Meraki is the future of Cisco.
...Whether they realize it yet or not.
OK, I know, that's a controversial statement. And yes, I know that I will get a lot of pushback on that statement, some of which may be valid in certain use cases. Highly-customized networks and classified environments come to mind. Cisco is an "Enterprise" vendor, they always have been. Start big (and expensive) and scale down to the average business use-case. I've heard it hundreds of times, "don't buy a new Cisco product for at least 2 years." That's when we find out if it will live or die, the bugs will be mostly worked out, and the cost will come down. I don't think the pattern of solving the problems for the fortune 500 first will change any time soon. But they have one business unit that is different. It started small (before Cisco acquired them) and has grown more organically.
Yes, the purchase by Cisco in 2012 gave Meraki some legitimacy and certainly a financial boost, but they have continued "growing up" instead of the Cisco usual "shrinking down" since the beginning. Meraki's approach of putting the management into a web controller, that the user doesn't have to deploy and manage, is the future of networks. In many ways, it's the SDN we've all been promised for the past 20 years.
I know Meraki isn't perfect. Every time I introduce a network engineer to Meraki they always come back frustrated or cussing at it. They can't see what it's doing while it's trying to connect. They can't dig into logs. It only does OSPF. The VPN capabilities are lacking. Why can't it do multiple spanning-tree or PVST? There are more but, once it connects and is setup, it works. The upside is great analytics, visibility, and remote control without having to deploy a complicated servers or management appliances. Nothing to patch or make highly available. It works and in most circumstances does everything the business needs a network to do.
At my day job, we deploy networks in Colorado Springs. That means a lot of small to medium businesses. Most "big" business is headquartered out of Denver or another large municipality. We've deployed upwards of 70 Meraki organizations over the past few years, from just a small firewall to decent-sized schools that are all Meraki switching and wireless. I've noticed in the past couple of years, that larger organizations are going to Meraki, not just the SMB. The growing feature-list, while maintaining the continued focus on ease of use, makes them continually more viable for more solutions. For wireless (Meraki's first and most mature product line) there is little reason to deploy something more complex with dedicated onsite controllers. The physical controller no longer buys us anything of business value.
I have a bias towards the small business, I believe it is and will continue to be, the backbone of the country. As long as Cisco wishes to maintain a presence in the SMB space, and don't make the licensing, cost, and deployment of Meraki portfolio more difficult, they will continue to see growth in Meraki sales. No matter how you classify "small" business, a high percentage of businesses are small. Your typical small business does not have the resources to hire a full-time network engineer. Many do not even have full-time IT staff of any sort. These are prime candidates for outsourcing their IT needs to an MSP who are in the business of helping SMBs with their growing IT needs. And Meraki is a great fit for both the ease of remote management by an MSP and, more importantly, the business' needs.
More than ever our applications are moving to the cloud. Even Cisco's own Webex meeting solutions and up-and-coming voice platform is 100% cloud-based. Everyone's email sits in a Google or Azure datacenter. Cloud-based applications are great for SMB and even enterprises that have applications that don't require extensive customization. When the data center (or the wall rack in the mop closet) footprint is shrinking, it only makes sense to keep new network controllers, management appliances, and reporting tools in the cloud too.
The network is more important than ever. When I began in this industry if the network was offline for a day the business was annoyed (because of email) but could mostly continue to function. Phones were far more critical to the business. Now, the opposite is true. Phones are less critical than the infrastructure that runs point-of-sale, online communications, and the business apps that they rely on. Investing in an infrastructure that is more robust than what you can pick up at your local retail electronics store is a growing trend for the SMB space. Having a reliable, solution that provides insights into what's going on in the network is crucial for even the smallest businesses. Good riddance to the unmanaged switches found under some desk every time the "network is down."
Network simplicity, reliability, and visibility is the future of connectivity for the SMB. I know that Meraki doesn't always give the network engineer what he wants, but it does give the business what they need. That is why Meraki is the future of Cisco.
