The We’re Listening Blog Series: Making Licensing Easier through Automation and Increased Visibility

In our September We’re Listening blog, Brian Jeffries, vice president of operations, talked with you about steps taken to ease your challenges with Cisco software licensing. I asked Brian to update you about our progress around licensing and software management. Brian leads a Cisco-wide initiative focused on simplifying our customers’ software licensing experience.

by Guest Contributor Brian Jeffries

We continue to actively listen to you–our customers and partners–and we are still hearing that you want a better Cisco software experience. The good news is, we have made some major progress with our software initiative that we launched a year ago. In addition to launching new software licensing products, we have made many improvements to how you manage software today.

The Future—Smart Software Licensing—Join Us at Cisco Live!

We are standardizing our licensing model across all Cisco software products. The first products are launching this fall–CSR1000v and ASR9k with the ISRG2 and ISR 4400 next. The launch of these first products helps us shape the future of software licensing models and tools.

The new approach addresses your pain points around manual processes and lack of visibility into your software install base.

All products will self-register themselves upon installation and configuration, removing the need for any Product Activation Keys (PAKs) or license key intervention on your part
Licenses are no longer node locked to the device
A central portal provides visibility into what you’ve purchased and consumed.
You will have the ability to divide your company into logical license pools to manage the distribution of licenses and measure software usage

We hope you’ll join us at Cisco Live! to learn more about the new licensing model. Attend our break-out session on Thursday, June 27, talk with subject matter experts in our booth and get hands-on experience in walk-in labs.

What’s Available Today
Manage your Cisco Software in in One Location–eDelivery, Self-Service and Software Management Capabilities

As you may have read in Joe Pinto’s recent blog we’ve taken specific steps to make it easier for you to buy, deploy, and consume Cisco’s software.

You now have one aggregate location where you can access all software management tools. At Cisco Software Central, we believe it’s easier to get quotes, order software, get licenses, and download and upgrade Cisco software.
Thanks to Cisco.com search improvements, you should be able to find software lifecycle tools without opening a case.

The latest enhancement to your licensing experience is License Wizard, a new interface on the license registration portal that guides you through the registration process with an easy-to-understand, step-by-step flow.

The product license registration portal has also been updated to provide you with context-sensitive help information and comprehensive answers to frequently asked questions.