V12 Licence

[Nick_M]

I have a site running a 16SC V12 installation bought on a perpetual licence. No current 3CX maintenance, but we still maintain it. It serves a 32 apartment residential sheltered housing complex. The SSD in the unit is now failing and we need to swap out the drive. We have temporarily set up a NUC on a VPN running V12 in demo 2SC mode so that they can continue to receive calls from the door entry systems etc. I restored our backup from the main server and all the config is there but the licence is not. If i enter the licence details in the 3CX it is unable to validate with the 3CX server (presumably as they have now been retired?) and I cannot get the system out of 2SC mode which is not really viable for them!

I have ordered a new drive for their main machine but am now concerned that even if I re-install V12 on the new drive and apply the backup then we are not going to be able to reapply the licence?

We did take an Acronis image of the drive after it had been initially configured for just this scenario, but it was back in 2015 and we are struggling to find where it was filed now!

To be clear these users (generally in the 70+ year old range) do not want or need ANY additional tech services other than to be able to make and receive a phone call (in fact all of the apartment extensions are analogue as they wouldn't be able to understand an IP phone with all its features!).

Is there a way to revalidate the licence on a new build of their V12 machine?

 

[CentrexJ]

You can't activate Windows XP anymore. The servers are down. The key will let you install, but it will stop working after 30 days.

(To be fair, XP does still work via phone activation apparently.)

Adobe is an example of a very large software company and their activation servers are offline for old products and no way to re activate.

 

[SweetAction]

Adobe is an example of a very large software company and their activation servers are offline for old products and no way to re activate.

Thanks for reminding me about how just a few months ago during a PC replacement I had to fight the client about Acrobat v9 not working on the new system.

 

[AndreasA_3cx]

@Nick_M - Our partners have answer what is to be answered, so I will say it from a bit different perspective.

From installation until now the key was working! 10 year later due to hardware issues you need to re-activate.
Consider the licence key as a hardware that was working for 10 years and it broke.

It should be noted that the activation server change was due to the fact that internet now wants HTTPS and valid SSL certificates, something that was no in place 10 years ago, and there is no way for us to resurrect those servers!

Now your only choice if want to continue using 3CX is to buy a new key this time would be annual and renew it each year! Otherwise you would need to find another solution as other partners have adviced!

Another note, as a selling point, in V18 we do have a smartphone app!
Elderly people do use smartphone nowadays (no need to additional cost for an IP phone or changing their analogue) and they are even moving away from their analogue lines!
They could find the app useful and agree with the upgrade and additional cost, just for the convienience of having their land phone on their smartphone!

 

[Nick_M]

@Nick_M - Our partners have answer what is to be answered, so I will say it from a bit different perspective.

From installation until now the key was working! 10 year later due to hardware issues you need to re-activate.
Consider the licence key as a hardware that was working for 10 years and it broke.

It should be noted that the activation server change was due to the fact that internet now wants HTTPS and valid SSL certificates, something that was no in place 10 years ago, and there is no way for us to resurrect those servers!

Now your only choice if want to continue using 3CX is to buy a new key this time would be annual and renew it each year! Otherwise you would need to find another solution as other partners have adviced!

Another note, as a selling point, in V18 we do have a smartphone app!
Elderly people do use smartphone nowadays (no need to additional cost for an IP phone or changing their analogue) and they are even moving away from their analogue lines!
They could find the app useful and agree with the upgrade and additional cost, just for the convienience of having their land phone on their smartphone!

Ah....so you want my "software key" to now "self-identify" as a piece of "hardware"?? How very woke!

Getting the licence to work is not going to happen, I get it. Unfortunately my client doesn't get it, but I guess that is now my problem.

In terms of selling points of V18 having a smartphone app, this has existed for some years. Do you not think I have tried to get them to embrace a richer feature set, upgrade to later versions, use IP Phones, or try the App? They are NOT interested in it, period. 75% of the "eldely people " who live in this complex struggle to use a standard analogue phone. We don't even have voicemail enabled on the extensions, the residents who want to have messages use analogue phones with an answerphone built in!!

The site is run by a management company who in turn are instructed by a residents committee. The bottom line is that no one wants to pay for service visits due to residents not knowing, or just plain forgetting, how to use the hardware. As it stands the managements responsibility for providing telephony terminates at the apartment socket, and that's as they want it. Handsets are provided by the resident and its their responsibility to know how to use them and/or replace them if they fail. Analogue handsets require zero config to work, they are truly plug-and-play

In terms of purchasing approval, currently their stance is the same as its always been - no annual subscription services will be approved by the committee.

I'm sure many of partner companies here will be apoplectic about this strategy, but again this is not a corporate environment with an annual IT budget.

In any event, I think we are all done here now....