...Whether they realize it yet or not.
OK, I know, that's a controversial statement. And yes, I know that I will get a lot of pushback on that statement, some of which may be valid in certain use cases. Highly-customized networks and classified environments come to mind. Cisco is an "Enterprise" vendor, they always have been. Start big (and expensive) and scale down to the average business use-case. I've heard it hundreds of times, "don't buy a new Cisco product for at least 2 years." That's when we find out if it will live or die, the bugs will be mostly worked out, and the cost will come down. I don't think the pattern of solving the problems for the fortune 500 first will change any time soon. But they have one business unit that is different. It started small (before Cisco acquired them) and has grown more organically.
Yes, the purchase by Cisco in 2012 gave Meraki some legitimacy and certainly a financial boost, but they have continued "growing up" instead of the Cisco usual "shrinking down" since the beginning. Meraki's approach of putting the management into a web controller, that the user doesn't have to deploy and manage, is the future of networks. In many ways, it's the SDN we've all been promised for the past 20 years.
I know Meraki isn't perfect. Every time I introduce a network engineer to Meraki they always come back frustrated or cussing at it. They can't see what it's doing while it's trying to connect. They can't dig into logs. It only does OSPF. The VPN capabilities are lacking. Why can't it do multiple spanning-tree or PVST? There are more but, once it connects and is setup, it works. The upside is great analytics, visibility, and remote control without having to deploy a complicated servers or management appliances. Nothing to patch or make highly available. It works and in most circumstances does everything the business needs a network to do.
At my day job, we deploy networks in Colorado Springs. That means a lot of small to medium businesses. Most "big" business is headquartered out of Denver or another large municipality. We've deployed upwards of 70 Meraki organizations over the past few years, from just a small firewall to decent-sized schools that are all Meraki switching and wireless. I've noticed in the past couple of years, that larger organizations are going to Meraki, not just the SMB. The growing feature-list, while maintaining the continued focus on ease of use, makes them continually more viable for more solutions. For wireless (Meraki's first and most mature product line) there is little reason to deploy something more complex with dedicated onsite controllers. The physical controller no longer buys us anything of business value.
I have a bias towards the small business, I believe it is and will continue to be, the backbone of the country. As long as Cisco wishes to maintain a presence in the SMB space, and don't make the licensing, cost, and deployment of Meraki portfolio more difficult, they will continue to see growth in Meraki sales. No matter how you classify "small" business, a high percentage of businesses are small. Your typical small business does not have the resources to hire a full-time network engineer. Many do not even have full-time IT staff of any sort. These are prime candidates for outsourcing their IT needs to an MSP who are in the business of helping SMBs with their growing IT needs. And Meraki is a great fit for both the ease of remote management by an MSP and, more importantly, the business' needs.
More than ever our applications are moving to the cloud. Even Cisco's own Webex meeting solutions and up-and-coming voice platform is 100% cloud-based. Everyone's email sits in a Google or Azure datacenter. Cloud-based applications are great for SMB and even enterprises that have applications that don't require extensive customization. When the data center (or the wall rack in the mop closet) footprint is shrinking, it only makes sense to keep new network controllers, management appliances, and reporting tools in the cloud too.
The network is more important than ever. When I began in this industry if the network was offline for a day the business was annoyed (because of email) but could mostly continue to function. Phones were far more critical to the business. Now, the opposite is true. Phones are less critical than the infrastructure that runs point-of-sale, online communications, and the business apps that they rely on. Investing in an infrastructure that is more robust than what you can pick up at your local retail electronics store is a growing trend for the SMB space. Having a reliable, solution that provides insights into what's going on in the network is crucial for even the smallest businesses. Good riddance to the unmanaged switches found under some desk every time the "network is down."
Network simplicity, reliability, and visibility is the future of connectivity for the SMB. I know that Meraki doesn't always give the network engineer what he wants, but it does give the business what they need. That is why Meraki is the future of Cisco.
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