July 14, 2009

Introduction

This document outlines the hardware and software end of life policy for Riverbed Technology. ("Riverbed") products. As technology development drives changes in our products and practices or we offer new and different products, we may make changes to our policy, which will appear on our website at www.riverbed.com/supportpolicy. We encourage you to visit this site on a regular basis.

Definitions

End-of-Availability	The date when a product is no longer generally available to be ordered from Riverbed.
End-of-Support	The date when a product is no longer supported by Riverbed.
Appliance Product	Combined hardware and software products on the Riverbed price list that are not upgrades or components of other products. Examples are of such combined hardware and software products are Steelhead Appliances, Interceptor, CMC, Cascade Profiler, Cascade Sensor, etc.
Software Product	Stand alone application software on the Riverbed price list that are not upgrades or components of other products. Examples of application software products are RSP or separately licensed software applications that can be installed on RSP or non-Riverbed hardware.
Hardware Upgrade	Products on the Riverbed price list that include hardware components that add functionality to an Appliance Product. Hardware Upgrades include Appliance Product model upgrades that contain any hardware component.
License Upgrade	Products on the Riverbed price list that add capacity or software functionality to an Appliance Product or Software Product through a license key without requiring additional hardware. License Upgrades include Appliance Product model upgrades that do not contain any hardware component.
Component Spares	Component Spares include any component of an Appliance Product sold on the Riverbed price list (disks, memory, NIC cards, etc.)
Cold Spares	Cold Spares are Appliance Products that are sold without any software license. Cold Spares allows customers to keep on-site hardware replacement units that may be used only when a fully licensed equivalent Appliance Product fails, is no longer operational, and is disconnected from the network.

End-of-Availability and End-of-Support: Appliance Products

An End-of-Availability notice is generally issued 60-90 days before an Appliance Product is removed from Riverbed's ordering system and price list to allow customers to transition to newer products. The End-of-Availability notice will include the End-of-Support date which is five years after the End-of-Availability date. Riverbed will continue to offer its then current maintenance and support services until the applicable End-of-Support date on the Appliance Product as follows:

• Riverbed will provide access to telephone, email and website support for five¹ years from the End-of-Availability date.
• Riverbed will offer hardware defect repair and replacement services for five² years from the End-of-Availability date, including repair and/or replacement of component parts of the Appliance Product. Riverbed reserves the right to substitute functionally equivalent products and/or peripherals.
• Riverbed will provide software maintenance (patches and bug fixes) on one or more Major or Minor releases that support the Appliance Product for a period of five³ years from the End-of-Availability date.
• For Major and Minor releases made generally available for use on the Appliance Product's product line (e.g. new releases of RIOS® that run on all Steelhead models) within two years after the End-of-Availability date, Riverbed will support the full feature set of such new Major or Minor releases on the End-of-Availability Appliance Product except where precluded by hardware limitations.

The End-of-Support date for an Appliance Product applies to all Hardware Upgrades, License Upgrades, Component Spares and Cold Spares associated with that Appliance Product. Supply permitting and at its discretion, Riverbed may continue to make available for purchase such Hardware Upgrades, License Upgrades, Component Spares and Cold Spares after the End-of-Availability date of an Appliance Product as follows:

1. Hardware Upgrades: Hardware Upgrades to an End-of-Availability Appliance Product for a period of up to two years after the End-of-Availability date of the Appliance Product.
2. License Upgrades: License Upgrades to an End-of-Availability Appliance Product for a period of up to four years after the End-of-Availability date of the Appliance Product.
3. Component Spares: The End-of-Availability date for an Appliance Product generally applies to Component Spares associated with that Appliance Product. After the announced End-of-Availability date, Riverbed may continue to have new or refurbished Component Spares available for sale, supply permitting and at its discretion.
4. Cold Spares: The End-of-Availability date for an Appliance Product generally applies to Cold Spares associated with that Appliance Product. After the announced End-of-Availability date, Riverbed may continue to have new or refurbished Cold Spares available for sale, supply permitting and at its discretion.

After the announced End-of-Availability date for an Appliance Product, the sale of a Hardware Upgrade, License Upgrade, Component Spare(s), or Cold Spare(s) for use with that Appliance Product will not change the previously announced End-of-Availability or End-of-Support dates for that Appliance Product.

In addition, supply permitting and at its discretion, Riverbed may continue to make available for purchase refurbished Appliance Products and/or excess inventory of new Appliance Products after the End-of-Availability date. The sale of a refurbished Appliance Product or new Appliance Product that Riverbed elects to sell after the End-of-Availability date will not change the previously announced End-of-Availability or End-of-Support dates for that Appliance Product.

End-of-Availability and End-of-Support: Software Products

An End-of-Availability notice is generally issued 60-90 days before a Software Product is removed from Riverbed's ordering system and price list to allow customers to transition to newer products. The End-of-Availability notice will include the End-of-Support date which is five years after the End-of-Availability date.

The End-of-Availability date for Software Products is the date after which no new Major or Minor software releases will be made available. Riverbed will continue to offer its then current maintenance and support services until the applicable End-of-Support date on the Software Product as follows:

• Riverbed will provide access to telephone, email and website support for five years from the End-of-Availability date.
• Riverbed will provide software maintenance (patches and bug fixes) on one or more Major or Minor releases that support the Software Product for a period of five years from the End-of-Availability date.

The End-of-Support date for a Software Product applies to License Upgrades associated with that Software Product. At its discretion, Riverbed may continue to make available for purchase such License Upgrades, for a period of up to four years after the End-of-Availability date of the Appliance Product.

Software Version Support

From time to time Riverbed may release new versions of software for its products that contain new features or provide fixes to existing features. The timing and content of any software release is at the sole discretion of Riverbed. Customers under current paid support agreements can obtain such new versions by downloading the updates from the Riverbed Support web site. Riverbed software releases are designated by a release designator of the form X.Y.Z (where X, Y, and Z are integers) and are characterized as follows:

Release Type	Release Designator Changes to	Release Content
Major	X changes to X' which is greater than X.  Y and Z are set to zero.	Contains significant new features, and may also contain minor new features and software error corrections.
Minor	X does not change.  Y changes to Y' which is greater than Y.  Z set to zero.	Contains minor new features and may also contain software error corrections.
Patch/Fix/Maintenance	X and Y do not change.  Z changes to Z' which is greater than Z.	Contains software error corrections (maintenance) to existing features and may occasionally contain minor new features that Riverbed elects to provide as part of the Patch/Fix/Maintenance release instead of a Minor release.

Riverbed's standard practice is to provide software support and maintenance on the following releases:

1. The current or latest Major or Minor release of the software.
2. The immediately preceding Major or Minor release for a period of 1 year after general customer availability of the current or latest Major or Minor release.
3. The latest valid Major or Minor Release for any End-of-Availability Appliance Product or Software Product that has not yet reached End-of-Support.

At its discretion Riverbed may provide support for older releases. If a customer encounters an error in a version of the software that is other than the latest release of any type, Riverbed may require that the customer upgrade to a specified later version to obtain a correction of the error.

The following link provides a list of products that Riverbed has provided notice for End-of-Availability as well as End-of-Support:

Hardware and Software End of Life Products