Someone from Belgium

[MERA-CIS]

Hi,

In this crisis time I spent most of my time in helping customers to work remote. The good thing is also that there remain some time to follow trainings and Webinars.

As Cisco partner for a long time, I'm questioning if it is not interesting to switch over to Meraki.

And maybe, can this forum help to exchange some experiences from people who did the switch from Cisco to Meraki !

[gmitto]

I've been wondering if Meraki is a good tech to get some of the local small businesses onto a secure and easy to support platform.

[MERA-CIS]

All my customers are small businesses. But the needs these customers are mostly the same as large organisations except the scale and budget is different.

[BrechtSchamp]

Welcome, fellow Belgian!

The hardest part will be the budget part. Small businesses don't always like the subscription model. The tech is awesome though, and the cost for the subscription is easily compensated by the fact you don't have to come on-site to provide support. Build your business cases based on that. Scale is no issue for Meraki.

[MERA-CIS]

Indeed, the subscription model  is a bottleneck.

Therefore,I think Meraki Go is probably the solution.

I don't know if we can find a comparaison between the features and possibilities of the normal Meraki devices and Meraki Go devices. Even, what are the constraints of Meraki GO ?

[GIdenJoe]

Greetz fellow Belgians, West-Vlaming here.

I wouldn't personally use Meraki Go on anything larger than a shop/restaurant/single office basic company.
It's not really meant to use as an MSP and even VLANs are not even fully supported.

We also have alot of smaller customers but they usually end up with MX67 appliances with MS120 series switches and some MR33's soon to be replaced by MR36 deployments.

[MERA-CIS]

@GIdenJoe 

Thanks for your feedback, I see the answer is near by house.

Now, it is clear where to position Meraki Go.

Just one more question. Is it possible to merge the devices of Merako Go en Meraki ? Starting with Meraki Go end end up with MX, MR's. Is the initial investment lost ? 

[GIdenJoe]

I would personally consider it a lost investment.
As said before.  I would position Meraki go to anything bigger than a single small office or store or restaurant.

The moment you realize they probably would grow beyond a single building or are considering some cloud service or having the need to VLAN off certain traffic I'd immediately go the regular Meraki gear.

I know it is a bit expensive but not quite as expensive as Cisco gear (exception for mobility express/EWC access points).  Once the customers realize how easy the regular setup is they usually bite.  Be mindful of pitfalls like unsupported features.  Meraki is easy but don't try to squeeze it into positions it's not meant to or you'll have some trouble 🙂

I even have small business owners that just buy Meraki gear for their homes.

[MERA-CIS]

Thanks, Glden

It seems you have a lot of experience with the Meraki portfolio. Because your answer is clear and convincing. 

This is the best "exchange of idees" we can have someone who talks from practice.

Thanks again, for sharing your insigth !👍👍

[QLSteve]

While it may not pertain to small businesses one of the things that is a joy after making the switch from Cisco ASA to Meraki: auto-vpn!

The tunnels just work!!

And of course the single pane of glass to admin/config/troubleshoot/monitor is a huge productivity boost.

[MERA-CIS]

@QLSteve 

I fully agree with you.

I work mainly with the Cisco small business switches and Mobility Express controllers but sometimes to have the installation up and running you need to work with 'CLI-commands'. Which is time consuming if you don't do it all the time.

And of course, as you said, your single pane of glass is also very important for us. 

[KRobert]

Welcome to the Community!