Cisco to buy Meraki

Greg Ferro tweeted it this morning. Later on Meraki decided to make it official.

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I have not used Meraki equipment but have heard nothing but good things about it. The price point is just too high for most of my clients.

NightShade1

The truth is that Meraki doesnt seems that good anyways... so i dont really care :P

1-It has no adaptative radio managment funtion like Aruba or clean air like cisco... just rudimentary scanning capacibilities... it does not even have band steering or airtime fairness as far i know
2-If you loose connectivity to the cloud, authentication, the guest access and network management functions are disabled
3-With Meraki you need an annual subscription cost besides of the cost of the product.

And well much more other stuff... but i just name 3...
No idea why cisco bough it...

Now i remenber rumors of Alcatel lucent and Nokia trying to buy Rukus wonder if that true....

Iristheangel

We use Merakis in dozens of our sites internationally and we love them at my company. Not a bad move for Cisco to buy them

NightShade1

Guess you don't manage high density of users in your company because meraki does not seems to have tools fight agains that....

Iristheangel

Yes, we do. We're a Fortune 100 company with over 75 locations internationally with guest WiFi access at each of our locations. We use our Meraki's for the guest access where thousands of users login every day. We set up the Merakis on both a DSL connection (for main guest access) as well as a redundant link through our MPLS cloud to the internet. They've worked pretty well for us so far

NightShade1

do you have more than 1000 users using meraki in one site? using internal applications voice etc? i mean do you really use Wifi or its just like extra ? because those are 2 different scenarios

Iristheangel

Yes, we have over 1000 users logging into our Merakis at each site. As I said, it's for guest access so they're not using it for internal applications or voice. They fit out needs and they're easily and centrally managed from the corporate office. We like them. They fit our needs. We usually heat map a site out and then install as many Meraki's as needed for full coverage. I have to say they're EXTREMELY useful for guest WiFi access if you have locations with large amounts of people coming in and out daily

NightShade1

ahhhh its for guest access so just internet access... not really necesary High thoughput...
Thats why

I was really asking myself how they are working in there with no band steering airtime fairness and all that....
I was about to ask you how does meraki does it to learn something new... because i dont see how it could do it...

Anyways im sorry for saying they are useless i really dont like it as a corporate solution for many reasons adn stuff they dont have that they should thats all...

it_consultant

A little over a year ago I set up a meraki network and I did some band steering [which I tested and it worked fine]...I really like Meraki, I considered buying their firewalls for a couple of sites since their upper models have, what is in essence, a built in riverbed. I am sad to hear that Cisco bought them. They will ruin it badly I suspect.

Nightshade - factually you have a couple of things that are quite incorrect about the product. Did you sit through a sales pitch from a competitor or do you have real world experience deploying Meraki wifi?

SteveLord

I like the fact they have one of the few free MDM solutions. As far as their equipment, I believe Iowa State University uses them across their campuses.

malcybood

We are a Meraki partner and Cisco Gold partner and every customer we have sold Meraki products to absolutely love them. Awesome company and the products have some brilliant features included without the headaches of additional licensing to unlock stuff.

My particular favorite Meraki feature is the "make a wish" box.

Great acquisition by Cisco.

malcybood

SteveLord wrote: »

I like the fact they have one of the few free MDM solutions. As far as their equipment, I believe Iowa State University uses them across their campuses.

Yeah Systems Manager is cool, you can even use it for your home devices (if you really wanted to lol)

We have rolled out to a retail customer with 500 stores and approx 2000 APs along with some educational institutions.

NightShade1

it_consultant wrote: »

A little over a year ago I set up a meraki network and I did some band steering [which I tested and it worked fine]...I really like Meraki, I considered buying their firewalls for a couple of sites since their upper models have, what is in essence, a built in riverbed. I am sad to hear that Cisco bought them. They will ruin it badly I suspect.

Nightshade - factually you have a couple of things that are quite incorrect about the product. Did you sit through a sales pitch from a competitor or do you have real world experience deploying Meraki wifi?

Thats why i said as far i know... i do read a lot

not real implementation....
Does it has airtime fairness? or it just has band steering... maybe the documention i read at that time was old.
Also i read that besides bying the equipments and all that you need to pay a yearly subscrition.. which does not make it cheaper than other brands....

Cheers

cmitchell_00

I used to work @ a company who sold Meraki products and they are a partner too. I rolled out a few in the past and the systems were simple to support, cheaper than Cisco and Aruba plus more cost efficient when selling to SMB's. I think Cisco brought this product to gain that part of the WLAN market and maybe an essential system design component etc... The Cisco people aren't stupid they are here to make money and to be on top of the market while I guess the Meraki folk are real happy today.

SteveLord

That's how the tech giants work. Find smaller companies with good products, buy them up and rename it your own. (Look at EMC/VMware)

RomBUS

I guess this is a win for MIT graduates.

it_consultant

NightShade1 wrote: »

Thats why i said as far i know... i do read a lot not real implementation....
Does it has airtime fairness? or it just has band steering... maybe the documention i read at that time was old.
Also i read that besides bying the equipments and all that you need to pay a yearly subscrition.. which does not make it cheaper than other brands....

