Platform and Software Support Changes

This section lists current and future planned changes to platform and software support. The complete list of platform and software support is available in the 2023.3 (11.3) Platform and Software Support section of the System Release and Patch Notes documentation.

The changes in platform and software support from version 11.2 (2023.2) to 2023.3 (11.3) are listed below. Customer action may be required.

Current Updates

Support for the items listed below has ended:

STEP to PDX integration

The new integration approach to integrating STEP and PDX moves the responsibility of converting multi-context STEPXML to PDX-native JSON from the STEP application to the PDX application. This change has been done to improve the overall throughput of product records transferred from STEP to PDX.

Starting with this STEP 2023.3 release, ONLY the new STEPXML outbound integration will be supported, and the old JSON outbound integration will no longer be supported.

Users of PDX, regardless of their STEP version, will be required to set up the new STEPXML outbound integration and disable the old JSON outbound integration. Existing customers on the JSON outbound integration must contact their Stibo Systems account manager or partner manager to discuss migration to the STEPXML outbound integration approach.

New PDX Syndication customers should only use the STEPXML outbound integration.

For more information, refer to the Product Data Exchange topic in the Data Integration documentation.

Future Updates and End-of-Life Notifications

The support for the items below will end with the next feature release 2023.4 or as indicated.

Server and client support

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Oracle Linux 7.9 will be supported for existing customers until officially desupported on June 30, 2024.

  • macOS 11 (Big Sur) support ends with the 2023.4 release.

New on-premises deployment architecture

One of Stibo Systems' strategic focus is on delivering a superior SaaS service, which leads to changes in our overall architecture to introduce more and more containerized microservices. These changes cannot be deployed on-premises or in a private cloud without changes to the deployment architecture. To allow on-premises customers to continue to upgrade STEP, starting with the 2024.2 release in mid-2024, these customers need to change the way that Stibo Systems' software is deployed on-premises so it is aligned with how Stibo Systems' deploys in SaaS. Upgrades to 2024.2 and subsequent releases will require a new deployment architecture where the current application server architecture is replaced by a containerized architecture—just as in SaaS. This in turn requires extra hardware due to an overhead in running the SaaS architecture on-premises. Application operations like starting and stopping the application will be similar in complexity to today—but different.

The database deployment architecture will be exactly the same, so database administration along with backup / restore will remain the same. Any deployment of InDesign and Elasticsearch will also remain the same. Only the application server architecture is changed. On-premises and private cloud customers will receive more detailed documentation separately.

Baseline EOL

Support for these STEP versions ends as indicated below:

  • Support for 10.1 ends on December 1, 2023.

  • Support for 10.2 ends on May 1, 2024.

  • Support for 10.3 ends on November 1, 2024.

Customers should update as soon as possible to the latest release of Stibo Systems Enterprise Platform (STEP). Contact your Stibo Systems account manager or partner manager, or the support department, if you have questions and/or to receive help and guidance on how to update to a supported release.

Software errors reported for the versions shown above may be rejected after the listed effective dates. Application support issues in progress for the releases being desupported will be closed on the desupport date. It is not possible to extend the support services for desupported versions.