Meraki-Display and Subscription licensing

[Aquatoes]

Hello,

I have a client who has cameras. They want to add a Meraki display. We installed it and tried ordering the license but are being told now that we cannot do so because the new subscription licensing is not compatible with Meraki-Display. How was this missed on Subscription licensing and how is the best answer from support sorry you can't use the product we advertise because of our error and we have no eta on a fix. I have already escalated to my sales rep as well and no response there either.

Any thoughts from the community? I am already locked into a subscription term and passed return policy and I now have no way to add just a Meraki-Display license to that organization.

[DarrenOC]

Personally I’d be screaming at my Account Manager and then in turn their line manager.  Was their a Partner involved in this process?

Ive always found Cisco/Meraki pretty easy to work with and if a mistake was made they’ve made amends.

Fight your corner.  There’s always another vendor that will be happy to take your business…!

[Aquatoes]

We are the Meraki Service Provider / Partner. We have about 100 Meraki organizations under management today and our rep has already been looped in and the responses are that product / engineering was looped in and a ticket was made and we just have to wait for a response. Meanwhile I am stuck.

[PhilipDAth]

I haven't used the subscription licences yet.

So if you go with a subscription licence, you can no longer buy co-termination licences - is that correct?

[Aquatoes]

Correct @PhilipDAth once you convert your dashboard into subscription it is only compatible with subscription license sku's and you cannot combine co-term/Per Device type licensing with Subscription licensing on the same organization. It is one or the other. They had "forgot" to add the Meraki-Display sku because it was not an "MV" sku it was overlooked as a critical part of camera service. Meraki-Display should have been called MV-Display from the get go to prevent this error from happening.

[BrandonS]

I am interested in this because I am also a reseller and working on my first subscription licensing deal.  I understand the issue with not being able to RMA the co-term license (hopefully you resolve somehow).

Can you describe in more detail why you can't add cameras to the subscription?  I thought this new subscription license model/method was more flexible.  Is it just some particular issue with MV cameras?  Otherwise it doesn't make sense to me.  Customers add and remove various hardware all the time so would the same issue happen if they wanted to add 10 more MR's and update the subscription?

[Aquatoes]

The issue is that subscription models don’t allow Meraki-display meaning Apple display. Pretty much every camera client of ours has that function and a display station onsite. Since that’s not supported I cannot convert clients who have cameras due to limitation. If they just have cameras and not display station your fine. 

[PhilipDAth]

Going sideways, before the Meraki Display was an option, I was using the Axis T8705 video decoder.

https://www.axis.com/products/axis-t8705-video-decoder/support 

Plug a monitor into it via HDMI (I would often stick it to the back of the monitor because it is so tiny).  Set the cameras that you want displayed to RTSP to it.  It was very configurable with its presentation options.

[BrandonS]

Ouch.  I see.  This seems like a fairly big concern.  It may not be the most heavily used feature, but surely Cisco is on this.  Have you heard any update?  And thanks for replying so fast.

Side question: Looking at my deal without doing all the comparison yet it seems subscription licensing is much cheaper.  Is that your experience?