Cisco One - ISR 4400 Pros/Cons?

[Colton]

Good Day,

We are currently working on implementing Unified Communications in our environment with ISR 4400 Routers.

CON-ECMU-C1A4400S - Advance UC perpetual License ISR 4400

CON-ECMU-C1F1PISR - Foundation Perpetual License ISR 4400

At this time my boss is looking at the cost of Cisco ONE with either a 1 year or 3 Year Option and wanted to know the drawbacks to not continuing with Cisco ONE.

I have been searching through the Cisco One Documents scattered across cisco.com and have found the information to be quite convoluted. So I apologize in advance if this is information I should have been able to gather from the PDFs available.

1. With Cisco One we have access to Software Updates which is simple enough.
2. How Can I explain License Portability when I can not find what the roadmap is?
   1. Example: Determine after 3 years the ISR is to be replaced by a new device. It seems that we should be able to move the license from the device but it seems there is a lot of caveats tied to this and no clear instruction on how it works or the Roadmap you should be using to continue keeping the licenses alive.
3. With the Exception of having no access to Software Updates, what will we be missing out on without Cisco One?

My Apologies if the above seems confusing. Still trying to wrap my head around all these different SKUS and Licenses.

Thank you for taking your time to read my post, I will try to answer any questions as quickly as possible.

[Leo Laohoo]

Please read this:  Get a Free ISR 4331

[Richard Burts · Accepted solution]

I agree that Cisco licensing and maintenance agreements are quite complex and can be difficult to evaluate. Here is my perspective, which I hope will be helpful.

First we need to understand that in terms of Cisco maintenance agreements there are traditional maintenance agreements and there is Cisco One. Probably your first decision will be about whether to purchase some maintenance agreement or not. With a maintenance agreement you are purchasing protection against any hardware failure and you are purchasing the ability to obtain and implement software upgrades, and you are purchasing the ability to get software support (to open a case with Cisco TAC if something is not working). Cisco maintenance agreements are fairly expensive. But I tell my customers that it is usually money well spent. So you and your boss need to decide whether to purchase a maintenance agreement. 

If your decision is to purchase a maintenance agreement then you need to decide whether to purchase a traditional maintenance agreement or to purchase Cisco One. If you choose the alternative of traditional contract then you will need to purchase (and periodically renew) individual software maintenance and licenses for the features that you need. With Cisco One I see a couple of advantages - there is a bundling of software maintenance and licensing (which I believe can be advantageous), - and there is portability (which to me is the most significant factor). You are implementing a 4400 router. At some point it will need to be replaced. At that point, if you chose the traditional maintenance contract, you start over again, having to purchase licenses again (the money you spent on licenses for the 4400 is gone and you start over again with licenses for the new router). But if you chose Cisco One then the licenses you have purchased for the 4400 will transfer to the new router. I can not address the mechanism by which this happens (I have not yet had that experience). But it seems to me to be a very convincing reason to choose Cisco One option.

HTH

Rick

[Leo Laohoo]

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@Richard Burts wrote:

I agree that Cisco licensing and maintenance agreements are quite complex and can be difficult to evaluate.

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Cisco will add a new CCIE stream & it will called CCIE-Licensing (aka CCIE-ONE).  

Here's the rub:  Yearly re-certification (instead of every 3 years) and all modules must be a pass, or else ...

[InfosysNCDSB]

Thank you for the Detailed Response @Richard Burts

I am hopeful that there is a brave soul on the Support Forums who may have gone through the Cisco One Upgrade Process and has been able to experience the "Portability" which seems to be a key feature of this. I can convince him this is the route to go but he will also want to know how the upgrade process is going to work down the road and what the cost savings would translate too. (I know this is no easy request)

I.E Do we pick the next device or is Cisco providing a "Path" per-say for the proper portability of licenses.

The Portability of the License doesn't seem to be very clear from what documents I've located.

I will wait a short while to see if any examples pop up otherwise I will mark this as resolved.
Thank you again everyone!

[Leo Laohoo]

My recommendation is to talk to your SE/AM. Cisco ONE is constantly evolving (and sometimes giving the same SE/AM grief).