DNA Licensing and SmartNet Support Terms?

[Toivo]

Possibly silly question, but we're looking to purchase some new LAN switches, and in the current Cisco Commerce estimator 3850, 4500 and Cat 9k series all only come with term-based DNA feature licensing.
The issue is that we're getting push-back from our financial department, due to fears that they now have to keep track of a myriad of 5 (or 3, or 7) year contract periods which do not co-terminate on the same date as the SmartNet contracts.
For example, all of our SmartNet contracts are set to renew on July 1st. But if we buy a Cat9400 in February with a DNA-E license, it will expire in February 5 years later; our contract staff wants to buy a license for a different number of months so the licenses will also expire on July 1st.
Any insight into whether this is doable, and if so, what are the magic words we should ask our account team to look for?
How are other organizations handling this?

[r.babb]

The magic word is "co-term."  With the addition of subscription services on top of hardware maintenance services, a lot of people are struggling with this very same thing.  The minimum DNA subscription that you can purchase is a 3-year term, but SmartNet (hardware) allows as low as one year.  You can still purchase 1-year term SmartNet but if you want the hardware maintenance to end on the same day as your other hardware maintenance items, then ask your account team to "co-term" the new purchases with the existing equipment. 

That being said, remember that you have to purchase a minimum of a 1-year contract, so in order to co-term you may have to purchase additional months of SmartNet to make them align.  So for a new order you may have to purchase 1-year plus 3 months of additional SmartNet. 

Does that make sense?

[Toivo]

Thanik you for the reply.

If I understand it correctly, you can co-term your SmartNet to coincide with the DNA term -- but since the DNA term is random, depending on when equipment is bought, this means that now every piece of equipment again would have different terms, so it's not an optimal solution. Better than completely random, though.

What our financial folks want is that licenses and maintenance all would renew on a particular calendar date that aligns with our fiscal year.

[r.babb]

You are correct, you can co-term your SmartNet and DNA subscription. As for the renewal date, you should be able to work with your Cisco partner and Cisco Account team to make all of the renewal dates align as you desire. We do this quite frequently for our customers. Just remember that there is the restriction that you can't purchase less than a year of coverage so you may have to purchase additional months on new product to have the dates align properly.