Archive for January, 2016

New! Australia Startup Kit

The Startup Kit promotion was a hit in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in recent years. This time around, we want to bring it to a new region and help more startups grow their businesses.

Meraki was once a startup too, so we know what it’s like to have limited resources, be scrappy, and to work into the wee small hours of the night. Though we hope you aren’t working around the clock, we’d like to support your network infrastructure by helping you save time, resources, and money. We want to make sure that your wireless and wired networks are easy to manage and in top performance at all times and when you need them most by giving you a chance to win the Meraki Startup Kit. If you’re reading this and not part of a startup, be sure to share this promotion with a friend who is!

The Meraki Startup Kit has all of the hardware and software you need to set up a full network, including:

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We will be awarding Startup Kits to up to 10 companies based on their ability to put a Cisco Meraki network to good use. To apply, fill out this short application form between 25 January 2016 to 30 July 2016.

There are some important eligibility requirements to be aware of. In order to place Startup Kits with organizations that will receive the most value from them, eligible companies must:

  • Have raised seed or Series A funding from VC firms and/or established angel investors
  • Be headquartered in Australia
  • Have not previously received promotional Meraki products, other than a free AP or a free switch from attending a webinar

The Meraki Startup Kit for Australian startups is a limited-time offer. Eligibility is at the sole discretion of Cisco Systems.

Enter by 30 July 2016 for a chance to receive your very own Meraki Startup Kit! To learn more about the products in the Startup Kit, attend an interactive webinar, see a live demo, and get your questions answered by our Product Specialists.

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Talk Meraki

The Meraki team recently celebrated exceeding half a million active networks around the world for the first time. With so many people now using our APs, switches, security appliances and MDM, we know there will be many discussions and questions arising every day.

The good news is that we inhabit the same online spaces as many of our customers and partners and we love to talk all things Meraki, as you might expect. Here are the places where we’re most regularly dropping-in.

Twitter came into existence in the same year as Meraki, 2006. Just one year later we signed-up and this was our first communication to the world over that medium:

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Ahhhh, those were the days, full of lofty goals to cover the city of San Francisco with mesh WiFi, using technology our founders pioneered at MIT. From there our account has grown to the point where today over 17,000 are following what we have to say. The account is mostly a mouthpiece today, however for those who like to engage in conversation on Twitter, several of our employees maintain accounts focused around our work at the company, and we love to chat. Partners can also head over to @MerakiPartners for more focused discussion.

When 140 characters isn’t quite enough, we also have a couple of communities which we regularly hang out on. Our public Google community recently passed 1000 members and generates some interesting content, debate and questions. Sometimes it just helps to ‘network’ a question and see how other customers are tackling challenges, and this is the place to do it.

Another popular medium in the tech community is Reddit. Since launching our own subreddit last year we’ve enjoyed seeing some – occasionally very – lively discussion, and as is appropriate for the site, there’s no shortage of technical topics. Definitely one for the committed internet addict.

When the day’s work is done, we love to share the lighter side of life at Meraki. If you’re one of the billions on Facebook, please like our page and say hi!

socks

Finally, we also have presence on other popular networks like LinkedIn and Spiceworks. In fact, let’s just keep this simple. If you’re looking for a place to share your experiences, ask your questions, or just like some of the crazy photos we post, there’s a place where you’ll find us.

See you online!

 

We’re ready for Bett – See you soon, London!

For the 4th year in a row, Meraki is crossing the pond and heading to Bett 2016 in London from January 20-23rd. If you’re planning on attending, be sure to stop by our stand, E90, to say hello!

We’ll be giving hourly presentations about our mobile device management platform (Systems Manager) as well as live demos of our cloud-based dashboard. Not to mention, we’ll have lots of great Meraki giveaways – including limited edition #Fullstack tshirts! Here’s what we’ll be talking about daily in the booth:

11AM: Device overload! How to Escape the Chaos
Get a quick intro to our MDM solution – Systems Manager – and how it will help you breeze through this school year.

12PM: Meraki 101
Learn what it means to manage your network from the cloud.

1PM: Meet Your New Teacher’s Assistant
Calling all teachers! We’ll show you how Systems Manager makes classroom device management easy as pi.

2PM: MDM Study Hall
Already using Systems Manager? Thinking about getting started? Stop by and get all your questions answered.

3PM: “Straight A” Success Stories
Learn how primary, secondary and higher education campuses have used Meraki to simplify their network management.

4PM: Meraki 101
In case you miss the earlier session! Learn what it means to manage your network from the cloud.

And don’t miss our Learn Live sessions, featuring fellow IT managers and Meraki product experts. These will take place in the Secondary Theatre and all audience members will receive a FREE AP just for being there!

Thursday, 21 January at 11:15am–11:45am
Friday, 22 January at 11:15am–11:45am

Hope to see you in London next week! 
Cheers,
The Meraki Events Team

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Join Us for the Meraki Quarterly Update

A major benefit of Meraki cloud management is that as our technology continues to advance and develop richer capabilities, existing customers benefit from new software features at no additional cost. Our customers are a critical part of the Meraki family, and we want to offer your network the best!

Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in the craziness of life and miss out on neat feature releases that could make managing your Meraki network even better. We understand this, and have developed a solution: The Meraki Quarterly Update webinar series.

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Once a quarter, we bring specialists from each Meraki product family into our webinar room and have them explain key updates to wireless, switching, security, and MDM. Audience members have the ability to ask questions at any time and get answers straight from the experts during this live presentation.

