IP Office Release 12

IP Office Release 12 is planned for general availability by April 30, 2024 and here’s what to expect with the update.

OS Change to Rocky Linux

The backend OS for Server Edition and Application Servers is changing from CentOS 7 to Rocky Linux 9. This is coming just in time since CentOS 7 is slated to be end-of-life as of June 30, 2024. It also means that the upgrade is more complex than some previous major releases. It is, however, expected to be much the same as the process was for going from R11.0 to R11.1. Fortunately, Rocky Linux should be much easier to upgrade than the process was for CentOS 6 > CentOS 7 > Rocky Linux 9.

Upgrade to Latest R11.1 Before Going to R12

Much like the R11.0 > R11.1 upgrade, we think you will need to be on the latest version of R11.1 before going to R12. There will almost certainly be no way to go from R11.0 or older directly to R12.

IP 500v2 Still Supported

Word on the street indicates the IP 500v2 chassis is fully supported in R12 and is still the appliance platform we should expect in the near term. Further out there will likely be an IP 500v3 with updated components, but it doesn’t sound imminent. There is probably no reason to think that any of the expansion cards or modules that were supported in R11.1 would not be supported in R12 with one major exception regarding the UCM.

UC Module to Stay on R11.1

It looks like there will be no upgrade path to take either UCM v1 or UCM v2 modules to R12. Apparently Avaya will support scenarios where an IP 500v2 is upgraded to 12, but the UCM stays at R11.1.3.xx. The visualized plan moving forward will be to use Application Servers exclusively. Any current UCM customers, whether v1 or v2, already have a Preferred Edition License which allows the use of an Application Server.

IPO R12 will Support Subscription Licensing in N.A.

We should be expecting to have Subscription Licenses available in North America in addition to Perpetual Licenses. This type of licensing has been available in other parts of the world for a little while now and may work quite well for some scenarios.

Those are the major news items so far – we will edit this post as more information becomes available! Technical documentation for IPO R12 should be available here after the release date.

April 26, 2024 edit: Avaya has published a short document on what to expect for IPO R12. It appears the R12.0 Upgrade Manual is published also.
The document briefly describes an IP500 V2B that will become available and be compatible with R12.

Jenne also held a public webinar in which Avaya’s Matt Furrer discussed R12 and the roadmap going forward. Content is available here.

April 30, 2024 update: We do not yet see R12 downloads available at support.avaya.com as of 7:00pm Eastern Time today.

May 1, 2024 update: Per Avaya, the release has been delayed 2 weeks. This implies the expected release date is now May 14, 2024.