Added clarity in vendor lifecycle designation on IT components

We aim to reduce ambiguity and deepen the understanding of the separate vendor lifecycle information by renaming the default vendor lifecycle phases on IT component fact sheets. In the week of August 18, the following changes to the vendor lifecycle, not the lifecycle of the fact sheet itself, will be rolled out to all workspaces with SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance. Unless the labels have been adjusted in the meta model configuration:

• Active (Vendor) -> Active: The date an IT component is generally available for commercial use and eligible for support and maintenance services.

• End of Life (Vendor) -> End of (Standard) Support: The date a vendor limits supporting and maintaining an IT component, transitioning it into a state of potential obsolescence risk due to its end of life and stop of regular updates for all users. Some vendors may provide optional extended support to give users more time to upgrade to newer versions.

• Extended Vendor Support Agreement -> Extended Support Agreement: The date an individual agreement with the vendor for extended support of an IT component ends, transitioning the product or version into an unsupported phase, posing an obsolescence risk.

• An additional hint next to the extended support agreement date informs about the vendor's End of Extended Support Offering. This is when a vendor finally ends all associated services of an IT component, transitioning it into a definite unsupported state, posing an obsolescence risk (formerly called "Last Date of Paid Support post End of Life" on catalog items).

At the same time, the following details of the IT component lifecycle shown in the reference catalog will also change. This information is not synced from the reference catalog to fact sheets, but can be helpful to plan transformation:

• Plan -> Alpha: The date of the first, unstable stage of an IT component lifecycle, in which basic functionality is tested. It's usually not publicly released, has limited functionality, and receives frequent updates.

• Phase In -> Beta: The date of the second, stable stage of an IT component's lifecycle. It's often released to more users, including external testers, to gather usage feedback.

• Phase Out -> End of Sale: The date a product or version is no longer sold or manufactured by its vendor. However, support services may still be available for some time.

All dates in the catalog related to obsolescence risk will be researched by our teams with priority.

This is what it will look like:

Of note, as announced in March, the transition period with the option to continue syncing lifecycle information from the catalog to the fact sheet lifecycle, in addition to the vendor lifecycle, will end in September 2025.