Software Center Changes

Question

Hi All,
Merry Christmas to everyone
Have a look over the email below. Is there any truth or validity in it (i ask beacuse i did not recieve this)?
I'm interested to know peoples opinions on it.
Regards
Stephen
From: Cisco Services Update [mailto:[email protected]]
Subject: Important Update: Get ready and take action for Software Download
Enhancements on the Cisco Website
Software Download Enhancements
Get Ready for Software Download Enhancements on the Cisco Website
Dear Valued Partner, To improve your experience with Cisco and protect your investment in  Cisco Products, we’re pleased to announce the improvement of Software  download entitlement controls effective 10th January, 2011.
In preparation for this change, we ask you to complete the following  actions before 10th January, 2011: •   Verify all applicable Cisco Products are covered under Cisco Service  contracts, and that you have a valid license for Cisco Software. •   Verify your Services contracts are accurate and make necessary  corrections- serial numbers, part ID’s and locations must be accurate on  each Services contract. •   Associate all Services contracts to applicable Cisco.com user ID’s •   Verify all Cisco.com user IDs for your company are valid and  properly assigned to individuals in your company.  Starting 10th January, 2011, software downloads on Cisco.com will be  verified against Products registered on your Services contract. Attempts  to download Software for Products not registered on your Services  contract will not be permitted.
In an effort to minimise entitlement issues, we encourage you to  directly manage Services contract associations to Cisco.com user ID’s  via the Service Access Management Tool (SAMT). This tool enables  administrators to manage which individuals are allowed to request  Service from Cisco (e.g. technical support/ TAC, hardware replacement/  RMA).
Cisco.com users can use the Cisco.com Profile Manager to view which Services contracts are associated to their profiles.
Thank you in advance for your support.
Kind regards, Cisco Services

Answer 1

Hi all,
Thanks for the responses.  I enjoy the discourse and the recognition that sometimes I have sane reasoning! 
I absolutely understand that time is money.  It is for Cisco too.  And you correctly point out that there are areas of our business where we need to improve in terms of the ease of doing business with Cisco.  I know our senior leadership has always been committed to this and that actually right now, it is called out with laser focus that we will address some of these most critical pain points.
Will we always get it right?  Nope.  Will we always address them as quickly as we and our customers & partners would like?  Nope.  But I can say that my role and others in similar roles are your advocates.  Your feedback matters, and where possible, we will aggregate it and address it.  I know that sounds “jargony” but I believe in it.
To some of your specific points:
Licensing
6 hours on the phone related to licensing issues isn’t acceptable.  I trust that this is more an exception than the rule, and I know that licensing as a whole is always looking for continuous improvement opportunities.
Contract Associations
I agree this model can be improved, but I don’t think the challenge or cause of the pain is SAMT.  SAMT is a tool for partners and customers to use in order to manage associations on their own.  At the end of the day, the work that SAMT does is the same as if Cisco had made the contract association.  It just enables the partner or customer to do it themselves.  This was born by partners asking specifically for this capability.  I think the issue is more about the model of how we entitle people with their contracts based on these individual associations.  I know that some very bright people are looking at this through the lens of contracts belonging to companies and companies have individuals with Cisco.com profile.  This approach could help and will be analyzed.  But, there is always going to be some form of associating an individual Cisco.com profile with something…a contract or a company.  We can’t entitle you to services unless we know who you are.  So we’ll continue refining the tools to help make that association happen whatever that looks like.
3rd Party Consultants
We understand the issues here and that many of your businesses are about servicing customers who didn’t purchase their Cisco service coverage from you.  But think of it this way…Your customer buys equipment and service from one company, and that establishes a services relationship between them and the company they bought from.  Or in the case of SMARTnet (most common in the scenario you gave), establishes a direct services relationship between them and Cisco.  The customer now calls your company and you come in to support them.  How would Cisco know that you have permission to obtain service on behalf of that customer?  We aren’t aware of any affiliation/relationship your companies have unless we are told.  Enter contract associations.  And again, SAMT is one way that a customer can “tell” Cisco who has permission to access their contracts as they can manage that themselves.  There are other ways to let Cisco know of the association with your customer but also recognize that comes with the due diligence on Cisco's part to protect the customer as well.  We can’t blindly allow just anyone access to services that the customer has via their service contract.
Huge Numbers of Contracts
This can certainly be a challenge having to manage contracts one-by-one on an individual basis.  One bit of good news is that partners can utilize their Bill-To IDs as the mechanism to pull all of those contracts together.  This is yet another benefit of SAMT.  Partners can use it to manage Bill-To ID associations.  SAMT Admin Matthew Hall can say, “Give Jeremy Davis access to service all of our customers against the contracts they bought from us” simply by associating your Bill-To ID(s) with my Cisco.com profile and flipping the switch to tell Cisco that I can obtain support against every contract underneath those Bill-To IDs.  Powerful.  Does that help in the 3rd party consultant case?  No.  And it only works for the party that has a Bill-To ID with Cisco, so it isn’t often directly helpful for the end-customers themselves.  But it sure can be for the partner.
I can assure you, we absolutely, positively do not make it tough to do business with us intentionally.  As I mentioned, we are all focused on easing how our customers and partners do business with us, and continuous improvement does happen.  Keep the feedback coming because there is no better way for Cisco to qualify and quantify those pain points without hearing them from you.
Thanks again for the input!
Jeremy Davis
Entitlement Theater Lead, the Americas
Cisco Services Entitlement Field Operations