Please stop mistreating existing customers

You may not be aware of the recent change at DocuWare Corporation that precludes DocuWare 7.4 from running on AWS environments or in a Terminal Server environment.
 
It was cowardly of DocuWare to not mention this fact during the recent DocuWorld sessions!  I’m sure they were afraid of a mass mutiny.
 
The reason behind this action is to try to force any customer with plans to move to a cloud environment to utilize DocuWare Online.
 
Our concern with the whole DocuWare Online approach, is that DocuWare is severely penalizing their existing on-premise customers.  We have large customers who have been paying regular support for twenty years, after spending large amounts of money to purchase the server license and user licenses.  Now DocuWare wants them to scrap all of that investment, without any allowances, to repurchase all of their client licenses, which can no longer be concurrent, along with a much higher monthly cost than they have been paying.  Not only that but the process to perform the migration is so daunting, it will be another major investment for the customers.  Besides the fact that DocuWare Online comes with many modules that many customers do not need!
 
Since, these customers will in effect be starting over, they might be very tempted to source a competitor’s product, which hasn’t left a bitter taste in their mouths.  I know if a was a salesman for a competitor, I would certainly be knocking on the door of any DocuWare customers.

And if a current customer is utilizing AWS or a Terminal server environment, they aren't able to even upgrade to DocuWare 7.4, so tht they could migrate to DocuWare Online.

Hello Darrell, 

I should clarify, there was no intention to change this in 7.4. DocuWare does not run on AWS, but we do not prohibit the installation on AWS,  we just do not support it or test it.

Terminal server is also not supported as a server environment but again, there was no intentional change as this has not been supported for older versions as well.

Hi Darrell,

I asked DocuWare about this a couple months ago because we have an on-prem client that's planning on migrating to AWS.  I was told that the documentation says that DW is officially not supported in AWS or TS because to be able to say that you have to have staff trained specifically in those environments AND you have to fully test any new release of DW in those environments.  That's a lot of infrastructure, so I can understand that the higher-ups would make the decision not to go that route. 

Having said that, there's a lot of good info in the knowledgebase and forums about how to deploy DW in TS and I've received support on several occasions in that environment (including a recent 7.4 implementation in TS) and I can't see DW abandoning that attitude.  I'm sure that as we deploy into AWS we'll see the same thing.

Does this not-officially-supported policy on AWS also apply to Azure?  I thought the problem with cloud services was that the DocuWare system architecture uses Message Queueing and that is not supported by AWS or does not work between two or more servers if your DocuWare system uses more than one. I cannot find the article where I think I saw this information.  Clarification would be welcome. 

DocuWare leverages several specific technologies developed specifically for our Azure cloud system.  While the main functionality of DocuWare is the same between our cloud and on-premise versions, much of the service infrastructure is different to accommodate the cloud environment.  The on-premise version of DocuWare and the Cloud version are functionally similar, but the code base is not identical.  An example of this is that DocuWare uses MSMQ for communication between services in on-premise versions, however our cloud version leverages the Azure Service Bus (a service not available on AWS).

AWS instances are not identical in functionality to traditional windows servers in traditional network environments.  One example is that AWS does not support network multicasting outside of transit gateways, a technology we rely on for multi-server deployments of DocuWare.

The notion that we are deliberately trying to not allow AWS is simply not true or accurate.  Rather we are not specifically investing in developing versions for AWS, testing on it, or promising forward compatibility as we continue to develop new functionality.

There is a good reason that we have specific supported platforms – these platforms are kept in mind while we develop new versions, while we evaluate technologies that we include in our product suite, and platforms we test in our QA process. 

Sometimes it is possible to install DocuWare on a non-support environment.  Perhaps there are workarounds available to overcome some technical limitations in these environments, but doing this is risky and unadvisable because there is no guarantee that they will continue to work in the future or for future versions. 

Installing DocuWare on a non-supported platform exactly means that we cannot support this installation, nor ensure it’s future compatibility.  It is never advisable to install in a non-supported environment.  Doing this for customers should only be done with their express knowledge of this risk.
 

So that would be like saying we will only support on-premise systems running on IBM servers, but not on Dell servers.

The mention of 'network multicasting outside of transit gateways' only applies to customers who use multi-server deployments.  So just say that multi-server deployments environments aren't supported.