5 Reasons Managed Meraki Services is Winning

 Meraki, a Cisco product, has grown exponentially over the past 5 years, evolving from a niche wireless provider with an incredible set of management tools to a proprietary Cisco product with a complete network stack that includes network switching, next-generation firewall, and wireless LAN. , mobile device management, CCTV cameras and telephone system. The Meraki stack provides the incredible feature set that Cisco offers, but without reliance on CLI (Command Line Interface). Instead, all management and reporting is provided through a single web portal. This combination of smart control with the world's most powerful suite of web-based tools gives Meraki a significant edge that all the other big players are chasing. In this article, we will explain why Managed Meraki Services is winning the network infrastructure battle.

Ease of handling

Managing connections between devices and their destinations, and ensuring security while prioritizing traffic has always been a challenge. In traditional environments, network administrators must be familiar with many different products, using different operating systems, different portals, and no real common level of control. Meraki removes complexity by moving all network components into a portal with one place to apply applications and group or custom policies across your entire infrastructure. With virtual stacking (up to 10,000 ports), projects such as implementing VLANS, upgrading STP, or enforcing QoS policies are converted in a couple of clicks and instantly applied to selected devices. Enabling Mesh VPN between sites is now a checkbox, eliminating the cumbersome process of configuring IPSEC tunnels between each device. The implementation of new sites is carried out on a plug and play basis. Meraki delivers on-the-go installation by giving IT the ability to dispatch commands and connect with local experts. The device then connects to the network, accepts DHCP, connects to the Meraki cloud, gets the settings, and is ready to use.

Security Measures

Regardless of the industry, data security is an incredibly important but often overlooked component of IT. Choosing the right solutions, applying the right policies, designing the physical layout, and maintaining critical fixes can be incredibly difficult while maintaining the performance that users expect. For those on the Meraki platform, these problems are ridiculous. Controlling and applying content filtering across devices is a drop-down menu that gives you granular control over what gets blocked to whom and when. Patch rollouts are automatic, so the 100-day average for a patch is reduced to less than 10 hours. Meraki has access to robust Cisco security tools and uses tools such as Snort Sourcefire for IPS / IDS and the Cisco Advanced Malware Protection (AMP) database to scan files for malware in real time. Additional tools may be required depending on your security needs, but for most businesses, the security tools included with Meraki will significantly improve the current state of security.

Problem-solving

Identifying and solving network problems requires a combination of data collection, analysis, problem isolation, and having someone with advanced networking skills. Meraki's troubleshooting and reporting tools are designed to simplify this process by providing complete visibility into routes and physical locations of equipment. The software includes built-in tools for remote ping, LED blinking, performance measurement, tracing, port switching, WOL, cable testing, remote packet capture, learned MAC address table, and easy-to-understand ARP table. Meraki's love of analytics and productivity tools is quickly outstripping the industry. Meraki Insights is coming soon, designed to give customers the ability to see performance issues outside of their own network through ISP visibility and application-specific performance. For wireless clients, the new Meraki Wireless Health provides detailed information about wireless networks, identifying poorly performing APs and providing context so administrators can easily and consistently improve performance. Identifying and solving network problems is what keeps us awake at night; Meraki gives us peace of mind.

Resiliency and high availability

Designing a reliable network requires engineers to carefully plan for disaster recovery and failover while balancing performance for end users. Meraki has radically simplified this process in many ways, giving even mere mortals the opportunity to create something impressive. MX devices provide built-in resiliency by automating the failover process without the need to learn dynamic routing technologies. The system automates the creation of mesh VPN connections between sites, ensuring that you never depend on a key site for routing. Meraki also supports hot standby VRRP; the design allows the feature set to be maintained at 100% with limited interruptions. Integrated SDWAN technology between sites allows Meraki customers to provide optimized Internet performance and automatic failover on public or private WAN links. The Meraki team will continue routing even if they are unable to connect to the Meraki cloud datacenter, which is unlikely given that Meraki supports multiple datacenters with automatic failover in the event of tertiary location failure. As a network company, we know that failure is not an option, so implementing Meraki is the surest way to improve the reliability of your network.

Level 7 visibility

I think we can all agree that the traffic on the data network is not exactly the same. Certain applications are so critical that reduced productivity can bring a business to its knees. However, most of our networking tools limit or fail to see this critical layer in the OSI model. Meraki provides Layer 7 visibility for the entire network stack, from the firewall to the client device. The decision can then make routing decisions and shape traffic based on the specific application, its importance, and the nature of the traffic in real time. Layer 7 traffic parameters can also be used to identify and then control congestion, which can help reduce traffic to social media, streaming services, or any other havoc-causing application. This visibility also gives administrators the flexibility to allow direct Internet access for specific traffic, such as Microsoft O365, SalesForce.com, or RingCentral, while routing informal web browsing through more robust security devices at the headquarters site or firewall in the cloud.