About Cisco Meraki
Acquired by Cisco Systems in December 2012, Meraki is the leading cloud-managed IT company with products including wireless solutions, network equipment and security offerings which can all be managed from their user-friendly web portal. Meraki is known for its simplicity and cost effectiveness.
From Omida’s 2020 Cloud‐Managed Networking Report, Cisco has a market share of 65% in revenue and 54% in device management. This is a market segment that Meraki invented and with the backing from Cisco has been immensely successful. In 2007 they were selected by San Francisco to power their “Free the Net” campaign which at its peak supplied 100,000 citizens with free internet connectivity.
Over 500,000 customers across the globe make use of Merakis products to make their network faster, smarter and easier. Meraki’s goal is to simplify networking, their products can be unpackaged and ready to go within minutes. Some networking knowledge is required though to configure features like spanning tree, VLANs and routing. This is all done through their management application which provides customers with a “single pane of glass” over their network infrastructure. The dashboard can be accessed from anywhere in the world and even has an app for iOS and Android. However this does come with a cost, with each device requiring a subscription that can be purchased. As an example, a one year wireless license will cost around $150 and a three year license $300, as expected you’ll save by purchasing a longer lasting license. It's important to note that if your license slips and you miss payments the device will stop passing traffic and your network will stop working.
