What is Meraki?
Meraki is a company founded in 2006 by some smart IT networking fellows from MIT following work they did on a project called Roofnet, which was to bring wireless internet to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project and subsequent work were focussed on building simple to deploy and easy to manage distributed networks with optimal performance. In fact Meraki became so good at this that the company was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2012.
This approach is now what we know as ‘Cloud Networking’: secure, scalable and easy-to-deploy networks that can be managed from any internet browser on a single pane of glass.
The drive behind Cisco Meraki remains to build technology which can free passionate people to focus on their own missions. In fact, the Greek word μεράκι means (something like) ‘doing something with soul, creativity and love, and putting something of yourself into your activity’.
Portfolio
Cisco Meraki now produces mostly based on the core Cisco portfolio, but with the deployment and management simplicity of the Meraki vision.
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The ‘physical products’ are Cloud-Controlled (OF COURSE!):
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All of the above come with enterprise-grade cloud management via the Meraki Dashboard – the control panel hosted by Meraki from which all the devices can be managed and monitored |
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Systems Manager is endpoint management which controls iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows devices, and seamlessly integrates with the above. |
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Meraki Insight is the latest component: a software add-on which has been developed to provide end-to-end visibility into how end-users are experiencing the network by taking a more holistic view of the factors contributing to the end-user’s perception. |
Licensing
All Meraki devices require an active license to function and be accessible in the Dashboard. The license includes tech support and means your Meraki device is under warranty. If it’s broken, Meraki will ship a replacement to you. No need to reconfigure, because the beauty of cloud management means that the replacement picks up the configuration as soon as you connect it to the internet.
Licensing is very simple: one device = one license, bought in years.
On this site, the license options are set out for you so you can see your total investment.