We ordered a Firepower 1010 for evaluation this past spring, finally just arrived 4 months later. I powered it up, connected and started seeing the messages about enabling strong encryption...in 2020 you are still requiring this to be license? Nevertheless I continued on, taking a quick look to see if this is an option in the future for replacing 5506-X (you know the ones where you added 7 ports and none were switchports but did give us those idiotic bridge-ports). Then I realize I do need to active a license for, so I Google Firepower 1010 License and come up with a few sites with some choice opinions on this mess Cisco created.
After about 20 minutes of messing around with the awful Smart Licensing site I figured to make a new virtual account and tried to re-register...with no luck.
So this message is to Cisco management and executives, are you serious? Are you secretly working for the competition and this is your strategy to lose customers? How could anyone come up with such an idiotic and convoluted process and still keep their jobs? Does Cisco even give a **** about their customers? Even if I got through this and got this license, there is no *#(@ way I am going to go through this each time to setup an ASA for customer site. THIS will cause us to look elsewhere. I honestly have to say if Cisco management does not take drastic action by end of the year, our company will need to look at alternatives. Not just because this is a god awful mess of a process, but it is a sign of worse behavior on part of this company. All you managed to do is cause me to reach out to our vendor to arrange introductions with your competition. Not saying someone should get fired for coming up with something so stupid....but how are they still employed?
