BMC Helix is announcing the End of Life (EOL) for the following product:
Product Name | End of Support Date |
Stackify Retrace | March 31, 2027 |
Stackify Prefix Premium |
BMC Helix will continue to provide support for Stackify Retrace as defined in the Product End of Life section of BMC’s Product Support Policy until the date listed above. As per this policy, BMC Helix will continue to develop hotfixes for issues of high business impact. However, this solution is considered functionally stabilized and will not receive further enhancements during this period.
Effective today through March 31, 2027, BMC Helix will continue to provide customers access to Stackify Customer Support as described in this letter. You may continue to interact with Stackify Customer Support as you do today to receive such support.
As part of BMC Helix’s long‑term observability and AIOps strategy, we are focusing our investments on modern, open standards–based telemetry collection. BMC Helix AIOps, powered by OpenTelemetry (OTel), provides a scalable, vendor‑neutral approach to observability that delivers deep operational insights. BMC Helix recommends that customers consider transitioning to Helix AIOps with OTel as part of their future roadmap. We will share additional migration resources and transition options, including potential incentives, as they become available.
Please note that, because Stackify is a SaaS-only product, it will no longer be available or accessible after March 31, 2027. Customers will not be able to log in to the service, ingest data, or access stored information after this date. Guidance on data export and transition planning will be provided in advance of the EOL date.
If you have any questions regarding this transition, please contact your Stackify Support at support@stackify.com.
Stackify Retrace End of Life FAQ
1. Why is Stackify Retrace being retired?
BMC is evolving its observability strategy to focus on modern, open standards such as OpenTelemetry and advanced AIOps capabilities. This shift enables greater automation, correlation, and root cause analysis, and provides customers with a vendor‑neutral, future‑proof approach to observability.
In addition, Stackify Retrace relies on underlying cloud services that are scheduled to reach their own end of life in March 2027. Because these services support core components of the product, their retirement contributes to the decision to sunset Stackify Retrace on the same timeline.
2. When will Stackify Retrace reach End of Life?
Stackify Retrace will officially reach End of Life on March 31, 2027.
Until that date, the product will remain in maintenance mode, meaning:
No new features will be introduced.
Critical fixes and security updates will be provided as needed.
3. What does “maintenance mode” mean for me?
Your existing Stackify Retrace environment will continue to operate; however:
No enhancements or feature updates will be delivered.
Support will be limited to critical issues only.
4. Will there be extended support after March 31, 2027?
No. After March 31, 2027, Stackify Retrace will no longer be supported or available. As a SaaS‑only product, the platform and its services will not be accessible after this date.
5. What happens to my data?
Customers are responsible for exporting any data they wish to retain prior to the End of Life date.
Helpful documentation:
After End of Life, customer data will be handled in accordance with applicable regulatory and compliance requirements.
6. What options are available moving forward?
We recommend that Retrace customers choose among the four paths below. Each path replaces the Retrace agents with OpenTelemetry as the common standard, but many commercial vendors use their own agents as well.
There is no simple automated conversion from Retrace to OpenTelemetry or to any other platform. Retrace collects data with its own agents and profilers, so a move to Helix AIOps or to any other backend means replacing them with that platform's instrumentation.
Path | Best suited to | What it involves | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
Helix AIOps with OpenTelemetry | Organizations with enterprise operations needs, or an existing BMC Helix footprint | Fit assessment and demo with a BMC Helix representative, then a pilot on one service | New Helix tenant and enterprise license required, enablement by request, broader scope than Retrace |
Commercial APM platforms | Teams that want a managed tool | Shortlist vendors and trial them with real traffic. Some accept OTLP, while others use their own agents | Pricing varies by data volume, and language support and agent requirements vary by vendor |
Open source, self-hosted | Teams with platform engineering capacity | Pair open source backends such as Jaeger or Grafana Tempo with Prometheus and Loki, or use an OTel-native option such as SigNoz | You operate, scale, secure, and build alerting for it yourself |
Dual export during evaluation | Anyone still deciding | The Collector sends the same data to two backends in parallel | Short-term cost and noise while both run |
What is available from BMC Helix now:
See this guide for additional details on what a move to BMC Helix observability and AIOps means.
If you want to evaluate Helix AIOps, visit the BMC Helix observability and AIOps page to learn more and get in touch with BMC Helix Sales. A representative will qualify whether Helix AIOps fits and arrange a demo.
Stackify Customer Support remains available at support@stackify.com through March 31, 2027, including for questions about the end of life.
7. Will there be discounts or transition incentives?
BMC Helix plans to offer transition incentives for customers moving to Helix AIOps. Since Helix AIOps is licensed differently from Retrace, details are still being finalized. For current pricing and any available incentives, contact BMC Helix Sales.
8. What happens if my contract extends beyond the End of Life date?
BMC will work directly with affected customers to ensure contracts align with the End of Life timeline.
9. How will customers be notified?
Customers will receive direct email communication regarding the End of Life. In addition, notifications will be displayed within the Stackify Retrace product interface.
