Go back to HP support, and ask them 'Why' they want you to upgrade to 8.1. Personally, I am very hesitant to recommend that someone upgrade to 8.1x because of the new Licensing scheme, and without a solid reason on why to do it. Maybe they saw a fix that was only present in 8.1, I really don't know.
But, in my opinion, if upgrading takes you out of a supported version, I would not recommend that you do it