Perry
There are some items in here that Cisco needs to address but as a Cisco partner I will provide my 2 cents
1) Yes digging up old SO can be a pain. If everything is sold through one partner they should have the records. We do as a company and provide that to customers when they need it. If this was sold through many partners then it becomes a challenge. Some orders may go through distributors too. Cisco should be helping you here. They have SAM (Service AM) who can also help. At the end of the day if your rep has left, then there should be another Cisco rep taking his place and supporting you
2) Your un used DLU will not go away. They will be converted at a ratio of 6 DLU to one enhanced. you can even convert them to ENHP at 9 DLU per user. So rest assured your left over DLU will move. Your points are valid on how the licensing changes have caused confusion and buying in packs of 10 when a phone took 4 also caused confusion.
3) The User ID field association is in fact nothing to do with AD. It is the Owner User ID field in the phone page. That’s how ELM decides if the phone is assigned to one user or not. For hoteling phones(there are many threads on this) they will not be assigned and will consume a license based on the model. Existing users who use Ex Mo will be converted at no charge. However I agree that there will be a need to maintain that user to device association for ELM to do the math correctly. Whether the owner User ID field was the right decision is not the intent of my post. That is a topic for other threads that go into it in detail
4) UCSS has always been a muddy area. Many orders have gone through where DLU have been purchased without UCSS. Hence Cisco is grandfathering them one time when moving to 9.1 without caring whether those un used licenses have UCSS. Only when the next renewal happens will you need to commit to the new ESW/UCSS based on what ELM sees. No going back and doing true up unlike MSFT 
Anyway my intent here is not defend any licensing scheme but rather provide some points of clarification hoping they can help you out
Thanks
Srini
Srinivasan, Thank you for the reply. I am just trying to get some questions answered and get a consistent reply. I want to be able to plan for the the best path forward and not get some sort of sticker shock. This whole license upgrade process is admittedly convoluted to try and follow.
1) Have gone back to VAR for this SO number everyone is asking for. But I don't know why Cisco / Global Licensing does not have them in the first place if it was from previous sales orders.
2) I plan on converting all DLUs in the final conversion to v9. Was just concerned over the suggestions that we abandon them because the UCSS issue.
3) The Owner User ID field in the Phone "Device Information" definitely ties into AD. So I still don't quite understand how this works with ELM and where we have many users who could be using this device / DN. We are in Healthcare, so many caregiver staff could be using the phone over the 3 shifts. There is only one DN assigned to the phone == for example, 3rd Floor Nurse Station. The end result is that neither the phone or the number are associate to any specific person. With staff turnover, I can't keep going back to continually update the phone / Owner IDs. So how does ELM handle this?
4) I am sure Cisco has an intent for UCSS that will end up costing more $$ . Right now, it is pretty much a mess. There is no way to associate a UCSS to a specific user license. At the moment in v8, you register UCSS to the ESW contract! Using MSFT terms, UCSS seems to be Cisco's version of a Systems Assurance contract -- the right for users to upgrade to current version. No one has been able to explain to me what happens in the scenario if we only have 50% of licenses covered with a UCSS and v10 is released? What incentive is there to even buy UCSS *now* when one does not know what features v10 has over v9 that we would find as a "must have"? Cisco not going to let us upgrade unless all users in ELM have current UCSS??
Some VARs have told me that it is Cisco's intent is that every user will need a UCSS -- that would be crazy in our business as we have many more users than phones. We pay MSFT "Trueup" CALs based on number of devices -- not # of users! Never thought I'd admit to undertanding MSFT licensing better than Cisco!
The Global License PM in the TAC case I have did end up sending me a few v9 Lics for the "unregistered" PAKs I see in the Licensing Portal. But the DLU numbers don't seem to add up and still waiting for an explanation. Getting answers seems to take forever which just leads me to believe there is still a internal uncertainty!
-Perry
