EC News DeskCisco Meraki has announced expansion of its portfolio along with additional integration of Cisco networking and security innovation into its solutions. New, cloud-managed networking and security offerings will simplify the customer journey to secure, next-generation networking technology. The new solutions also enable customers to further realise Cisco Meraki’s overarching mission to make a digital business as simple to run as possible without sacrificing performance or security.
The company observes that employees work from anywhere around the world and are using an ever-increasing number of devices that need to be managed, but many businesses cannot afford to run networks that were not built for these new digital demands. Those with limited IT budgets should not have to choose between innovation and security, so Cisco Meraki offers an intent-based architecture that provides the secure foundation businesses need and equips an IT organisation of any size with the capabilities to grow and innovate with confidence.
The new innovations introduced today build on Cisco’s legacy of networking and security solutions, and allow for IT to easily extend management across network domains. The new Cisco Meraki solutions include:
- MS390: A next-generation access switch that combines the simplicity of Meraki with the power of Cisco switching innovations. This is the first Cisco Meraki networking solution built utilising Cisco Catalyst intent-based networking hardware and Cisco Meraki software innovation.
- Adaptive Policy: Cisco Meraki Adaptive Policy allows organisations to group users, applications and devices to easily apply the right policies. Adaptive Policy is a part of Cisco’s Zero Trust Security initiative, and will enable advanced multi-domain policy support between Meraki and a SD-Access fabric deployment.
- Cisco Meraki Security Innovations: Cisco Meraki is introducing new security features, as well as further multi-domain integration with Cisco’s industry-leading security portfolio. This includes the introduction of Meraki Trusted Access, which provides device authentication without the need for an MDM solution. Other innovations include deeper Umbrella integration to protect against DNS attacks and enhanced Security Appliance Firewall rules.
- Meraki Mobile Gateway: A new product line for Cisco Meraki, Meraki Mobile Gateway (MG) is a wireless WAN cellular gateway that unlocks the power of cellular connectivity while offering simple provisioning and management.
Cisco Meraki claims that for partners, the company’s approach to networking has provided immense growth opportunities. By simplifying the implementation of networking and security, Cisco Meraki partners are able to spend less time building networks for customers, getting customers up and running sooner. In addition, Cisco Meraki’s network is open and extensible, enabling partners to integrate and build value-added applications and services on top of Cisco Meraki’s platform.
“The new Meraki MS390 combines the simplicity of deployment and management of Meraki with the power of Cisco switching innovation,” says Brian Ortbals, Vice President, Advanced Technology at World Wide Technology. “The MS390 creates a scalable way to aggregate high-density Wi-Fi deployments while providing the ultimate user experience. In addition to scale, the MS390 offers extensibility for new feature development, including new security policy, that organisations will want to take immediate advantage of.”
Adds Osama Al-Zoubi, Chief Technology Officer, Middle East and Africa, Cisco, “Our goal has always been to empower our customers to do what’s best for their business by providing a network solution that allows them to focus on what is most important. LTE, Wi-Fi 6, IoT and the other countless networking innovations available today can seem daunting, but with the right architecture and the right security in place, IT can be adapted to meet the needs of the business at any scale. So, whether it is someone managing one site or one hundred sites, we aim to provide our customers with the most powerful and most simple option.”
