Steve Burnley
Collaboration Technical Lead
In the big news today, Cisco announced that they will cease selling perpetual licensing for their on premise collaboration technologies – this includes Communications Manager (CUCM), Contact Centre Express (UCCX), and Meetings Server (CMS).
What does this mean for you?
What does this mean for you? Well, if you have any of these solutions in place the first thing you need to know is that they are not going to go End of Life any time soon. These are platforms with long lifecycles and roadmaps and they will continue to be sold and supported for a long time yet. What’s changing is how you will acquire them and how you will obtain support.
After 23rd January 2021, the only way to purchase new licensing, or to renew a support contract, will be to enter into a subscription agreement with Cisco for these technologies – so instead of purchasing licenses and separate support, you’ll replace your old licensing with an annual or multi-year subscription.
Between now and then you’ll have time to decide exactly what you want to do. If you decide to migrate to a subscription now, you’ll get credit for your existing purchases and any unexpired support – so it could make good financial sense to actually make the move now even if you still have a significant amount of time left on your support contract; and that's not even taking into account some of the benefits of moving to a subscription, such as simplified ordering, built in growth allowance etc.
You could use the opportunity at the same time to migrate to a Cisco cloud offering, such as Webex Calling or UCM Cloud, reducing your dependency on on-premise technology and simplifying your support and maintenance. Moving collaboration to the cloud is a trend that has accelerated during lockdown, and it doesn’t look like this will change any time soon given the advantages in flexible working and accessibility that it naturally brings.