I realize this is a 20 month old post, but I am seeking an updated statement. Is "on the roadmap, nothing official" still the official stance as of 12/4/2014?
I cannot express the following statement more emphatically: Licensing, UCSS/SWSS, and the struggles to properly maintain the two are by FAR the #1 issue my customers with the Cisco Collaboration solution/suite of products.
I do a good number of upgrades for various customers of various size in various business segments in various parts of North America, and the above statement is universally true across all of them. I am a technical resource (ie, not sales or sales engineering) and yet on average 25% of my time on an upgrade is spent on licensing in one form or another. That is simply ridiculous.
As a Cisco outsider it seems dummy simple to me: UCSS/SWSS should be tracked in PLM. Customer wants to reduce their UCSS/SWSS count on the next renewal? Sure, load up this new license file in to your PLM with the adjusted count, send us an answer file back so we know it was loaded, and we can send you that updated renewal quote.
We in the field are desperate for improvements and plead for Cisco to develop a meaningful plan of attack for this problem, and to communicate that to us (the partners and customers who use the product). It would take 100 hands and 100 feet for me to count the number of customers who have let their UCSS/SWSS lapse when they had no intention to, which then triggers a multi-week back-and-forth about how to get it reinstated, or more often than not the customer ends up having to re-purchase licensing. How is this okay?
Make it easy for your customers to maintain UCSS/SWSS, and you make it easy for Cisco to continue collecting that revenue.
Please help us.
-jd
