Niagara 4.4 End-of-Life Notice; Trade-Up Your Legacy JACEs — Niagara 4.4 will go off support October 1, 2021!

Niagara 4.4 will go off support October 1, 2021, which means there will be no future updates, patches or cyber security fixes for this version. We are announcing this deprecation date more than a year in advance to ensure that you have adequate time to notify and upgrade that subset of Niagara customers still running Niagara on legacy hardware. By Q4 2021, after the retirement of all versions of Niagara AX and with this deprecation of Niagara 4.4, Vykon will have ended support for any version of Niagara that runs JACE 3, 6 and 7 series devices*. Likewise, this version was among the last to support deprecated operating systems and features like Windows 7 and Web Start. If you have customers that are putting off their updates, now is a good moment to introduce them to all that is new in Niagara Framework in all the following categories.

Visualization	Fast, Easy	Cyber	Edge	Connectivity	Certifications
& Analytics	Provisioning	Defense	Intelligence	& Cloud	& Compliance

Niagara users on Version 4.4 and earlier are missing out on powerful new features like tag-based graphics, the built-in Niagara Security Dashboard, the ACE deterministic engine, and the JSON toolkit. Note too that yesterday’s hardware often cannot support the burden of processing code written to meet today’s cyber security needs. The threat landscape for Operational Technology systems has become more treacherous to navigate and more tightly overseen by IT. With each new release, Niagara developers are incorporating new cyber-defense features as well as upgrades and patches in response to newly discovered attack vectors and vulnerabilities. Once a version goes off support, customers will not have access to such cyber upgrades, which will cause them to fall out of compliance with cyber best practices as defined by most government agencies and enterprises.

To encourage customers to begin their migration to current Niagara 4 software and away from legacy JACE devices, Vykon is running JACE trade-up programs with attractive cost-saving incentives. Links to an overview presentation and brochures for programs now running in EMEA and the Americas can be found here. Customers that are still on legacy platforms should act as soon as possible.

UPCOMING NIAGARA END-OF-LIFE KEY DATES

• October 1, 2020: AX Supervisor models no longer available for sale. Niagara 4 model may be purchased with AX downgrade.
• July 1, 2021: 
  • Sales of all Niagara AX licenses and license options end
  • Sales/replacements for Legacy JACEs end
  • Niagara AX fixes for defects and cyber issues end
• October 1, 2021: Niagara 4.4 fixes for defects and cyber issues end

SUMMARY

After October 1, 2021, there will be no further update builds, changes or security updates to Niagara 4.4. Also, Niagara 4.4 will not be available for download. If you have customers that haven’t refreshed their Niagara Framework^® software for years, we hope that you will generally encourage them to deploy the current release, Niagara 4.9. They’ll be pleased at how much more productive and cyber-secure they will be. Also, JACE pricing will never be more advantageous, and it is time that all Niagara users experience the powerful features and cyber-defense improvements built into the latest versions of Niagara 4. If you have any questions, please contact your Vykon partner. 

* The Last Time Buy (LTB) dates for new installations for both the JACE 300E and JACE 600E families was July 1, 2018, as detailed here. Vykon will continue to allow for replacement devices of these series until July 2021. While 4.4 will be going off support, we plan to release a new long term supported release in the near future.