Serena Business Manager (Solutions Business Manager) with contents dependent on Adobe Flash Player

[udaya5C7B]

Hi All,

We need urgent SME help on this.

We have contents in SBM that are dependent on Adobe Flash Player that is ending support this month end.

So what are our options and alternatives and mitigation plans  in the short run ? 

If we do not do anything or any upgrades or updates after December 31 st 2020 , will existing Adobe Flash Player work or not ? if works then any possible security issues   ?

If we upgrade to SBM 11.4.2 problems will be solved ?

What all others are who delayed their conversion of Adobe Flash Player to new technologies like HTML5 etc are doing for continuity after December 2020 ?

Any examples of possible or tested solutions  with any free trails for testing newer versions of  SBM without Adobe flash player working ? what happened to flash contents ?

Anyone tried the solutions like Harman as third party solution support offered by Adobe ?

We really appreciate any level of advice or ideas or guidance in these questions urgently as time is of essence in next two or three  weeks .

Thank you all in advance 

Udaya

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

"So what are our options and alternatives and mitigation plans  in the short run ?"

For certain enterprises the Harman packaged browser will provide short term continuity. That's it. The number of people who have done nothing for three years and are now seeking workarounds and loopholes has increased enormously in the last few weeks. The number who won't be able or willing to pay Harman's costs will also increase.

"If we do not do anything or any upgrades or updates after December 31 st 2020 , will existing Adobe Flash Player work or not ?"

Probably not, except for some people with very out of date apps and equipment.

"If we upgrade to SBM 11.4.2 problems will be solved ?"

I don't know what SBM is, but contact the makers for their support position.

"What all others are who delayed their conversion of Adobe Flash Player to new technologies like HTML5 etc are doing for continuity after December 2020 ?"

Some have spent the last 3 years converting. Some decided to let their offerings or products based on Flash reach a natural death. Some will go out of business. I don't say this is a good outcome, but it will happen to those who do not keep a sharp eye on their IT dependencies, since IT is fast changing.

[udaya5C7B]

Thank you very much for all the answers. We really appreciate that. 

-Udaya

[jeromiec83223024]

For completeness, here's the original EOL announcement from 2017: 

https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-flash-update/

Here's the Enterprise FAQ, which should answer some of your other questions: 

https://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/end-of-life.html

It sounds like you'll also need to talk to the Serena Business Manager people to find out information about their product, and/or what options might be possible on their end.

[udaya5C7B]

Thank you Very much for sharing and guidelines. working in that direction.

-Udaya

[AA5FC3]

Looking into Ruffle.rs might be able to help you..

A quote from their site "Ruffle is a Flash Player emulator written in Rust. Ruffle runs natively on all modern operating systems as a standalone application, and on all modern browsers through the use of WebAssembly. Leveraging the safety of the modern browser sandbox and the memory safety guarantees of Rust, we can confidently avoid all the security pitfalls that Flash had a reputation for. Ruffle puts Flash back on the web, where it belongs - including iOS and Android!

Designed to be easy to use and install, users or website owners may install the web version of Ruffle and existing flash content will "just work", with no extra configuration required. Ruffle will detect all existing Flash content on a website and automatically "polyfill" it into a Ruffle player, allowing seamless and transparent upgrading of websites that still rely on Flash content."