7ish years ago SAV 10.x was at the forefront of corporate AV protection. I personally thought it was great and we happily upgraded a year after its launch from the 9.x version on our network.
An announcement has been made that it is now going EOSL in July 2012. Its interesting to note that it will go end of support life rather than end of life - yet the message we have received and seen can be a bit worrying...
Firstly, the use of 'support' life will cause many admins to raise an eyebrow. Does this mean that we can still get definition files/updates? if not, we'll have to hastily migrate to the SEP 12.1 product within 3 months - or switch vendors all together.
Secondly, there is no mention of this in the emails sent to customers and/or on the website. By not announcing eitherway whether definitions are allowed passed July 2012 will potentially scare customers into going with SEP 12 anyway - a clever marketing ploy I think. This could backfire though, like I said, its a choice to upgrade to SEP 12.1 and its just as much of a change than it would be to switch vendors altogether.
The news from our camp (after contacting Symantec) is that XDB updates will not be available online for SAV 10.x installations. We rely on manually updating the definition files daily - whilst many employ the LiveUpdate application to do this for them - we're old fashioned and like to see the file download + run. BUT.... if you continue to use LiveUpdate for SAV 10.x installations after July 2012 then you 'should' still be ok.
Make of that what you will.
I noticed that you can pay to have definitions available beyond July too! So Symantec would charge you for packaging the update and hosting it for download - when LiveUpdate will continue to work for free? Money for old rope? - I think so.
Now, many people will question why you're still on a legacy AV product anyway - what with security and all, being a top priority in most organisations. I do have some sympathy for the folk left behind - I've managed migrations to SEP and it is a task - one that should be project managed if you're doing a large scale deployment and its features and functions are massively different from the 10.x platform to boot. Smaller organisations might have employed better edge protection and thus have decided to stick with 10.x or there might be financial reasons. The best case I've heard is of a small business running 10.x because when they paid for contracted resource to install it (in 2008) it has just 'worked' ever since.
I still think that Symantec could have/can do this better. Their clever/not-so-clever decision to omit the definitions question with either alienate or force the hand (neither make good customer relations). Why not announce that defintions will continue to be available for 6 months after the EOSL period or tie in with the renewal period of current licence holders? Sack off the fee for updates idea (that just makes you look greedy) and distribute trials of SEP to current 10.x customers so they can use the 6 months to familiarise?
Anyway, goodbye to SAV - thanks for all the phish(ing) emails you've not protected me against - only joking Symantec. Can I have a job please?
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