Premium Upgrade Assurance

Premium Upgrade Assurance allows sites to upgrade their PaperCut software at any time without having to worry about any extra upgrade costs. It also combines our Premium Support option ensuring requests for support are treated with higher priority over standard email support.

PaperCut Software has a well established upgrade policy where minor point releases are free and a fee is charged for major upgrades. Although our upgrade costs and frequency have remained consistent over the years, most organizations prefer to deal with fixed annual budgets. Premium Upgrade Assurance provides this certainty and allows organizations to pay a set annual amount granting them access to all upgrades at any time. It allows them to stay on top of technological advances and participate in our ongoing customer-driven improvement process.

Premium Upgrade Assurance includes:

• Upgrades - Access to all upgrades, both major and minor. PaperCut averages 6 to 8 upgrade releases a year.
• Priority - You'll have priority access to developer-level support. Support requests sent via email are placed in a priority queue and are always addressed before standard support. All emails are answered within 24 hours and the current average response time is under 4 hours. We'll also allocate a single-point-of-contact to ensure continuity in your support issues. You can contact us via email, live web chat or phone and we'll go the extra mile.
• Your Say - Have your say in the future of PaperCut and vote for what you'd like to see implemented next.
• Hotfixes - We'll go the extra mile to keep you up and running, even if this means issuing a custom hotfix out of normal release cycles.
• Coverage - Thorough our offices in North America and Australia and our network of Authorized Solution Centers through Asia and Europe, we're able to offer coverage across all major timezones.

Premium Upgrade Assurance does not includes:

• On-site support and services
• Consultative services
• Customization and bespoke development
• Support for 3rd party products or integration not done/developed by PaperCut

Please contact us if you have requirements in these areas

Upgrade Assurance is set at the higher of USD $250 or 20% of the purchased license price (including any optional modules). It is normally purchased annually but may be purchased for up to five years in advance.

Why upgrade assurance?

Having access to upgrades is an important requirement in ensuring smoother operation over time.

Compatibility

Your printing environment is based on an infrastructure of printers, operating systems and networking equipment. Upgrade Assurance ensures that the functionality you are experiencing today keeps pace and is maintained in the face of often unavoidable changes to your infrastructure. Changes may include new printer models and updated printer drivers, new versions of web browsers and databases and the ever ongoing evolution of operating systems.

Examples: Through 2008/9 we provided our users with...

• Compatibility with Mac OS X 10.5, Firefox 3, Windows Server 2008 and a range of new Adobe Applications.
• Added support for dozens of new printer models such as Brother 4040HL, Konica Minolta 2480MF, Dell 1720DN, HP 3500 & 5500 PCL6 printers, Canon imagePROGRAF iPF5100, Konica Minolta GDI printers, etc.
• Updated timezone and daylight savings rules to adjust to changes in world-wide daylight savings regulations.
• See our release history for more examples.

Technology

New information technology products promise much, but require alert technology partners that adapt to and embrace these new opportunities. The PaperCut development team takes pride in being on the leading edge and is always looking towards providing updates to leverage new technology in new ways.

Examples: New technologies introduced in 2008/9:

• The majority of mid-range and high-end printers now report their toner levels via SNMP. PaperCut has been extended by a remote toner level querying functionality to alert administrators ahead of low toner levels and simplify gathering toner level statuses across print farms.
• Organizations are starting to adopt IPv6, the emerging successor to the established Internet Protocol standard. PaperCut's client-server networking has been upgraded to natively support IPv6.
• Operating systems have started to transition across to 64-bit. PaperCut not only runs on 64 bit operating systems it has been extended to natively leverage this new architecture.
• With Vista Windows now offers a new facility over earlier versions to display pertinent information on the desktop in the "sidebar". PaperCut takes advantage of the Vista Sidebar to display users' print account balance and environmental impact.
• Novell published their OES Linux iPrint server, an increasingly popular alternative to Windows or Unix-based print servers valued for its combination of ease-of-use and cross-platform compatibility. Novell OES is now an official platform choice on equal footing with Windows, Mac and Linux.

Usability

Improvement is not just about new features. Doing what you already do better is just as important.

Examples: Usability improvement made in just 2008/9 include:

• Dozens of new pre-built one-click reporting options have been added to make producing reports even easier.
• Organziations are showing increased environmental awareness. We responded by improving our existing range of environmental impact reports.
• Through load balancing and find-me printing large organizations can now distribute printing more effectively to make better use of the existing print infrastructure.
• Feedback from many individual customers has resulted in hundreds of minor improvements that make day-to-day operations smoother and reduce administrative effort.

FAQ

Will this cost less/more than if I purchase upgrades on an ad-hoc basis?

Purchasing Premium Upgrade Assurance is always a more long term cost effective option than purchasing upgrades as they come out. Typically major releases are issued once a year. For the past three years releases have occurred in the December-January period.

What do I receive when I purchase?

Your digitally signed license file will be stamped with the upgrade assurance expiration date. Once installed, this date is visible on the application's About page. This license file will automatically work with all future versions released during the purchased period and you may upgrade any time with the standard install-over-the-top upgrade procedure. The About page will also list our priority support email address and your organization will be listed in our database for priority attention.

What will be the cost of my Premium Upgrade Assurance subscription in subsequent years?

The cost will always be 20% of the license price (including any optional modules) as listed on the website at the time of renewal.

How do I tell if my Premium Upgrade Assurance is current?

If valid, the expiration date is listed under the license details in the application's About page.

Is upgrade assurance mandatory?

No. You may opt not to renew your Premium Upgrade Assurance subscription any time. After this time, you may continue to run your current version and upgrade as per our standard upgrade policy. The most recent minor release of the version that you purchased or upgraded to will remain active indefinitely with your license. Many software companies are trying to push their customers across to mandatory support or service level agreements (SLA). We believe in choice and that the quality of our software, services and updates should be the driver to subscribe rather than a "contract".

We have other software applications and their upgrade assurance is less?

The "industry norm" for software maintenancem varies between 15% and 20%. We understand that 20% is on the higher side. As an engineering driven company we understand that software must evolve to stay alive. What makes a good software application is not what it can do today, but instead what it will do tomorrow. We believe strongly in investing in the future and this is demonstrated by our rate of release.

Why did you change the name from "Premium Support" to "Premium Upgrade Assurance"?

Our previous support and upgrade assurance offering was called Premium Support. This name was changed in early 2009 because we thought "Premium Support" sent the wrong message to customers with standard support. The real value of the offering is in access to upgrades. In reality both levels of support are addressed by the same team and to the same quality level. We do however try and differentiate premium support in a few ways. First, premium support requests are always handled first as a priority. Second, we'll go the extra mile to keep you up and running, even if this means issuing a custom hotfix for your current version.