. Plenty of time for planning and implementing the Creo 4 release and upgrade Windchill to something that will last until Creo 7 and Windchill 12 are released in 2020. I am on Creo 4 and Windchill 11.0 m030.
My plan forward is not direct and there will be some delays due to release dates. I will next go to Windchill 12, which supports Creo 4 and then jump to Creo 7. Creo 7 is scheduled for release 3 months before Windchill 12, hence the delays because Creo 7 will not be supported on Windchill 11.0.
While the US government may not be the largest user directly, I know at least 2 companies that have had that claim in the past, between government agencies and contractors, they may be.