Looks like Cisco is trying to make things a little easier for their customers by changing its licensing, which will help consumers buy its products a la carte. The company gave us a heads up earlier this summer about wanting to change the licensing and even gave some indications as to what exactly what it wanted to do.

One of the first requirements that will be pitched out the window is that UC licenses are only to be used with Cisco IP phones. Instead, the company has replaced it with what it call “software only” licensing, which will allow customers to interact with the telephony platform through other devices such as PCs, tablets and smartphones.

According to Robert De La Mora, a Cisco UC director, the system has been more device centric and not so user friendly, so the company is looking to change that.

The company is also including the new Enterprise Licensing Manager (ELM) with every UC sale. This has been designed to make it easier for customers to monitor and change their companies’ UC licenses.

The company has even downsized its UC bundles from eight to three. According to Cisco, more collaborating products were added to each bundle. The company will, however, still cater to those who would rather have custom-configured bundles, De La Mora said.

“The flexibility of buying a-la-carte still exists,” he assured, “”You can still do that and we’ll offer a competitive price.”

But this isn’t the only project Cisco has had its hands in. According to a networking panel of three industry execs at VMworld, the company helped develop a transit chip for Broadcom’s Trident switch, along with the help from VMware.

And speaking of VMware, the company has decided to get rid of its vRAM licensing with the release of vSphere 5.1 and will go back to its old familiar CPU-based licensing model.