UTM 9.6 and 9.7 are in the works.

https://www.avanet.com/en/blog/sophos-roadshow-2018-see-the-future/?utm_source=sophos.avanet.ch&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=domain%20redirects

The question is will the updates continue to be delayed further and further apart or will it be delayed indefinitely. The latest version

9.510-4

hasn't even reached the Up2Date servers yet because of so many people having problems. It feels like a slow burn. 

I am willing to believe that the delayed release cycle is because Sophos is working much harder on regression testing.   This is all good.

UTM has two competitive difficulties:   (1) a non-traditional architecture for a device that is often used as a firewall, and (2) dependence on a competitor (McAfee) to provide a critical knowledge component.  Consequently, it is inevitable that something else will replace it during your next product refresh cycle.   On the other hand, it is working well for us right now.

UTM's recent quality problems have reminded me of something that I knew from the beginning:   complex products are difficult to debug.   This is another reason that my next products will probably not be all-in-one solutions.

On the other hand, UTM was available at a price that I was able to get approved (just barely), so NOT buying something that was "better" (but more expensive)  would not have accomplished anything.

UTM has taught me a lot about what I want on a whole range of cybersecurity features.   It has kept us safe when huge organizations were wiped out by ransomware.   I have a lot for which to be grateful to this product.

I do not have immediate plans to replace what is working, but I am spending a lot of time thinking about what I want next.   Right now, that thought is mostly focused on email filtering.   My ideal future product uses very different logic than the two spam filter products that I am using now (UTM is secondary, another product is primary).   It will not be an all-in-one device and it will probably be a cloud product using a vendor's proprietary knowledgebase.

For what it's worth at least for me UTM does exactly what I need. For a home user there really is nothing better. UTM is not perfect but it has been out for so long that I'm sure most of the major security/functionality issues have been solved by now. So by not having releases exactly on time is not disastrous. Plus with new features comes new bugs.

Maybe Sophos is getting ready for the "planned obsolescence" stage for UTM. I hope a developer can prove us wrong.

For what it's worth at least for me UTM does exactly what I need. For a home user there really is nothing better. UTM is not perfect but it has been out for so long that I'm sure most of the major security/functionality issues have been solved by now. So by not having releases exactly on time is not disastrous. Plus with new features comes new bugs.

Maybe Sophos is getting ready for the "planned obsolescence" stage for UTM. I hope a developer can prove us wrong.