Cheers

I re-read my post and I realize I may have came off more harshly than intended. It does do band steering and other methods of controlling top talkers; mainly by the way they implement their policies. For example, I can control the bandwidth allocation based on whether the computer is a mobile device, or based on what AD group they reside in.

You do have to pay a yearly subscription fee - think of that as more of a smartnet like program. I have had a few Meraki's go out of license and they did not stop working overnight. The subscription fee allows you things like tech support and RMA support.

I have one complaint about them and that is that their releases are quick and dirty and often features arrive which I wanted but no one told me they were coming. Classic start-up type of mentality. Hopefully Cisco does not kill what makes Meraki so good. They are incredibly simple to use and deploy. This is not something that Cisco is necessarily known for.

In about 2 years someone will open a post about how awesome Aironets are and I will look up the part number and discover that it is a rebranded Meraki

networkjutsu

AFAIK, Meraki does not have airtime fairness. They try to do "fairness" by using QoS. They do have band steering and I believe they have a similar technology, if not same, as Cisco's CleanAir or Aruba's ARM called AutoRF. AutoRF might not be as good as Aruba's ARM or Cisco's CleanAir though. Not really sure.

Think of the subscription as yearly support fee. You pay these with Cisco and Aruba too if you want support and fast replacement. With Aruba, I believe they charge around ~$120/year per AP while with Meraki charges as low as $90/year per AP (5 year but they offer 10 years too) with no controller support cost, which is around $2K for Aruba Mobility Controllers? You also do not need to buy a controller which can cost a minimum of thousands of dollars not including the licenses you need. That's significant savings right there. Think about the savings too that you're going to get by not getting AirWave and/or Cisco's Prime NCS since having multiple controllers can be a pain to manage without centralized management tool.

NightShade1

networkjutsu wrote: »

AFAIK, Meraki does not have airtime fairness. They try to do "fairness" by using QoS. They do have band steering and I believe they have a similar technology, if not same, as Cisco's CleanAir or Aruba's ARM called AutoRF. AutoRF might not be as good as Aruba's ARM or Cisco's CleanAir though. Not really sure.

Think of the subscription as yearly support fee. You pay these with Cisco and Aruba too if you want support and fast replacement. With Aruba, I believe they charge around ~$120/year per AP while with Meraki charges as low as $90/year per AP (5 year but they offer 10 years too) with no controller support cost, which is around $2K for Aruba Mobility Controllers? You also do not need to buy a controller which can cost a minimum of thousands of dollars not including the licenses you need. That's significant savings right there. Think about the savings too that you're going to get by not getting AirWave and/or Cisco's Prime NCS since having multiple controllers can be a pain to manage without centralized management tool.

You are totally wrong.... They do not charge you 120/ AP.... its less...
Now i don tknow if you referring to the price the partner is giving you or what.... because you got to take in mind this
What is the porcentage the partner wanna do over the price of aruba? so it totally depends...
Im even looking at the most expensive indoor antenna and it doesnt even reach half of what you saying...

Annyways with aruba the only appliance you need like an extra is the airwaves and Clearpass... but besides that its not like cisco that you need a lot of apppliances!

malcybood

The no controller requirement is a massive incentive.

Not only from an initial up front CAPEX cost but also there are no additional licenses when you need to add APs along with no upper limit of 500 APs per controller i.e. Cisco 5508.

There are many features that are included where if you have seen a propoer demo of Meraki kit from one of their SE's or you have actually had hands on with the kit you will understand the benefits i.e. someone mentioned the built in WAN optimization within their security devices. A Riverbed will cost about $10k list where Meraki comes in about a tenth of that for the entry level device.

Sure they're not for everyone and there will always be skeptics about new technology, but I think the products are great.

Another key point that should be made clear is if the AP loses connectivity to the internet / cloud users will not be cut off. There may be authentication issues for new users using central authentication, however the nature of Meraki products is that they operate in the equivalent to Cisco's H-REAP/Flexconnect.

Final thing I thought was cool was the meshing capability. We have talked to customer who for example have large lecture halls or buildings that they can't drill holes in the concrete walls for structured cabling. Therefore they maybe put 2 or 3 APs in positions that structured cabling was installed and used meshing feature for the more challenging places in the building.

This obviously has a hit on throughput but lets face it, in a lecture hall as long as there is decent connectivity nobody would be too bothered, as long as they could get online.

it_consultant

I would bet a dollar that the recurring license cost on the Meraki is less (in year over year aggregate) than smartnet would be on a similar cisco wifi network.

You can forget about the Meraki firewalls and switches surviving the transition. It would eat their ASA business. Unless they do something wild and kill ASA off in favor of the Meraki product. I know of a school district who just bough meraki switches for their access layer; oddly enough to replace Cisco.

Side note, the Meraki website is dog slow. All these Cisco "partners" are probably browsing the site thinking "I have never heard of this thing before...you mean someone else make wireless other than Cisco?". Hopefully this will help a lot of Cisco people break out of their Cisco bubble.

