What is our primary use case?
The main use cases for my customers with Meraki MX are cloud managed virtual controller, basically for managing the Wi-Fi, managing the switches, managing everything through software defined, cloud managed solutions. There is great flexibility with no need to be in the office every time to do network maintenance or for changing Wi-Fi passwords configurations specific, event based SSID creations.
A lot of activities can be achieved in work from home scenarios as well. Many of the use cases nowadays involve majority of data center switches and data center firewalls being upgraded to Meraki MX for convenience, flexibility and software-defined solutions. Apart from this they also have the solution for the management of users logins based on the authorization authentication in a uniform manner. Many of these features are unique in the brand.
What is most valuable?
The other features that are most useful for network security are that they are the leaders in the market in cloud managed network security. Their SD-WAN solutions are very effective and most cases now involve VPN-less access for the majority of companies' private networks.
These became Zero Trust networks and Zero Trust access. Meraki MX is among those top solutions in their exceptional approach towards VPN-less, Zero Trust client access to office private networks.
The SD-WAN capability of Meraki MX enhances network performance by reducing bandwidth utilization and increases availability. Additionally, multiple branches in different countries and continents can be connected as one WAN network, making all users connected continuously with convenience. Separate authentication is not required to access networks in different countries. All this becomes completely seamless, saving time and reducing security risks.
The highest security algorithms are configured between these branches over the SD-WAN, where the network becomes uniform across the world. Users have service access or network access without knowing they are actually in different countries or cities. Additionally, passwordless authentications enhance the user experience. By increasing these user experiences, productivity has been enhanced across companies and client employees.
What needs improvement?
I recommend that Meraki MX should improve to be a better solution for the next release by being more competent so that we can offer it as a primary solution among all other brands, although I don't have any specific feedback, while the competitors are also ahead of these solutions.
Enhancing user experience is always required. Enhancing the seamless connectivity is crucial and user experience enhancement is needed daily, otherwise people find it outdated. New features should look and be dynamically connected, and users should not be bothered frequently when connectivity issues occur. It should automatically remediate and find out the issue and then resolve it on its own without interrupting the work of the employees.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working with the Cisco solutions with Meraki MX for about 7-8 years.
What was my experience with deployment of the solution?
Meraki MX is using AI to improve network management and security. AI is one among those additional layers of convenience added. It reduces the IT manager's job and IT mistakes, manual processes, and configuration errors.
AI operations function seamlessly when you add a client, as it knows how to segregate the client. It will automatically add the policies and generate the client-related specific employee security policies, giving access based on the segregation we apply.
Meraki MX is easy to set up, I would rate it 9 out of 10.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Overall, Meraki MX is very stable, I would rate it 9 out of 10.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Scalability is an obvious concern with Meraki MX. You can't scale beyond some value. They are not highly enterprise grade, when you have hundreds of thousands of people it is very difficult to scale in Meraki.
How are customer service and support?
I have seen usual challenges with Meraki MX, such as sometimes we don't get the access points online, or connectivity related issues. When we raise a ticket with Meraki MX, they instantly become available to support us for configurations or troubleshooting. In the majority of cases Cisco support is good. We immediately get the support to solve the issues, in case of any challenges or incidents.
I can rate the support 10 out of 10.
How would you rate customer service and support?
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Meraki MX is obviously expensive.
The cost of a device varies based on the Meraki MX device, whereas if you buy the same access point in Aruba, it is three times costlier. I get it for $25,000, a device that can connect up to 75-100 users, whereas in Meraki MX, it goes to 75,000-80,000 per access point.
What other advice do I have?
I am an implementer.
My clients are small to medium businesses, with about 800,000 employees to 2,000 employees. They are mainly in IT, manufacturing, pharma, schools, and universities.
I recommend that for a class experience for security reasons, or convenience management, cloud-based solution, when you look at all of them, people should prefer Meraki MX as leaders in software-defined networks and cloud managed networks. I rate Meraki MX 9 out of 10.