Unifying SmartNet Renewal Date

[Arun Greig John]

Hi,

Is it possible to renew Smartnet contracts in such a way that the contract expiry date will be the same for all devices?

As of now, the Smartnet of a few devices will end in February, a few in April, and the remaining in August. The client has enquired whether it will be possible to renew them now in such a way that the contracts for all devices can be renewed in November every year (the IT support contract between our company and the client expires in November, and they want to renew both our contract and Smartnets at the same time, as they are having some difficulty to get approval from accounts department many times in a year for Smartnet renewal). Also, they want the same to be applicable for Cisco devices that they purchase in future.

I had contacted a distributed and they advised to wait till all contracts expire, and then renew all, which doesn't sounds good. Also, whenever the client purchases a new Cisco device, its Smartnet renewal date will be different, and hence this solution will not work.

Is it possible to renew the contracts as per the above-mentioned requirement?

Thanks,

Arun John

[Marvin Rhoads · Accepted solution]

Your Cisco partner can order partial year renewals / extensions to make your products' contract dates all co-terminous. I've both had this done as a customer and seen it done as a partner.

If you're working with a smaller distributor they may not be familiar with the process; but it can definitely be done.

[Arun Greig John]

Thanks for the answer, Marvin.

The response that I posted was provided by a well-known distributor here.

I will contact another distributor or Cisco Support to get the exact part numbers for extending the contracts as per the customer requirement.

Thank you very much for confirming that it is possible to do partial-year renewal of Smartnet contracts.

[Marvin Rhoads]

You're welcome.

It's not a special part number per se but just overriding the default term length for the standard Smartnet support contracts in the Cisco tool (Cisco Commerce Workspace or CCW).

Please refer them to the (partner-only) FAQ page for CCW here:

     http://forums.cisco.com/ecom/web/operations-exchange/ccw/faq_d

It states:

"Q1: Can a user order services for less than 12 months?

Yes, If ordering technical service after the attached product has shipped, a duration of less than 12 months can be ordered to align end dates on a service contract. Note that a service duration of less than 12 months may only be applied only once to any Cisco product."