Sound enticing? You’re in luck, the next Meraki Quarterly is right around the corner! Mark your calendar for Tuesday, January 19th, at 10:00 AM PT, and save your spot by registering here.

If you can’t make it, not to worry, we will have a recording available on our website soon after the presentation. Can’t wait to see you soon!

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A 2015 Year in Review

With a new year already upon us and brimming with exciting possibilities, it’s important for us to take a look back at the past year to see how far we’ve come.

2015 began with new feature releases designed to ease some of the challenges routinely faced by network administrators. VPN-tagging on the MX provided additional flexibility to establish targeted third-party VPN peer connections with specifically tagged Meraki networks, instead of having organization-wide availability. The introduction of the dedicated standalone site survey mode on Meraki APs made planning new deployments a breeze, reducing the amount of time and equipment needed for that perfect setup.

Network admins also ticked their security checkbox with port isolation on the Meraki switches, successfully preventing client devices from communicating with each other, but without having to create separate VLANs for each port.

As the winter thawed and we London-based employees vainly looked for the first warm sunrays of spring, our engineers focused on making it easier to deploy both brand new organizations, as well as new devices in existing organizations. From creating eye-catching networks at events to supporting large distributed networks, we shared some useful tips. Did you know you can create AP and Security Appliance templates and tether hundreds or even thousands of sites to them? What about building fullstack locations from a template…in bulk? We were pleased to announce that functionality too!

Bulk Network Creator2

We made sure to invest time in our employees and the community as well. Employees at Meraki banded together to tackle pressing workplace issues including gender equality, the attainability of a healthy work-life balance, and inspiring confidence to reach individual goals. The expansion of Meraki Gives spurred an ongoing, company-wide community outreach program dedicated to giving back and volunteering in various programs. It’s even been great to see Meraki products around the globe being used to support disaster relief efforts and provide workers with the resources they need.

Meraki gives 2

The summer months saw the development of numerous Systems Manager features, many of which arrived just in time for the start of the Fall school term. New additions to the security policies for Systems Manager permit admins to have visibility and control over applications, programs, and processes on end-user devices.

But what about device management during classes? Our engineering turned Meraki network into every teacher’s personal Teacher’s Assistant through a specially designed version of role-based administration. Now teachers were given the ability to take charge and instantly lock down devices, push content, share devices between students, and cast via AirPlay.

We didn’t throw caution to the wind with Systems Manager though; as the saying goes, “with great power, comes great responsibility.” Organizations can limit which admins have access to which devices, control network access and device permissions with SM Sentry, and even streamline the traditionally complex EAP-TLS deployment for WiFi authentication.

Nearing the end of the summer months, we announced the release of NetFlow on the Security Appliances, as well as a new and improved version of our CMX API, making it even easier for customers to take advantage of the rich analytics available in the Meraki dashboard.

That wasn’t all we announced over the summer, we also opened two new offices in Sydney and London, making the team more accessible around the globe.

Sydney Office Opening

An excited Merakian welcomes us to the new Sydney office!

EMEA office opening

The European teams proudly display their country flags!

September marked an historic moment as Cisco and Apple announced a strategic partnership, including Meraki support of iOS 9 in Systems Manager on the same day it launched. Not too long after, silent app installation with VPP and Sentry Policies, which links Systems Manager to MR and MX Group Policies, were announced for Systems Manager.

John and Tim pic

Not to be outdone, new MS features including port mirroring and DHCP functionality for multiple VLANs on Layer 2 switches were released alongside a much improved view of the VPN, AP, and MDM pages in the dashboard.

New VPN Status page

We rounded off the year with even more exciting announcements. Let’s talk about security first. In November we launched the brand new MX84 Security Appliance which has twice the performance and capacity as its predecessor and increased WAN, Ethernet, and SFP fiber ports. With this launch came support for dual-active VPN connectivity and Intelligent WAN (IWAN) features, which will ensure that more demanding applications receive the bandwidth they need.

Next, we announced the world’s first cloud managed stackable switches. These switches are just as easy and hassle-free to configure and monitor as the other switch families, but they pack a punch! You can aggregate links between adjacent stacks with all of them forwarding traffic and maximize stack bandwidth with a technology called spatial reuse, providing up to 160Gb/s of aggregate stack bandwidth. Remember Dave? He’s already taking advantage of the simplicity inherent in the switches!

Dave the IT guy

It’s been an action-packed year with ample new features to keep you busy, employees looking to improve themselves and their communities, and ground-breaking announcements which will continue to change the future of networking. We can’t wait see what the new year has to offer us, but we’re sure it’s going to be exciting!

Photo shoot at Cisco in San Francisco, Calif., Friday, June 21, 2013. Photos by Alison Yin and Adm Golub/Alison Yin Photography

Photo shoot at Cisco in San Francisco, Calif., Friday, June 21, 2013.
Photos by Alison Yin and Adm Golub/Alison Yin Photography

All hands and paws are on deck for 2016!

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IWAN Webinars: Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!

Happy New Year, dear reader! Here at Meraki, we’re kicking off 2016 with a new addition to the webinar portfolio. With the recent announcement of our IWAN open beta, we’ve added a series of IWAN webinars designed to provide information on how to use the Meraki MX to more effectively utilize multiple internet links.

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This webinar will highlight the three primary components of Meraki IWAN: Active-Active VPN, Policy-based Routing, and Dynamic Path Selection. Tune in to see some of the ways in which IWAN can improve network performance and resiliency, as well as a live demo of the IWAN configuration interface in the Meraki Dashboard.

You can sign up for one of the available sessions here.

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