Is Meraki going out of business?

Solved
Nemo
Here to help

Is Meraki going out of business?

We were recently told our previous Meraki rep is no longer with the company and their position has not been filled for quite a while.  I've pressed our Meraki reseller for information on a variety of questions and they keep telling me that they are unable to get anyone at Meraki to respond.  We have 34 MX60s that are reaching end of support this year.  We ordered MX67s to replace them and now find ourselves in need of more.  Our reseller tells us that the current availability date they are seeing is next year!  So I'm wondering what is going on?  I can certainly understand that the lockdowns in China are causing huge problems but I'm struggling to understand the total lack of communication.  All of these things make me wonder if Meraki is not planning to continue operations?   Is anyone else facing end of support on MX60s without a solution?  Is it really not possible to get any more MX67s before the MX60s go end of support?  Is there any communication to customers on what we can expect in terms of hardware availability?  Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can reach someone working at Meraki who can help us understand what the future of hardware availability is currently expected to be?

 

I'm a huge fan of Meraki but the inability to get any information from our reseller or Meraki is giving me concerns.

 

Thanks,

 

Nemo

1 Accepted Solution
Chad_Yates
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

If you are not getting a response from your Meraki rep please pm me the contact and I can try and find the appropriate team to contact you.

My suggestion is to get your orders in with the partner of choice immediately as lead times are changing daily.  When you place the order for say an MX67 do an order for each MX67 not an order for 50 units as that will most likely take the full lead time.  I had an MX68W order last Thursday for 1 unit with a lead time of 100 days ship in 3 days.  For smaller orders you can see units ship very quickly.

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4 Replies 4
PhilipDAth
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

What country are you in?

 

I work for a reseller as well.  Basically, we are not expecting to get any more kit shipments this year for new orders.  We let any customer looking to order kit they won't get it this year.  Earlier in the year we got customers we knew who wanted projects done to already everything in advance, so those ones are all sorted.

 

The labour market has been really tight in most parts of the world, and this is also affecting Meraki.  It is really hard to find people to fulfil positions.

Most economies went into rampant money printing over the COVID issue, which lead to low unemployment.  But over the next 12 months, inflation should really grip the world, unemployment will rise, and it will become much easier to fill those vacant jobs (what's left of them).

 

Your reseller should be logging into the Meraki Partner portal:

https://www.merakipartners.com/ 

From there, your reseller can look up shipping timeframes and answer most of the questions you have.

 

End of support for MX60s is  October 24 2022, so weather you will get the MX67s before then will depend on how much earlier in the year you placed the order.  it may be you left placing the order a little late.

 

It is not likely that the MX60s will suddenly stop working, so you should be fine - just not as comfortable as if you had the kit arrive beforehand.

 

What I have done for some of my customers who would otherwise be facing a network shutdown because their existing licence is expiring before their new kit and licences turn up is to arrange for them to get extended trial licences so that their existing system will continue working.  I would wait till your existing licences have just expired before doing this.

Once you existing licences have expired, you can also open a support case, attach proof of purchase, and support can extend the shutdown date by an additional 30 days to buy you some more time while you wait for everything to arrive as well.

DarrenOC
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

The lead times on some product sku’s is insane but there are some MXs that are available on a shorter lead time. These look to be the higher spec models however.

 

Meraki isn’t going anywhere.  This is a global issue and is affecting all verticals.

 

Adapt and overcome and get creative.

Darren OConnor | doconnor@resalire.co.uk
https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenoconnor/

I'm not an employee of Cisco/Meraki. My posts are based on Meraki best practice and what has worked for me in the field.
Nemo
Here to help

Thanks for the replies but none of this is encouraging for me.  I'm in the US to answer your question and our reseller does have access to the dashboard.  But if I'm hearing correctly; you are also not seeing any availability for MX67s for this year?  I can understand the opinion that we should have ordered earlier, however I still find no availability in this year to be problematic. Unfortunately our time machine is on the fritz so I'm not able to go back and place an earlier order.  I also appreciate the suggestion to be creative and adapt.  This is part of the reason I'm asking questions here.   Our contacts at Meraki have disappeared and I'm trying to find a creative approach to engage in a conversation on how we can address our needs.  

 

One possible approach that might help us and other customers would be to extend support for the MX60s.  Perhaps even offering an option to pay for extended support?  Can anyone from Meraki speak that that option?  I don't know what to expect in terms of functionality when we reach end of support but even if the devices continue to work we still face challenges with PCI compliance.  Since our credit card transactions travel through our MX appliances, the appliances are part of our card data environment.  My understanding is that PCI compliance will require that equipment that is part of the CDE is currently supported.  So having our MX60s go unsupported by Meraki while we are unable to purchase MX67s is a problem for us.  Deploying higher end devices is not the most desirable option due to excessive cost.  That puts us in a situation of having to consider using equipment from other manufacturers and then configure non-meraki peer vpn connections which I would really rather not do.  So without any encouraging information about when we could see availability on hardware we will have to give consideration to abandoning the Meraki platform.  We have 67 MX appliances in our network so replacing all of those is a big hit as well but I don't see how I can plan for the future with a platform that is not able to supply hardware or options for existing customers.  

 

How about it Meraki, any chance of offering extended support on MX60s to get us through this (hopefully) temporary product availability shortage?  

Chad_Yates
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

If you are not getting a response from your Meraki rep please pm me the contact and I can try and find the appropriate team to contact you.

My suggestion is to get your orders in with the partner of choice immediately as lead times are changing daily.  When you place the order for say an MX67 do an order for each MX67 not an order for 50 units as that will most likely take the full lead time.  I had an MX68W order last Thursday for 1 unit with a lead time of 100 days ship in 3 days.  For smaller orders you can see units ship very quickly.

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