Per-Device Licensing Released - Upcoming Webinars to help!

[Melissa]

Hi everyone!

Meraki recently released per-device licensing for both new and existing customers - a licensing model with new, exclusive features and flexibility. 

We are hosting two webinar sessions next week to help folks better understand how this model works and what the process of conversion entails. There are two time slots available to support different regions - register here!

We hope you can join us! These live webinars will also have a Q&A portion, so feel free to bring your questions 🙂

More information about per-device licensing can also be found here:

Per-Device Licensing Overview documentation

FAQ on Meraki licensing

[PhilipDAth]

I hate to be negative, and I appreciate this is going to be great for MSPs - but I think this is starting to go down the terrible slippery route towards Cisco Enterprise licencing - which is a nightmare.  You have different licences (and types of licences) needing renewals at all different times and co-termination hell.

I'm going to avoid using this new licencing like the plague.

[Nash]

Utility for MSPs may even be limited. Our clients all own their own stuff, and they're really fond of one expiration date to rule them all.

That said, I do have some clients who'd benefit. We're just holding off for a couple months before exploring it because we're paranoid.

[vassallon]

@PhilipDAth 

This is a change back to how the Meraki licensing used to be. At least this time they are giving people a choice instead of forcing a licensing change.

[PhilipDAth]

>This is a change back to how the Meraki licensing used to be. At least this time they are giving people a choice instead of forcing a licensing change.

I think it is only voluntary for the first 2 years (might have that time period wrong) and then new licencing gets migrated onto it.  It will be the new and only way long term.

[MerakiDave]

Hey @PhilipDAth hope all is well, I've been somewhat inactive for a while.  Please do tune in to the upcoming webinar.  Meraki is being very careful to avoid the slippery slopes you mention, keep it simple, and you'll have a single combined Licensing & Inventory page that'll make things simple to track like they are today. 

With PDL, you will still have the option to maintain a single co-termination date, although I don't think it'll be referred to as the "coterm" model anymore but perhaps "shared" expiration dates for example. 

So it will have the same effect, but you'll have PDL, and all the benefits and flexibility that comes with it, even if you've got a single Org and you're not an MSP.  Like individual device shutdowns (versus whole org) and partial renewals (if you so desire) and 90-day pre-activation grace periods (versus having licenses start to burn the day they are purchased).

In my space (Public Sector) I have lots of education customers who will leverage PDL.  They have requirements around grants and funding that require them to purchase X years of licensing for APs for a school district (for example) and actually get X years before needing to renew, and not have those X years co-terminated with all of their switches or cameras, which were purchased with separate funding at different times.  Just one specific example that I hear from my customers a lot.

[IanH]

Hi

I picked up on this in the last week with the Meraki Road shows through the UK.  I've since looked at the detail closely in regards to a SKU basis and presume that these are the Licenses that end -1D. 

EG:

LIC-ENT-1D  (Meraki MR Enterprise License-1 Day)

LIC-MS120-8FP-1D  (Meraki MS120-8FP Enterprise License and Support-1 Day)

I presume that in cases where this is suitable, and the customer wanted 3 Year for a specific project out of different customer cost centres

*1095 x Of each License  (for 3 Years)

It is the -1D licenses that i presume are for this process?  

Can anyone confirm?

PS - I have registered for the webinars.

Kind regards

Ian

[PhilipDAth]

The "1D" licences (aka 1 day) are for true-ing up and co-terminating licences.

So you might sell your customer an intial three year licence.  You use the normal and current product codes.  A month later your customer buys some more kit but they want all their licences to end at the same time - so you use the 1 day licences to make this happen (or perhaps you sell them a new 3 year licence and true up licences for the first set of licences).

My prediction - this aproach will crash and burn.

Some complications to this approach are:

• Every day the number of 1D licences required will change.
• If you customer has a long approval process (3 months, 2 weeks, whatever) the approved quote and what needs to be ordered will not be the same.
• In my country processing an order can take 1 to 2 days.  So do I build in an adjustment for 1 or 2 days into the true up?  What about public holidays in my country and in Meraki's country - these could adjust the processing time further.
• My country is GMT+12 and in daylight savings is GMT+13.  Whose timezone is Meraki going to proess the 1D in?  If they process it in the time zone of their head quarters the true up is going to be 1 day short.
• Currently as the licence period increases - 3 years, 5 years, etc - the effective discount increases.  I imagine true up licences will have the least discount.  Either that or they are going to need a more complex tirered pricing scheme.

I imagine we are going to have a running wave of customers with licences not quite trued up requiring lots of complex quoting, ordering process, and carefull timed execution of orders - and still not manging to get all of their licences co-terminating.

I have one customer that buys new Meraki kit almost every week because they are expanding.  Can you imagine the huge amount of work this is going to create for me to try and keep them with a single co-termination date.  Shoot me now.

Cisco Enterprise has this issue as well.  I have customers that I can spend 1 to 2 years trueing up their SmartNet contracts to get them single co-termination dates.

I imagine this new system is going to be just the same - horrible.