Q. Which causes contributed to the change in AnyConnect licensing models?

A. Cisco has taken in to consideration advice from clients over numerous years asking for a streamlined licensing model. Therefore, the latest license model removes all of the add-on licensing complications while maintaining support for the co-existence of license types.  This model enables shared licensing over all alternatives without the requirement to have equipment to impose licenses and removes the need to buy AnyConnect licenses on a per ASA base (thus helping with Hardware migrations).  Furthermore, this model has an inbuilt pandemic support feature. All term licenses comprise support and software privileges, so buying these licenses will at all times give you access to present software releases.

Q. What are the obtainable official user counts for the new Cisco AnyConnect licenses?

A. The Plus and Apex licenses are obtainable through banding-based licenses (L-AC-PLS-LIC= and L-AC-APX-LIC=) which empower you to choose a precise user count (e.g. 873), a precise term length (e.g. 30 months) and initiation date (e.g. term begins on date X, and goes up to 60 days from that date). The monthly cost per user goes down as the user count is increased and/or the term length goes up. This methodology should be employed to order Plus and Apex term licenses as an alternative of the L-AC-PLS-xYR-G/L-AC-APX-xYR-G methodology. The L-AC-PLS-LIC= and L-AC-APX-LIC= ordering methodology will give more flexibility for user counts, license term duration and easier, more streamlined renewals.

Q. How is the 4.x migration being handled for mobile forms of Cisco AnyConnect?

A. The use of Cisco AnyConnect on iOS & Android devices excluding an active Plus, Apex or VPN Only license (term or contract) has expired on April 30, 2016. Cisco AnyConnect users with Essentials/Premium and Mobile (obsolete) licenses can no longer benefit from this software option. Newer platforms like Windows Phone 8.1, Windows 10 Mobile, BlackBerry 10 and Chrome OS have always needed active Plus, Apex or VPN Only licensing.

Q. Are we able to purchase a perpetual AnyConnect license? What are the features of Cisco AnyConnect VPN Only and AnyConnect Plus Perpetual?

A. Cisco AnyConnect Plus is available as a perpetual license with term options of 1, 3 or 5 years.

Cisco also has a perpetual VPN-only license.  This gives the same functionality of previous AnyConnect Premium along with Advanced Endpoint Assessment plus Mobile plus Phone VPN.

The VPN-only Licenses are developed for VPN only settings which have a huge amount of possible end users but extremely rare usage (e.g. a university having 10,000 students but having just 100 active users at any given point in time). Using either the Plus Perpetual or VPN-only licenses, you have to separately buy support services or you are not going to be able to access software or any technical support.   

Cisco AnyConnect VPN Only is licensed based on a single headend device and on concurrent connections (not authorized users). For active/standby pairs, only the main headend is needed to possess a VPN Only license. VPN Only licenses are a substitute to the Cisco AnyConnect Plus and Apex licensing model.  No other AnyConnect function or service (Web Security Module, ISE Posture, Network Visibility, ASA Multi-context VPN, etc) is accessible via the AnyConnect VPN Only licensing. VPN Only licenses do have support for Clientless SSL VPN, third party IPsec IKEv2, Suite B and VPN HostScan with an ASA device. The VPN Only licenses are not able to be moved, rehosted, shared, joined, split, or directly upgraded to another different VPN Only license size. These licenses are not able to co-occur with Plus or Apex licensing or even any retired AnyConnect licenses.

Both the VPN Only and Plus Perpetual licenses need a SWSS contract on each of the head-ends so that they are eligible for SW access, updates, and tech support.

To learn more, please speak to our licensing specialists today.