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This is the same line that made me scratch my head. I'm a non-network guy who has been stuck migrating our phone system from PRI to SIP, and every time I think

This is the same line that made me scratch my head. I'm a non-network guy who has been stuck migrating our phone system from PRI to SIP, and every time I think I get it done, I have to buy another license from Cisco--that our resellers didn't tell us about at the beginning of the project. The latest issues is our voice gateways need a special security license to handle TLS. Outside that, cost per usage is one of the most common cost metrics I've seen--sure if its SaaS it seems directly related, but this is for on-prem licensing--I get the exact same application, only I'm licensed by how much I use it, like the authors font licensing complaint.

manuelmoreale 4y ago
In my defense, I did say "to the best of my knowledge" :) I'm just a designer/developer so I don't have deep knowledge of most of the tech world and I'm sure there are some crazy stories out there I am unaware of. But as I said, I'd be more than happy to hear them.
j45 4y ago
If you aren’t tied into Cisco permanently, maybe this can shed a light on the path ahead. There’s some excellent voip and sip solutions. Asterisk has been packaged into many a reliable flavour.
vel0city 4y ago
It absolutely astounds me the amount of licensing and related headaches companies are willing to deal with just so people can have desk phones with a name brand on them. It seems like absolute insanity to me, like we've devolved into the 1930s and AT&T still owns the phone inside your home.
kjs3 4y ago
Yeah, Cisco licensing is (and always has been) 'complicated'. But a lot of that is because customers like to say things like "I'm not going to use that feature, why am I paying for it". So Cisco has 500 licensing options for everything to maximize the amount it can extract. Perverse incentives and all that. The other end of the spectrum is Microsoft that says "Here's what you get in an E3 license, take it or leave it, because trying to put together an enterprise license that only has what you want to pay for is 1) gonna be more expensive in the end, and 2) we make it as hard as possible to do that.".
- castillar76 4y ago
  > Yeah, Cisco licensing is (and always has been) ‘complicated’. Some of this, too, is due to Cisco’s longevity in the market, the sheer number of product lines they’ve gone through, and the number of companies they’ve absorbed. You buy a company, you can’t just cancel all the existing licenses for those products, so you have to keep those licensing systems and pricing packages around for those customers that keep renewing year after year. Only after a while, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth to integrate those into your existing licensing packages (especially if you’re figuring you’ll get around to EoLing that stuff when no one’s using it anymore), so they just stick around forever. You kill off a product line and replace it with something, existing customers say, “Great, I’ll buy the new thing with the options I had on the old one”. Except those don’t map cleanly, so now you’re developing odd licensing packages for people who want the Super-Duper Routing 9000 but only with the same leather trim and manual shifter they had on the Routing 8000. If the customer is large enough you’ll bend for them, especially the big national ones with clauses in their contracts that require the forfeiture of dragon-blanching amounts of gold if you ever can’t sell them exactly what they bought last year.
  - kjs3 4y ago
    Of course. If the customer is large enough you’ll bend for them If the customer is large enough Cisco will produce a custom IOS build to your spec. Made some consulting gigs really interesting.

manuelmoreale 4y ago

In my defense, I did say "to the best of my knowledge" :) I'm just a designer/developer so I don't have deep knowledge of most of the tech world and I'm sure there are some crazy stories out there I am unaware of. But as I said, I'd be more than happy to hear them.

j45 4y ago

If you aren’t tied into Cisco permanently, maybe this can shed a light on the path ahead. There’s some excellent voip and sip solutions. Asterisk has been packaged into many a reliable flavour.

vel0city 4y ago

It absolutely astounds me the amount of licensing and related headaches companies are willing to deal with just so people can have desk phones with a name brand on them. It seems like absolute insanity to me, like we've devolved into the 1930s and AT&T still owns the phone inside your home.

kjs3 4y ago

Yeah, Cisco licensing is (and always has been) 'complicated'. But a lot of that is because customers like to say things like "I'm not going to use that feature, why am I paying for it". So Cisco has 500 licensing options for everything to maximize the amount it can extract. Perverse incentives and all that. The other end of the spectrum is Microsoft that says "Here's what you get in an E3 license, take it or leave it, because trying to put together an enterprise license that only has what you want to pay for is 1) gonna be more expensive in the end, and 2) we make it as hard as possible to do that.".

castillar76 4y ago
> Yeah, Cisco licensing is (and always has been) ‘complicated’. Some of this, too, is due to Cisco’s longevity in the market, the sheer number of product lines they’ve gone through, and the number of companies they’ve absorbed. You buy a company, you can’t just cancel all the existing licenses for those products, so you have to keep those licensing systems and pricing packages around for those customers that keep renewing year after year. Only after a while, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth to integrate those into your existing licensing packages (especially if you’re figuring you’ll get around to EoLing that stuff when no one’s using it anymore), so they just stick around forever. You kill off a product line and replace it with something, existing customers say, “Great, I’ll buy the new thing with the options I had on the old one”. Except those don’t map cleanly, so now you’re developing odd licensing packages for people who want the Super-Duper Routing 9000 but only with the same leather trim and manual shifter they had on the Routing 8000. If the customer is large enough you’ll bend for them, especially the big national ones with clauses in their contracts that require the forfeiture of dragon-blanching amounts of gold if you ever can’t sell them exactly what they bought last year.
- kjs3 4y ago
  Of course. If the customer is large enough you’ll bend for them If the customer is large enough Cisco will produce a custom IOS build to your spec. Made some consulting gigs really interesting.