IBM’s changes to sub-capacity licensing is an important update that I didn’t see when it was announced in May of 2022. Since I couldn’t find any notifications about this, I thought it would be good to write something up for it, in case you missed it too.

While the prior announcements in October from IBM about the new versions had only confirmed some of the software components as Long-Term Support Releases (LTSR). As of Friday, December 17th these products are now confirmed:

In December 2023, IBM announced new versions of FileNet, Business Automation Workflow (BAW) and Cloud Pak for Business Automation (CP4BA). No matter what version you are on as of today (05/07/2024), if you do not upgrade by the April 2025 deadline, you will miss out on crucial security patches, software fixes, and vulnerability notifications. This lack of security patches may increase the chances of your FileNet system falling victim to breaches or ransomware attacks.

The FileNet P8 platform remains an excellent long-term solution for mission critical business applications. However, as IBM has moved to a Continuous Delivery (CD) policy for ECM products, planning considerations surrounding upgrades have become increasingly important.

For those of us old enough to remember, the field of Records and Information Management (RIM) has evolved over the past few decades. I recall vividly first learning about the very practice of lifecycle governance while attending my first ARMA International annual conference. As a document imaging developer at the time, my singular focus had nearly always taken on the same basic pattern – capture, categorize and store some stuff into some repository.

Ever since IBM introduced Retention and Hold capabilities in FileNet P8 version 5.2, the tantalizing prospect of employing document lifecycle functionality to corporate content has been looming in the background. Unfortunately, it's perpetually continued to do just that ... loom.