Cisco licensing SNAFU could put call centres on hold

Cisco has warned that licenses for some of its contact centre apps could expire before they’re due to expire, and that call centres could go dark as a result.

A Field Notice issued late last week reports that “Contact Center Enterprise Agreement (CC EA) licenses for Cisco Unified Customer Voice Portal (CVP) can expire before the end of a customer's CC EA term.”

The reason for the mess is some licenses for Cisco software were issued with an expiration date, when Cisco’s own expectation is that they’ll ship with an open-ended license.

There appears to be no warning of the problem, other than the fact that “expired license on a CVP server triggers a graceful shutdown that causes inbound phone numbers to ring busy,” according to Cisco’s Field Notice, which adds “ The problem begins on the date that the CVP license expires.”

The affected products are Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise Virtual Machine Templates and Cisco Customer Voice Portal Software Releases, in release numbers 10.5, 11.0 and 11.5.

Cisco’s advised two potential fixes: either upgrade to version 11.6 of the abovementioned apps, or download a new permanent license for company’s licensing portal.

And if you can’t get through to a call centre in the next few days, maybe you need to send them a link to this article?