Have you renewed Maintenance on your Production Software?

What impact does letting your software maintenance expire have?  As a real life example, Customer X had purchased VMware ESX 3.0.2 with 1 year support.  They had chose to let that support end and were now looking to upgrade to 3.5.  According to support policies, we determined that they should be eligible for the minor release update since the licensing requirements remained the same.

Although Customer X was able to upgrade (they wanted to take advantage of EVC), they will of course have no support contract in place with VMware in the event of an issue.  I think for production systems, support contracts with the vendors are a very prudent measure.  For VMware in particular, I get heartburn whenever a client chooses anything less than 24/7/365 Platinum support.  The systems run fine, but when they don’t, I want to make sure I can get someone on the phone no matter what time or day it is.

Customer X will also not be eligible for the upcoming vSphere release.

What’s your take on Software Maintenance in these tough economic times?