Cisco Acquisition

FAQ

Why did Cisco buy Meraki, and why did Meraki agree?

Cisco appreciates that our cloud networking products are ideal for customers who need scalability and rich features, but are looking for a solution that is easy to deploy and manage. In particular, Cisco sees us delivering a lot of value to mid-market customers, while also enhancing their enterprise network offering. Cisco is also excited about our high-velocity software-centric approach to engineering and market strategy.

At Meraki, we see our products making a huge impact to customers. Cisco’s global reach will enable us to get our products in front of more customers faster than we could as an independent company. There’s much more detail, including perspectives from Rob Soderbery and Meraki CEO Sanjit Biswas, in the press release and on cisco.com.

But I loved Meraki the way it was!
The great news is that Cisco loved Meraki the way it was and we're all committed to preserving what makes Meraki special, and to delivering more of the products and services our customers love. The Meraki team will continue to build and support our products, with a continued emphasis on customer experience and innovation.
Does my license or support agreement change?
No — your license term is unchanged, your support, SLA, maintenance and feature updates continue to be included.
Will license costs change in the future? Will I have to buy SMARTnet for support after my Meraki license expires?
Like any cloud service, your Meraki license terms are guaranteed for the duration of the license period that you've purchased. There are no plans for you to be required to purchase SMARTnet at this point.
Who shall I call for support?
Continue to call Meraki support for Meraki products, and Cisco support for Cisco products.
Will you continue to make new Meraki products?
Yes. Meraki formed Cisco’s new Cloud Networking Group, and we’ll continue our development of new features, enhancements, and entirely new products without disruption.
Will Cisco be integrating Meraki’s cloud management to Cisco's products like Catalyst switches?
Our immediate priority is to continue to build and support the Meraki product line. We are looking into longer-term opportunities to broaden Meraki’s cloud management technology.
If I need to buy more gear, shall I call my Cisco rep?
Continue to call your Meraki sales representative.
Can I buy from my Cisco reseller?
Continue to call your Meraki reseller.
Is Meraki still hiring?
Yes! We've got big ideas of how far our group can go, and we'll need help to get there. Current openings are posted on meraki.com/jobs.
Will ongoing upgrades continue to be free?
Yes.

Letter to employees from Meraki CEO, Sanjit Biswas

Hi everyone,

As some of you may have heard through Twitter or Google Alerts, there is a rumor out that Cisco intends to acquire Meraki. Our original plan had been to break the news to everyone tomorrow before it was officially announced, but it looks like social media beat us to it!

Given this is a big deal, both literally and figuratively, I wanted to take a few minutes to provide some more context about the upcoming announcement. I'd rather have done this in person at tomorrow's event, but I think it's important that everyone at Meraki is in the loop.

First of all, this was an unexpected event for Meraki. When we started out six years ago, we were three guys at MIT wondering where our bootstrapped venture would take us over the next few years. We had some exciting ideas about how to build networks, and knew we wanted to have a big impact on the world, but hadn't figured out how we would connect the dots. Fortunately for us, our customers helped guide the way for us over the years and were able to organically build an amazing set of products and amazing company together.

This year has been particularly amazing for us (sorry to say amazing three times in a row, but it really has been). We successfully shipped another major product family, achieved a $100M bookings run rate, grew from 120 to 330 employees and did it all while achieving positive cash flow.

So, when Cisco approached with an acquisition offer a few weeks ago, our initial reaction was to politely say "thanks, but we're planning to do our own thing and take Meraki public". It turned out that was exactly why they were interested in talking to us — over the past six years, we'd developed an innovative product as well as sales model that was indeed our own thing and unique in the market. They had been hearing from customers, partners and analysts that Meraki had built something truly different, and wanted to see if Cisco could distribute the technology on a worldwide scale through their vast sales channels.

It was a very significant offer, so we took our time to think through its implications. First, we decided to break it down into two major components — the qualitative and the quantitative. Being engineers, the numbers were probably easier to reason about: we had been studying public company valuations, and were able to see the price was an attractive offer and gave us credit for high margins, high growth and great future execution. However, the qualitative portion was harder: would we be able to continue doing what makes us special as part of Cisco?

It turns out the Cisco team also understood how important our team, culture and environment are to us, and came prepared as part of their offer. They outlined a few key concepts that helped us with the decision:

  • Cisco appreciates the way in which we develop innovative products: by focusing on our customers and quickly trying new ideas in both software and hardware. They'd like to see us continue to release new features and products in the years ahead, and hopefully "cloudify" other Cisco products.
  • Beyond technology, they recognized our business model as being highly integrated and customer experience focused. This integration spans across teams, so they'd like all the departments to keep doing what they are doing while figuring out how to leverage Cisco's distribution channels.
  • Finally, Cisco recognized we built a culture and environment in San Francisco that has helped us recruit and retain phenomenal talent across departments. As a result, they'd like us to be a new "Cloud Networking Group", based out of SF, fun office, free food and all.

After several weeks of consideration, we decided late last week that joining Cisco was the right path for Meraki, and will help us achieve our goal of having maximum impact. As founders, all three of us plan to stay on as leaders of the business unit and look forward to continue towards our goal of $1B in annual revenue. We continue to be transparent with you all, and while some things like our email addresses, etc. will change in our day-to-day operations, we will ensure the important things like our culture stay the same.

In terms of what happens next: this week our job is the same as it was last week -- to build amazing products and deliver them our customers. We will also continue to operate as a separate company until the acquisition closes, which we expect before the end of Cisco's fiscal quarter. The plan is for employees to transfer from Meraki to Cisco.

My apologies again for having to send out email about something so important to all of us. We will plan to cover our plans in more detail tomorrow.

Thanks, and see you all tomorrow morning,
Sanjit