Heart Broken after seeing the Forrester New Wave report

[SCC]

Hi Guys,

I have seen the forrester new wave : wireless solution, Q3 2019

Why Cisco Meraki Wireless is under Challengers ....This is not good for Meraki lovers.

what justificaiton shall i give to my clients that Meraki is still best. Becasue I love cisco Meraki products.

[PhilipDAth]

It says the report focused on "emerging technologies".  So some other vendors who have integrated other technologies like ZiggBee scored higher.

Those that just delivered WiFi didn't score so highly as a result.

[SCC]

But people are thinking who ever has seen this that we are selling Meraki solution which is not good enough and even expensive and has no good rating as well.

what should i tell those guys...pls advise.

[SCC]

Is there any kind of such report which says Meraki is best.

[PhilipDAth · Accepted solution]

The greatest probability is they will never seen the report, so I wouldn't worry about it.

[SCC]

Yup, Agreed.

[lpopejoy]

In any case, I would say it is still sad that a $150 AP out-performs a $650 AP:

https://alethea.in/wp-content/uploads/Ubiquiti_HD_Test_Report.pdf

[cmr]

@lpopejoy however Ubiquiti RMA is shocking; international postage fee to send, wait a week with no device, import duties and agent fees on replacement Vs get sent a new one and put the old one back in the box to be collected...

Also have you tried the Ubiquiti GUI, I use both and would choose Meraki every time if possible.

[DuskTilDawn]

@cmr That is a fair point, but the GUI is the last of my cares compared to performance and reliability! Also, Meraki cloud log doesn't actually log everything like Ubiquiti does (we are having clients disconnect and seemingly get blocked from the internet and the logs are not showing anything, our old Unifi AP logs showed everything).

We had Ubiquiti 3 years ago and it wasn't all rainbows and puppy dogs, but I'm starting to miss them over Meraki. The current set of firmware available (stable, RC stable and beta) are all causing disconnects and we can't downgrade to an older more reliable firmware because it's not allowed. Hopefully Meraki will fix the issue in the next year, but I'm not holding my breath.

[pjc]

" and we can't downgrade to an older more reliable firmware because it's not allowed "

Have you checked with support ?  I remember a couple of years ago they gave us the ability to roll back to a much earlier version long after that option had dissapered in the dashboard

[DuskTilDawn]

@pjc we've been working with support, but they say we can only use whats available in the dashboard as that is all they claim to have available to them. RIP.

[Uberseehandel]

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@cmr wrote:

@lpopejoy however Ubiquiti RMA is shocking; international postage fee to send, wait a week with no device, import duties and agent fees on replacement Vs get sent a new one and put the old one back in the box to be collected...

Also have you tried the Ubiquiti GUI, I use both and would choose Meraki every time if possible.

---

Frankly, you need to spend more time using and learning about the UiFi system, and less time moaning about it on another manufacturer's forum.

[cmr]

@Uberseehandel I have used it for over a year and despite learning it, still think the Meraki one is much easier to use.  Isn't that the purpose of managing through a GUI?

Each to their own though, the main point of my post was that raw performance is only one aspect that needs to be considered when choosing a network vendor.  For me reliability is first, ease of management second, support third.  Of course, this is not the same for everybody.

[GreenMan]

I reckon that the best way of selling anything to any business or organization is to fundamentally understand what they exist to deliver and how technology and information can help them do that more quickly, more efficiently and with better outcomes for their customers, their staff and their owners / stakeholders.  In other words - give them what they really need, by way of wireless connectivity, don't be a slave to anybody or organization who tries to suggest that one size fits all.  Your latest car magazine might tell you 'this Ferrari is the best car in the world', but if what you need to do is carry eight kids to the supermarket, it wouldn't be your choice.

New customers keep buying Meraki.   Existing Meraki customers keep renewing their licences...

[davidvan]

https://www.crn.com/slide-shows/networking/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-wired-wireless-lan-2019-aruba-...

[Brons2]

These reports such as Forrester and Gartner, are biased towards larger enterprises.  We had a CIO a while back who only wanted to purchase products from the Leaders quadrant in Gartner, suffice it to say that, it cost us a lot of money.  One size does not fit all.

Meraki is probably the easiest to manage solution that is out there.  I would sell your customers on that.  Or if they get riled up about Forrester, point them to the Gartner report where legacy Cisco and Meraki were not separated for purposes of the report.

Barring that, you could offer another product line if it's what your customers want.

[davidvan]

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45619319

[Limitless]

Maybe its a fact that companies are hungrier & are listening to their customers like Mist & Juniper.  Check out their API's and location with people who want to help. Only saying!

[Brons2]

Yes, the pace of innovation seems to me to have slowed since Cisco acquired Meraki.  But I still like the feature set generally speaking, it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Mist but it's effective for what we need.  If we all adopted the latest and greatest thing every time it came out we'd all be broke.

[Limitless]

I hear you but when we had a problem with location I got my usual case closed reply.  Mist surveyed the site plan, advised where they would place AP's to achieve location below 2.0m and replaced the Meraki for mist.  On 4 occasions we have had issues with the location. Our AP's where located as per the meraki standard and we aren't even within 20m in the raw data. Sent reports with data from our data scientists and they still responded with case closed.  Mist can achieve it and its only an integration so you can offer customers both depending on needs. Could honestly say have had no support or engagement in almost three years of building and selling a retail platform built on Meraki