How can Cisco Meraki help your business?
Whether you’re an SME that is expanding or a large organisation with offices and campuses spread out around different regions, bringing a network management system onboard will help any business to leverage better overall control.
Meraki, developed by Cisco, operates on the premise of providing powerful control with simple to use tools. It’s an approach that has seen Meraki become popular in a huge range of sectors, including retail, schools and higher education, manufacturing and hospitality among others.
The core of Meraki’s offering is its ability to help teams to perform at their very best, making it a hugely effective tool for branch networking and provision, as well as enterprise mobility management (EMM). As it stands, Meraki is the network solution of choice for over 3 million network devices worldwide.
Easy installation and migration
A major factor in Meraki’s success is its usability. The fact that it operates on the cloud means that Meraki can be up and running on a network in short order, with simple implementations ready in as little as 30 minutes.
Migrating from legacy systems is also straight forward. One of the major concerns when it comes to migration is how much downtime the network will experience, as any significant loss of productivity can be difficult to balance later.
With Meraki however, the impact on a business is slim to none, as the new, cloud-based network is able to run in tandem with the existing system until istallation is complete. Once it is, you can simply remove the legacy set up.
The benefits of Cisco Meraki
Once an instance of Meraki is up and running, it won’t take long to get to the grips of the features that have made it so popular for businesses of various sizes around the world.
Comprehensive software and hardware
Cisco Meraki comes backed up by a comprehensive product range that includes both software and hardware. Designed to eliminate the need for complex network architecture and simplify IT offerings, these products have the added benefit of being fully integrated and reducing operating costs. And because all hardware and software is connected to the Cisco Meraki Cloud over a secure socket layer, you never have to worry about their integrity being breached.
The software and hardware available with Meraki includes:
- Security/ SD-WAN
- Wireless-LAN
- Endpoint Management
- Insights
- Security Cameras
- Switching
Robust security features
The prevalence of remote working and rise in the number of endpoints has made keeping networks secure a challenge. In fact, they have probably never been a greater target for hackers than they are today.
Thankfully, Cisco Meraki has a number of tricks up its sleeve that will help businesses to combat bad actors, including:
- Anti-virus and anti-phishing systems
- Advanced malware detection
- Content filtering abilities
- Automatic intrusion prevention
- Enhanced firewall security tools
Each of these security tools can be deployed within minute, and are synced and automated using Meraki’s zero-touch cloud provisioning.
A single dashboard with a huge range of features
One of the biggest draws to using Cisco Meraki is the way it allows businesses to manage their whole network from one centralised dashboard.
Users can log in to the dashboard using the majority of everyday devices (including PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets) to quickly access a suite of analytics and intelligence tools.
From this dashboard you can:
- Monitor traffic to identify issues that are causing the network to slow down
- Create restrictions that stop the network becoming overloaded
- Control firewalls and switches
- Gain remote access to endpoints and devices such as security cameras
- Roll out a single SSID across all wireless access points on the network with one click
- Implement Single Sign On (SSO) to boost efficiency
- Perform licensing and updating on any and all wireless access points without the need for individual administrator access
Being able to rely on your network’s security, and manage it with ease, is more important than ever before. With Cisco Meraki’s streamlined, but comprehensive, solution, businesses of any size can be sure that they have the best tool for the job.