Supported Mismatch - Can You Call That Supported?
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Here is something that I see often, especially from those terrible niche software vendors in the SMB space, and especially on Windows: a product's OS (or other software) requirements are no longer supported. This creates a conundrum... is it even supported?
If we were talking about Windows NT 4 and I asked "is it supported today?" You would quickly answer "no", and you would be totally right. Windows NT 4 is "out of support".
Now if you have a product that you want to run and it only has support when installed on NT 4 and you managed to get that to work - is it supported? In some ways, the application is supported, but only down to the OS, which is not supported. So the application can only run in an unsupported way. Doesn't this mean that the application is not actually supported? If NT 4 fails for some reason, there is no support. So the application would be down, and unsupportable.
Can a vendor really say that something is supported ("supported" is a tough term that can mean a lot of things) if it depends on things that are not supported?
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My response would be "no." In IT terms, if something requires (not allows, that's different) use on a non-supported, or not supportable dependency it is not supported and cannot be called such. It is not production level.
So, by extension, anything that requires Windows NT 4 is not supported by what I feel is the use of the industry term. If the business asked you, in IT, if your products were still "under support" or "supported", and they required components that could not be considered supported, then they are not supported and the answer would have to be "no". Anything else, I feel, would be taken by management as being false.
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Their part is supported. The software vendor is not responsible for the support of another piece of the puzzle. You, as the administrator, may look at the entire process as unsupported (and be correct), since the vertical stack is not supported top to bottom. However, that doesn't mean that the vendor doesn't support their software within the parameters that they define (related to the OS, in this case).
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@art_of_shred said in Supported Mismatch - Can You Call That Supported?:
Their part is supported. The software vendor is not responsible for the support of another piece of the puzzle.
Actually, they are. They determine what components they use. What you state would only be true if they supplied all of the pieces themselves. But they only supply part of them. The application as a running entity is not supported.
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@art_of_shred said in Supported Mismatch - Can You Call That Supported?:
However, that doesn't mean that the vendor doesn't support their software within the parameters that they define (related to the OS, in this case).
Correct, but they don't support the product as usable. They require that part of it be unsupported. Wouldn't that taint the whole? It is their requirement alone that determines that it cannot be supported. They alone are responsible for it being unsupported. They could use different components or make their own but choose to make their software an addendum to something that is unsupported.
