MyRepublic

Overview

MyRepublic is a cloud platform company offering telecommunications company services across Asia Pacific. With more than 1,300 employees, Sebastian Wieseler, Head of IT and Security, and Abdul Kadir, IT Manager, are responsible for deploying a stable and reliable network for the employees of MyRepublic.

 

Original Networking Challenges

• MyRepublic was in the process of consolidating their regional and Singapore teams into one large office regional headquarters. As part of the consolidation, Sebastian and Kadir looked at a few vendors for their new network
• MyRepublic had plans to upgrade their networks in their international offices. With a lean IT team based largely out of Singapore, Sebastian and Kadir were looking for a solution that allowed for easier management of their distributed and international network.
• There was no centralised network management at the MyRepublic offices. Implementing changes to the network required devices to be configured individually on-site, which was time consuming for the IT team.
• The team had limited visibility into how the office network was being utilised, which made it challenging to resolve issues.

Meraki provides a beautiful overall networking environment that the IT team can see all the networking pieces and puzzles coming together on an integrated dashboard.

Sebastian Wieseler

Head of IT and Security
 

Why Cisco Meraki?

• Sebastian and Kadir explored vendors that allowed their IT team to support the global network more easily from Singapore. Easy management was a key requirement for their next networking vendor. Sebastian and Kadir explored a few solutions but saw the value of Meraki as their team would be able to manage the whole network on a web-based dashboard from anywhere.
• “Meraki was able to provide us with an end-to-end networking solution, while other vendors provided just wireless or they just provided security,” said Sebastian. “Meraki provides a beautiful overall networking environment that the IT team can see all the networking pieces and puzzles coming together on an integrated dashboard,” added Sebastian.

 

The Deployment

• The Singapore office deployment only took a couple of weeks from decision to deployment. “It took us pretty much less than a month from the decision to purchase Meraki, to initial testing, to installation,” said Kadir.
• The speed of the deployment was due to the ability to pre-stage and configure the Meraki devices while they were still on their way to MyRepublic’s offices. “Thanks to the ability to pre-config, the devices could be set up even before it reached our offices,” mentioned Sebastian.
• The quick deployment they experienced with Meraki for their Singapore office is something they are planning to replicate for future office deployments in other countries. “Now, when we expand into new offices, we just have to pre-config and send it to the branch offices. We don’t require any technical expertise from anyone in the branch offices because you just plug the Meraki devices in, and we can manage the devices via the Meraki dashboard from Singapore once the devices connect to the internet,” described Kadir.
• In terms of the network design, Kadir and Sebastian highlighted how, thanks to the cloud architecture, they now have a network blueprint that they can copy and clone when they roll out to new offices.

 

The Results

• Before Meraki, they had to maintain their own network infrastructure. But since the network upgrade, his team does not need to maintain anything from a structural standpoint, and can rely on the Meraki cloud infrastructure.
• Visibility across the devices on their network is something they achieved with Meraki. “With Meraki, we have better visibility in terms of how our entire network runs across multiple countries, and the team has easier management via the dashboard that can be accessed from any browser,” said Sebastian.
• Firmware upgrades have changed and become much more efficient since implementing Meraki. “We can schedule firmware upgrades on our own time and we don’t have to worry about staying up late. We can just schedule it and verify the upgrade later on,” said Kadir. Meraki has also allowed their team to spend less time on support tickets for Wi-Fi related issues. “Since we moved to Meraki, we have seen a 30% reduction in WiFi support tickets.” This has allowed Sebastian and Kadir to spend more time on the IT projects that will impact and grow the business.