I second this. It's one of the reasons Cisco's reputation is in the gutter (yes it is, Google it, for all you Cisco employees). That and the insane licensing costs on top of the insane hardware costs. Buying a switch and then having to buy licensing to use all the ports and/or at full speed? Then that license is subscription based instead of perpetual? Are you serious? How much more penny pinching are you prepared to do?
I've been in IT for over 25 years. I haven't procured Cisco products for 15 years because of this, haven't even asked to be quoted on Cisco and won't ever do unless this changes, it's been getting worse since 2015.
You have people following certification (which I'm sure Cisco are wanting people to do) who want to use real hardware for the realism who are stopped dead in their tracks because they can't update the hardware. I know some who have dropped their cert to qualify with a competitor. Those that continue, after the aggravation of updating their hardware, do you think they'll buy Cisco whenever their career allows them to?
Take note of the damage done with the recent premiere virtualisation company buy out, and penny pinching that went on after.
What's wrong with offering a low cost annual subscription (and I mean low cost, couple of hundred £s) for non-enterprise use purely for image updates (not upgrades or feature update), just the latest version of the software on the device. Upgrades wouldn't be possible because of the license ID attached. Have you any idea how much revenue Cisco would generate?
