Meraki reduced management burden for IT

Mobility, security and cloud services are dramatically reshaping the workplace. Ubiquitous, always on, readily accessible wireless is the platform that knowledge workers expect to have. They want to make their way, fully connected, from coffee shop to hotel room to office to home, and everywhere in between. For the businesses that serve them, offering such access has become essential. Companies need a solution that includes mobile devices, location analytics, fast deployment, simplified administration, in short a pre-configured appliance that they can replicate across sites. Now there is such a network.

Enterprises with many physical locations expect geographically dispersed employees and contractors to collaborate intensively across their sites in order to innovate and create value for customers. Mobile devices now account for a majority of devices accessing networks. At the same time, more and more apps are moving to the cloud, consuming more and more bandwidth.

A big problem for some companies: they still rely on legacy network infrastructure and on an information technology (IT) silo model. They do not share the same goals and priorities or even the same tools. Departments cannot be integrated and are operating as individual business units. Those responsible for managing these networks face the struggle of monitoring potential security threats from internet usage of wireless networks at remote sites. They must grapple with device deployment and changes that are inconsistent across sites. In many cases, this must be done manually.

As everything from tablets to security cameras to TVs to the office refrigerator connects wirelessly to the Internet of Things (IOT), companies want to have a standard network deployment at all their sites that includes sophisticated enterprise-grade Wi-Fi.

They also want to be able to add new sites to their network and migrate devices between locations. They want a centralized, holistic, simplified cloud-based dashboard--from which to manage the various locations, devices and access levels via one web-based dashboard—providing customized network access and availability by user and device type, ensuring appropriate usage.

Enter three graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) who had a better idea, built a company called Meraki and allied with network standard bearer Cisco.

Meraki allows devices to be configured before they are shipped to a remote site, so local staff simply plug-in and set up. Systems Manager, Meraki’s cloud-based mobility management platform, provides tight control over mobile devices, from analytics to resource management. Access policies are applied to both corporate and guest IDs, controlling risks around wireless security.

Products like Meraki continue to take the pain and mystery out of networks that make a set of innovative services thrive across a company’s locations.