When should customers upgrade their ScreenOS?

Upgrading ScreenOS

It depends:  

• If someone just wants to stay current:

 Risk: Something does not work the same from one OS to the next.  Either we fixed a behavior that was not expected, thus not knowing customers were relying on a certain behavior. 

Regression Bugs, in other words for some reason by fixing one thing we caused an old failure to resurface

Rewards:  Bugs that the customer has not seen yet are avoided because the bugs have been fixed.

 Makes it easier to upgrade in case they would like to get the newer features

 if someone wants a New Feature

 risk:

 New changes in behavior may occur because of changes in packet flow through the box or added checking

 What used to work no longer does, Either we fixed a behavior that was not expected, thus not knowing that someone was expecting a certain behavior. 

 A bug that was fixed in one ScreenOS was not ported over to the new one

 Stability, if this is a r1-r3 release the code has not yet fully matured,

 reward:

  Added Functionality

 advise:

 Be aware of the risks and rewards before recommending a course of action.