Enhancing Customer Experience Through Seamless Licensing Management
3 min read
Computers allow huge amounts of information to be stored in a small space. Before computers, people used yellow pages to find flats and jobs, phone books to find telephone numbers, and manual folder systems to keep records. The folder system back in the day was not trustworthy since files and folders could be damaged or lost. These folders would take enormous space and it was a challenge to find something you were looking for. However, this is not the case with computers. You can make sure that your data will never be lost or damaged and you can easily find what you’re looking for.
From physical binders to virtual folders
Today, governments, corporations, organizations, schools, and even small companies have moved their records from physical files to computers by organizing information into small files. We place pictures, documents, videos, and so on in one place, and we can create sub-folders under the folders that we already have. The hierarchy of folders containing sub-folders is called a tree.
Folders are also used to separate the files created by different users. For instance, we can keep all our photos in one folder and add sub-folders for vacation photos. If you don’t enjoy the Baltic Sea temperature and spend your holidays every year in Mediterranean resorts, you would call them Morocco, Spain, Greece, etc. Each of them would contain only photos from a specific country. This basic system helps us to locate whatever we try to find in these files. To make our job easier, we could even add more sub-folders under the location folders and tag them with city names. How easy! In old times, this would require cutting etiquettes in different colors with scissors, hand-writing the folders’ names, sticking them inside binders… nightmare you can remember from school notebooks.
Smart Account & Smart Licensing
Cisco Smart Account lets clients organize their licenses, devices, and licensing agreements. It’s also possible to organize PAK files that contain the traditional licenses. Smart Accounts use the same logic as computers – a logical folder structure. We organize data in small folders and group our folders by data, type, or any other way. You can create a sub-folder and therefore create your folder tree. Now, imagine your Smart Account as your computer. In Smart Account folders are called Virtual Accounts and sub-folders are called Child Virtual Accounts.
Smart Accounts work with role-based user access control, meaning that users’ access can be limited to Virtual Account, or they could access the whole Smart Account. This way you don’t need to worry that someone else from your organization will access your licenses. Moreover, all the activities will be visible in your account along with the username and timeline. Whoever is using the account will be able to generate or download reports which could show various detailed or filtered reports.
Did you know that you can also manage your Enterprise Agreement as a sub-folder also called a Virtual Account? It makes licensing management easier than ever. Enterprise Agreement (EA) is a cross-portfolio buying program for Cisco Licensing which is easy to buy, easy to manage, and easy to consume. With Smart Licensing you can organize all your licenses under different Virtual Accounts for the EA. You will then be able to see different Virtual Accounts assigned to different technologies, under which you can create Child Virtual Accounts depending on business unit, product, location, or other features. You decide what is good for your organization – a rare chance of feeling like a boss.
In today’s world where at work we care about the time most, Cisco Smart Account brings a new perspective to licensing management. This means a new way of doing business. IT departments move their traditional approach for licensing to smart licensing management – organizing licensing entered a new era.
For further information about Cisco Smart Licensing & Cisco Enterprise Agreement and its benefits, please click on the links below:
- Cisco Smart Software Licensing
- Enterprise Agreements At a Glance
- Smart Licensing FAQ
- Enterprise Agreements FAQ
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1 Comentários
Great Overview. Thanks!