Thanks Pablo. You are right about the perpetual licenses. As a large customer though you get treated differently, which is why you have been allowed to renew and buy additional perpetual licenses. Unfortunately these customers are 1000 to 5000 clients and we have been told that as 'commercial' customers they cannot renew or buy more perpetual licenses. They have to repurchase their licenses as subscription licenses if they wish to keep the product up to date or use patch management. My experience suggests this is illegal as I have seen customers challenge vendors over very similar situations and win, but this does require the customer to raise the legal question. Did you legally challenge Broadcom or did they give in fairly easily?
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Incit Technology Ltd
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Original Message:
Sent: 05-28-2020 04:19 PM
From: Pablo Llorente
Subject: CMS License renewals after Broadcom aquisition
We are a large company, with around 35.000 licenses (just counting EMEA) and the same behavior was with CMS and SEP licenses. The perpetual licenses cannot be removed, is for that because are perpetual. And I insist, the rule was that you can keep the perpetual agreement if you have at least one perpetual license live.
Hope it helps.
Original Message:
Sent: 5/28/2020 2:39:00 PM
From: hmassie
Subject: RE: CMS License renewals after Broadcom aquisition
Pablo - are you a large company or are you a 'commercial' customer and when was this? We have been told categorically that customers MUST re-purchase their licenses with subscription licenses if they wish to keep the software maintained. I'm not actually sure this is legal (from similar situation that have arisen in the past) but it will take some customers to challenge this legally to get it changed.
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Incit Technology Ltd
Original Message:
Sent: 05-16-2020 05:37 PM
From: Pablo Llorente
Subject: CMS License renewals after Broadcom aquisition
Hello,
We had such similar experience during the transition and we were fighting for keep our perpetual licenses. Finally the rule was that, if your company already had at least one perpetual license for one particular software, then you can get more/renew perpetual licenses for exactly same software.
In our case we renewed or perpetual licenses and we got even more but it was hard specially because nobody even answered us during long time.
Hope it helps
Original Message------
Hate to pile on but we've had a horrible experience with licensing...
We had long drawn out process of acquiring 200 more licenses. Submitted in late December, yea bad timing! Our reseller spent 4 months trying to get anyone from Broadcom to respond or process the order on their end. Mid April I reached out to an old Symantec contact for help, it still took almost 4 weeks to get the license file, then the file i received has the wrong end date and now our previous 2800 now expire 6 months early with 200 new. Vendor cannot get a response from Broadcom and suggested I open a ticket.
The entire support model and treatment of smaller CMS shops has taken a backseat. We now have a SCCM and Intune being brought in for "our Cloud first strategy". At a previous employer, went through migrating to SCCM process 8 or 9 years ago (minus cloud) moving from DS 6.9 and CMS 7x. I can safely say CMS is a far superior product, however the second class citizen treatment from Broadcom is fuel to fire. (Side note: opened a P2 yesterday for CEM issues, who knows if I'll get any support on that one.)
Laurence - I'll reach-out to my contact and send him a link to this thread. Not sure if he will engage or not but is worth a shot. DM me if you like.
Regards,
Terry