Roguetadhg

Looks like Apple spawned networking gear! They look great, I'm sure WAPs aren't such an eye-sore in public.

veritas_libertas

Okay, this is a slick feature:

Capture.JPG

NightShade1

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Okay, this is a slick feature:

Other vendors like aruba alraedy does that

malcybood

Cisco also bought Cloupia last week - profits up 18% = buying spree.

Cisco buys Cloupia for $125m

The Meraki deal surprised me more than Cloupia to be honest, given the Cloupia stuff is positioned alongside UCS which is being pushed bigtime as part of the whole unified fabric data centre plug.

it_consultant

I am saying a prayer to the network god that Cisco does not ruin Meraki. I was selling this product to a couple of side jobs and I am not comfortable doing that right now. I am not sure about the future of the line and if they add the cisco tax (or god no, please keep IOS off of it) I will have to switch to aruba or something.

networkjutsu

NightShade1 wrote: »

You are totally wrong.... They do not charge you 120/ AP.... its less...
Now i don tknow if you referring to the price the partner is giving you or what.... because you got to take in mind this
What is the porcentage the partner wanna do over the price of aruba? so it totally depends...
Im even looking at the most expensive indoor antenna and it doesnt even reach half of what you saying...

Annyways with aruba the only appliance you need like an extra is the airwaves and Clearpass... but besides that its not like cisco that you need a lot of apppliances!

The $120/AP is the list price for 1 year according to Aruba's site. For 5 years, it goes down to $111/AP (list price). Yes, understand that some partners will give you discounts. They still, however, close to Meraki's $90/year (5 years subscription) price. If I am not mistaken, CDW charges around $80/AP for Aruba. Also, according to Aruba's site (if I didn't misunderstand it) they charge you for the controller support as well which is around $2K/year. Meraki does not charge you for the controller support only the APs.

Again, I think you're still missing the point of savings with Meraki. With Aruba, they charge you for the features you want. You want to use the built-in Firewall? There's a license for that. You want the spectrum analyzer feature? There's a license for that - if they didn't change it. Sure, you don't need to buy all that if you don't need it but with Meraki if they roll out a new feature in their controller you're getting it for free - no licenses needed just the subscription.

What are the appliances do you need with Cisco? I thought you only need the WLCs or WiSM2 and Cisco Prime NCS if you want to centralize all controllers you have? Are there more appliances you need?

malcybood wrote: »

The Meraki deal surprised me more than Cloupia to be honest, given the Cloupia stuff is positioned alongside UCS which is being pushed bigtime as part of the whole unified fabric data centre plug.

It could be because Aruba (Instant Enterprise) and others are introducing controller-less deployments. If I am not mistaken, Cisco does not have any offering that does not have controller-less aside from the autonomous APs which is really not the same as Aruba's Instant deployments.

NightShade1

networkjutsu wrote: »

The $120/AP is the list price for 1 year according to Aruba's site. For 5 years, it goes down to $111/AP (list price). Yes, understand that some partners will give you discounts. They still, however, close to Meraki's $90/year (5 years subscription) price. If I am not mistaken, CDW charges around $80/AP for Aruba. Also, according to Aruba's site (if I didn't misunderstand it) they charge you for the controller support as well which is around $2K/year. Meraki does not charge you for the controller support only the APs.

Again, I think you're still missing the point of savings with Meraki. With Aruba, they charge you for the features you want. You want to use the built-in Firewall? There's a license for that. You want the spectrum analyzer feature? There's a license for that - if they didn't change it. Sure, you don't need to buy all that if you don't need it but with Meraki if they roll out a new feature in their controller you're getting it for free - no licenses needed just the subscription.

What are the appliances do you need with Cisco? I thought you only need the WLCs or WiSM2 and Cisco Prime NCS if you want to centralize all controllers you have? Are there more appliances you need?

It could be because Aruba (Instant Enterprise) and others are introducing controller-less deployments. If I am not mistaken, Cisco does not have any offering that does not have controller-less aside from the autonomous APs which is really not the same as Aruba's Instant deployments.

Well thats weird where are you looking that? im looking on the partner site... maybe you adding a price you have to pay once for the AP and security licenses... but for the support yearly im not even reach 100 with the most expensive indoor ap... i mean putting it the support of all the licenses... and the ap support and all that.

About the appliance on aruba you need none.

Airwaves is for monitoring and clearpass is for BYOD....

Anyways always we are agains cisco, aruba is always cheaper than it so well aruba always wins tho....

Yes you need to pay for the license of the Firewall and the IPS/IDS thats if you want it

I was not telling you that aruba was cheaper i was just telling you that they say you save TONS of money but you dont, you save but its not like they put it...
How much cost you the subscription? thats the question... i got no idea...

Trifidw

networkjutsu wrote: »

Are there more appliances you need?

An MSE wouldn't go amiss too...

SteveLord

Senior network guy here laughed and said "Now if they could just buy a decent server-load-balancing appliance maker..." I agreed....pretending to act like I know wtf that is.