Smart Licensing: Smart Accounts
Smart Accounts are foundational to Smart Licensing. The first step in using Smart Licensing is setting up a Smart Account for your company. It serves as a repository providing you with full visibility and access control to your Cisco software licenses, devices, and license agreements. When ordering Smart license-enabled products from CCW, you must assign them to a Smart Account before submitting your order. There are three types of Smart Accounts: Customer Smart Account, Partner Holding Smart Account, and Limited Use Smart Account.
Smart Accounts are organized using Virtual Accounts. When you create your Smart Account, a default Virtual Account is automatically created. You may then add more Virtual Accounts to help organize your licenses by department, network, location, or other designation. Think of the Smart Account as a folder, and each Virtual Account as a sub-folder, all organized based on your business.
BENEFITS
- Real time visibility to the licenses you own and where they are being used.
- It is easy to adjust the Smart Account structure as your business grows and changes.
- User roles are designed to give you full control over the specific activities your users can access.
Customer Smart Account
Once a Smart Account is created and the Smart license-enabled products are purchased, the smart licenses are deposited in the Smart Account/Virtual Account assigned during the ordering process. Customers can access and manage their licenses, monitor license usage, and track Cisco license purchases in Cisco Smart Software Manager (SSM).
Partner Holding Smart Account
A Partner Holding Smart Account is a type of Smart Account for partners or distributors to temporarily store a Smart license order until the Customer Smart Account is identified. Licenses can be assigned to either a Customer Smart Account or a Partner Holding Smart Account as part of the ordering process. However, the software licenses will ultimately have to be assigned to the Customer Smart Account to be used by the customer. All partners and distributors who resell Cisco products need to create a Partner Holding Smart Account. Licenses cannot be activated in Partner Holding Smart Accounts. If a partner is also going to act as a consumer and purchase products for their own company, then they will also need a Customer Smart Account.
Limited Use Smart Account
A Limited Use Smart Account is a Smart Account with simpler and more limited functionality than a standard Customer Smart Account. A Limited Use Smart Account is meant specifically for small business customers that don’t have a company email domain and are using a public email domain, such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.