When it comes to selecting an SD WAN solution for your business, there are several factors to consider. One of the most reputable options on the market is the Cisco Meraki SD WAN solution. With 75% of Fortune 500 companies trusting Meraki, it demonstrates the trust and reliability of Cisco Meraki solutions.
Author: Netify Research Team
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Customers choose Cisco Meraki because of its simplicity and low cost. The solution is designed to be easy to manage with quick deployment and management tools in the cloud. The solution is primarily aimed at Small - Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and mid-market companies but does offer a lot of scalability for more comprehensive solutions. Meraki is suitable for enterprises with several branch offices requiring granular features.
Although Meraki is a cost-effective solution, to begin with, the addition of licensing fees can cause the cost to rise, creating, in some cases, an expensive solution. Further, some customer reviews suggest that because customer support is so rarely required, the Meraki support team can be hard to contact and slow to respond to requests.
Meraki has a vast partner channel, which offers clients a wide range of choices when choosing a managed services provider (Meraki do not sell direct). The sheer number of partners can be confusing for IT decision-makers. A clear understanding of a client’s business requirements is essential to make the right choice.
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Meraki was founded in 2006 by Sanjit Biswas, John Bicket and Hans Robertson and is today headquartered in San Francisco, California, North America. The cloud infrastructure startup was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2012 for $1.2 billion in cash as their easy-to-deploy, mid-market solution.
Cisco Meraki focuses on cloud-managed products such as wireless, switching, security, SD WAN, mobile device management, intelligent cameras and a cloud network platform that are all centrally managed from the web. The company’s MX range of SD WAN appliances supports wired WAN connections, 802.11ac wave 2 Wi-Fi and integrated CAT 6 cellular modems.
List of the pros and cons associated with Meraki SD WAN and SASE security.
Consider the points below to compare Meraki vs HPE Aruba vs Fortinet (FortiGate) vs Viptela SD WAN and SASE security.
Click the vendor logo to find out more about each respective SD WAN solution.
Cisco Meraki is a branch office solution designed for Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and larger companies. The company is a popular choice for clients looking to migrate away from expensive MPLS, which is achieved by using lower-cost leased line DIA and fiber broadband services deployed via Meraki MX appliances with zero-touch provisioning.
Hardware | Branch Size | No. Of Clients | No. Of Users |
MX64
| Small
| 50
| ~ |
MX64W
| Small
| 50
| ~ |
MX67
| Small
| 50
| ~ |
MX67C | Small | 50 | ~ |
MX67W | Small | 50 | ~ |
MX68 | Small | 50 | ~ |
MX68CW | Small | 50 | ~ |
MX68W | Small | 50 | ~ |
MX75 | Small | ~ | 200 |
MX100 | Medium | 500 | ~ |
MX85 | Medium | 250 | ~ |
MX95 | Medium | 500 | ~ |
MX105 | Medium | ~ | 750 |
MX84 | Medium | 200 | ~ |
MX250 | Large Branch/Campus Concentrator | 2,000 | ~ |
MX240 | Large Branch/Campus Concentrator | 10,000 | ~ |
Z3 | Teleworker | 5 | ~ |
Z3C | Teleworker | 5 | ~ |
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Meraki has historically offered integrated security options with SD WAN. The product has matured into a fully featured SD WAN capability with a SASE solution deployed from Meraki MX hardware appliances. The solution auto provisions IPsec VPN tunnels between sites, with the Meraki Dashboard able to automatically negotiate encryption and automation protocols and VPN routes while allowing clients to monitor network security. There are several key features:
Cisco Meraki uses virtualized MX appliances (vMX) to access cloud vendors. Users can deploy the vMX appliance in private and all major public clouds. The Meraki solution can connect branch sites to vMX appliances in multi-cloud environments. This provides a secure connection and dynamic path selection to optimize access to mission-critical resources. The vMX solution does not use any extra hardware however requires different licenses for each product. Licenses are available for 1, 3 and 5 years. The Meraki offering is as follows:
Cisco Systems are both an AWS Marketplace Seller and Public Sector Partner. They are also Service Validated by AWS for an Amazon Linux 2 Ready Product. Cisco Meraki’s dashboard and vMX software are available via the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, with the Meraki vMX receiving a ‘preferred solution’ rating.
Cisco Meraki can leverage IaaS, SaaS or data centre resources to ensure the optimum performance of business-critical applications. This is achieved through advanced analysis tools that utilize intelligent path selection and machine learning to provide end-to-end visibility into the network.
WAN optimization features were retired from the MX range of appliances at the end of 2015 after failing to meet quality standards. Cisco Meraki made no further improvements to the feature, and it was phased out in favour of VPN traffic optimization as part of their IWAN offering.
Cisco Meraki’s solution enables WAN acceleration and VPN traffic optimization through load balancing, active-active auto VPN, flow preferences and traffic shaping rules to improve the network performance.
Cisco Meraki’s SD WAN offering utilizes Automated-VPN IPsec tunnels between sites. The MX range of appliances supports multiple layers of redundancy. Redundancy features include warm spare failover through Virtual Routing Redundancy Protocols (VRRP), high data centre availability, and hub and spoke or mesh topologies. Failover is also supported by dual uplink support and 3G/4G cellular connectivity.
Remote workers have various support options available from Meraki. These include: Cisco AnyConnect, Native client VPN, and dedicated Wi-Fi-enabled teleworking devices. Meraki’s specific teleworking devices are the Z3 and Z3C; however, the MX appliance is also suitable. Both internet-based and site-to-site traffic is secured by cloud security for out-of-office users and on-premises unified threat management. Meraki further supports remote users by securing networks with Cisco Umbrella Cloud Security and Cisco Talos to provide high levels of protection anywhere.
Meraki does not directly offer managed, co-managed, or DIY services as a vendor. Instead, managed and co-managed services are available to purchase via a channel integrator or service provider, and DIY hardware and licensing are available from value-added resellers (VARs). The lack of direct input can cause issues due to the enormous size of the Meraki channel - finding a channel partner that can provide a solution suitable for business needs can be complicated.
Percentage of customers opting for managed services.
Cisco Meraki Insights is a product designed to offer clients end-to-end monitoring and network visibility in one space by analyzing web applications and WAN link performance. It can monitor remote and home workers and those in the office. It features:
As an SD WAN vendor, Cisco Meraki is not required to provide a Service Level Agreement. The SLA will be offered by one of the service provider partners that may manage the underlay solution.
Cisco Meraki is supported by service providers, managed service providers, distributors and partners. The Cisco Meraki Marketplace allows for integrations to be added to an existing solution.
Cisco Meraki supports MPLS, Broadband, Fibre, with 3G/4G LTE cellular failover underlay services. Underlay is not managed by Meraki themselves, however some partners in Meraki’s extensive channel may offer management of underlay as well as overlay as a bundle.
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