@SoCalRacer wrote:
For starters 😊🍻
What is the target reason for this licensing change/offer?
Is this to help Providers or Clients more?
Will the current licensing ever go EOL?
Can you move per device licenses between orgs?
Can you demonstrate how this licensing is beneficial for partners and clients?
Can you give us ideal use cases for this licensing?
It seems like the licensing is more expensive than current licensing, is that because its more flexible?
This sounds like licensing hell, prove me wrong!
Great questions!
What is the target reason for this licensing change/offer?
As Meraki has grown, customer needs have grown and changed as well. We've received feedback from customers and partners that while the current implementation of co-term is great, it breaks down for their use cases/business.
For customers, partners, MSPs that want to be able to manage expiration dates separately from one another, per device licensing allows them to achieve that. For example, I own 10 coffee shops and they each run their own P&L. I provide them the management service, but they need to pay for their hardware & licenses independent of one another. So, when coffee shop A purchases three years of licensing, they want the full three years of licensing. And when coffee shop B purchases three years, they want their full three years. In the current co-termination model, this does not work and causes pain for several customers. With the release of per-device licensing, customers are able to easily manage these types of scenarios. Service Providers with many customers/contracts, education systems with multiple schools, retail customers with multiple stores/warehouses/HQs, etc.
Another common use case we've seen is that customers/partners like to have different expiration dates for different products. So, in per-device you're now able to purchase 5 years for your access points and 7 years for your switches. In the current co-term implementation, these licenses would get blended together and the customer may not receive the full 7 years of licenses for their switches as they anticipated.
Is this to help Providers or Clients more?
If you are referring to providers as service providers and clients as their clients, I would say Providers. Their clients aren't meant to manage Meraki licenses, rather they have a contract with their Provider for X amount of years. But, if you are a Provider and have 100 clients, each with different start/end dates, it is difficult to manage that in the current co-termination implementation as you have a shared expiration date. Now, in per-device the start/end date of the Meraki licenses match those of the contract start/end date with their Clients.
Will the current licensing ever go EOL?
For our customers who really like the way we have co-termination currently implemented, we are not forcing them to move over and are telling them to sit tight. In typical Meraki fashion, we've released per-device licensing, but we're not done. Our goal is to get this into our partners/customers hands and get all the feedback we can. We want to understand the gaps in features and functionality, the pain points they're facing with per-device, etc. We can take that and continue to build on per-device licensing to make it better for our customers.
Remember, this is just the beginning, there are many features and improvements to come! If the current implementation of the co-term model works for you, stay with it.
Can you move per device licenses between orgs?
Yes! If you have two organizations using per-device licensing, you can move licenses between them in the dashboard UI or via API.
Can you demonstrate how this licensing is beneficial for partners and clients?
Refer to the response to your first question.
Also -- several customers/partners desire a specific or more predictable license expiration date. So, they want all their Meraki devices to expire on X date. In the current implementation of co-termination, this is very difficult, or near impossible. In per-device licensing, 1+1 = 2. So, if you have 2 months remaining on a device and you purchase a 3-year renewal, you know that the device will be licensed for 3 years and 2 months. Or, if you want your new devices to expire on the same existing date as your existing devices you are able to do that leveraging the new 1-day licenses.
Can you give us ideal use cases for this licensing?
See the answer to your first question.
In a nutshell, any customer/partner who is looking to manage individual expiration dates across their Meraki deployment.
In addition, we have great new features that are exclusive to per-device licensing.
- 90 day activation window: We are giving customers up to 90 days to claim and assign their licenses before the time starts to tick on a device.
- Individual device shutdowns: If there is a licensing issue (license has expired, no license applied) only the device/feature is deactivated, not your entire Meraki organization
- Move licenses between organizations: You don't have to call into Meraki Support to move licenses between organizations anymore. It can be done via the dashboard UI or API.
It seems like the licensing is more expensive than current licensing, is that because its more flexible?
Customers purchase the same license SKUs regardless of the model their currently using. We did introduce 1-day licenses specific to per-device licensing which is our current solution to maintain a shard expiration date or 'truing up' to a specific expiration date (if the customer wishes to do so). These licenses do come at a cost (e.g. they're not 1/365th the price of a 1-year license). All the other licenses (1,3,5,7, and 10 years) remain the same.
This sounds like licensing hell, prove me wrong!
We've been listening to our customers over the years. They have been asking for a more flexible way to manage their Meraki licenses and that is what we have set out to provide.
As mentioned above, for those customers/partners who love how co-termination is currently implemented, sit tight and stay tuned!
