Networking

Just attended a webinar on the Cisco Meraki wireless access points, and I have to say that I am really impressed with the management interface and how easy the deployment looks. These access points are cloud based meaning that you can configure them through the web portal and then the configuration gets pushed down to your access points. Meraki also offers security appliances and switches as well as a phone system. We are planning on attending webinars for both the security appliances and switches to  get more insight into these offerings as well.

We can see a real benefit to these devices in the small and mid-sized business sectors as they are easier to manage via the web interface and can be deployed quicker than a traditional Cisco product that is strictly configured via the command line. The web portal makes remote diagnosis of issues possible where in a traditional Cisco environment this is possible but a bit more complicated to achieve.

Check back for more updates on the Security Appliances and Switches after we attend the webinars. We will also be testing some of these offerings and then be able to provide a lot more feedback on the devices and the overall experience.