Hard, But Necessary: Keeping Up with Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax) Releases

Software currency is hard. Keeping up with the stream of updates every software vendor releases can completely consume your talented staff of system administrators. And, speaking from experience, update work is less than fulfilling. At the end of the project, you have a different release of the software that substantially does the same thing it did before. There may be minor changes and improvements, but it is hard to convince an end-user community that all the production interruptions update projects sometimes entail will truly make things better.

You must do it. There are too many gifted developers spending way too much time looking for and finding, ways to attack systems. Deferring an update can easily expose your enterprise to nefarious actors with less-than-noble intentions.

Tungsten Automation (formerly Kofax) delivers new releases of its TotalAgility and Capture platforms about every 12 to 18 months. Those releases include patches for known security vulnerabilities, feature updates, and support for new versions of prerequisites like operating systems and databases. However, along with those new releases comes the discontinuation of prior release support. Tungsten does offer some extended support for out-of-service versions at an added cost. So, there may be financial penalties in addition to the technical debt you incur by deferring updates.

Just for reference, here are several upcoming retirement dates for Capture and TotalAgility versions:

• Capture 11.0           January 15, 2023
• TotalAgility 7.7       October 24, 2022
• TotalAgility 7.8       August 12, 2023
• TotalAgility 7.9       May 12, 2024

Versions earlier than the ones I have listed are either already in extended support status or are completely unsupported. Check with your compliance officer. Using old or out-of-date software may put your enterprise in a precarious compliance position.

TotalAgility is getting added functionality at each release like an all-new management console introduced in Version 7.10.

Genus can help get you get back on the Tungsten version track. Our certified engineers regularly conduct update projects and are eminently qualified to get your platform versions current in ways that minimize production interruptions. Their training and experience always ensure that your upgrade happens at the lowest possible cost.

Keeping current is always the least expensive, least disruptive way to administer your systems. Not only does deferring those updates add to the eventual cost but it also may put your enterprise squarely in the middle of a cyberattack or in danger of non-compliance. The time to update is now.

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