Actually attend at least 50% of the Meraki webinars and quarterlies I sign up for (usually work blows me out). Python, same as last year, learn it, use it. Keep sending heartfelt wishes to Meraki to improve some of its firewall management and rules.   ... View more

Immediate/live display of bandwidth usage on any MX or MS ports (MR would be nice but the first two are needful), if possible with available breakdown by type of traffic.   If it also gave us the ability to then filter the view to traffic on (say) an MX WAN port that is sourcing or sinking from a particular client or switch port and display that usage in real time, that would be icing on the pudding on the cake.   Most of my other wishes are capabilities, not dashboard items:  the ability to use arbitrary IP address ranges, not just CIDR; the ability to create 'groups' of addresses, address ranges, CIDR ranges, for use in rules, the ability to create groups of services/ports for use in rules so we don't have to create so many individual rules...  ... View more

I try to keep at least a small part of the company's focus on alternatives to the unfortunately mandated use of a certain large northwestern software company's not very secure operating systems and environments, and also the continued unfortunate tendencies to not even look at alternative products and to automatically purchase each new service, system, and application put out by said company with no competitive reviews (or for that matter, any kind of review).  In reality we can only continue to try and wrap those systems and applications with layers of security to offset their own lack of same.   I wish I could say we are using Meraki exclusively but there are too many limitations to the VPN support for some of our customers.  At other sites though we've put in partial (Cisco ASA/Meraki) or whole Meraki stacks with excellent results, especially with AMP service licensed, and expect to continue doing so for sites that don't have more involved VPN requirements.  In the future we are pressing for all sites to have AMP licensed and working on their perimeter firewall(s) because it really has proven to be a benefit to the sites that have it despite the high cost.  It remains a very hard sell for small customers because of the cost.   I would like to try the cameras, but so far no takers.  Physical security is not really a topic the company gets into. ... View more

(Not my entry)   The CEO read it in Gartner And said its the way we must go Hurrah for this new transformation Our old ways that worked really blow.   This new digital Transformation Will make all our processes slick No more manual operations That make our millennials sick!   The IT department had warned them Complexity rules this path And if we're not ever so careful we might just get bit in the ass...     (yeah, I know...)   But management can't be dissuaded And said "Gartner's showing the way!" "The deadline is closing in quickly" "Get it done or there'll be hell to pay!"   Now HR can check inventory And Maintenance sees the GL Our data's all stirred in together This new paradigm works so well!   Our CEO soon left this business His parachute golden deployed The government screams about HIPAA Our IT staff's soon unemployed   The new CEO came in breathless Said "Look whats in Gartner today!" "Get rid of these old crufty methods" "We're going to go this new way!"   ... View more

Digital Transformation first defined itself to me at a Compaq conference shortly after they purchased Digital Equipment Corporation and started more aggressive moves into the enterprise environment.  They called it "Zero Latency Enterprise", where all processes and functions, including human interaction inside the enterprise, expanding out to satellite locations, and with end customers, was completely digital, redundant, and centrally available.  The concept was that if a customer expressed interest in an item (via online, or at the time interactive kiosk or other physical terminal, or the early customer scanning devices folks thought might catch on), that information was immediately digested and made available to every level of the enterprise 'business intelligence' and CRM datastores; enough customers expressing said interest might trigger automatic inventory changes, as well as alerting about possible trends or fads, alerting store managers to 'feature' items on end-caps, or the ads department to make sure those items were in next weeks commercials or newspaper ads.   They used Disneyland as an example (and Disneyland has made a lot of changes that reflect ZLE, whether or not that came from Compaq).  The ride reservations, timers to go places so you didn't have to stand in line, forecasting things you might want because you bought particular tickets/entry tokens/whatever, to keep all the customers as happy as possible while minimizing costs of walkouts, improving sales (we have time to hit the food stand instead of waiting in line), etc. ZLE talked about magnetic stripe card or a portable PDA type device at the customer level, obviously no longer needed with current tech.    It was all quite interesting, though the complexity of what they were envisioning may be part of why Compaq got eaten by HP not long after and ZLE disappeared into the bit bucket  (a digital transformation of a trash can...).     So Digital Transformation, from this early ZLE concept to current, is about gathering as much data as possible about every aspect of the business environment and the people in it, and the people they work with, sell to, buy from, deal with, and optionally _might_ do any of those with in the future, as close to real time as possible, analyzing it, collating it, making it available to as many relevant people, processes, and systems as possible in coherent and usable form as close to real time as possible, so that it can be used to best prepare and position the business/organization to prosper.   Digital Transformation has also meant that many businesses are forced to change their methods and processes to work the way whatever package they purchase wants them to work.  It doesn't matter if your business has refined its procedures and methods for decades; if you go with a pre-package you must change a lot in order to squeeze into that new mold, otherwise you have to have the large IT departments of the past with considerable development staff and support costs... but then keep your long learned/earned methods.  The latter doesn't seem to get counted as "Digital Transformation" in current parlance; if you don't standardize on an 'industry standard' package or giant well known BI/CRM/etc service, then you're still stuck in the past.   ... View more

Swiper the Dog says hello from his (my) new Avatar  And after reading the fine print:   I have a new avatar! ... View more

Complete my initial Cisco/Meraki Express certifications Get my Z3C Teleworker set up at home, replacing the tired SonicWALL TZ100 we've had for years Use that to justify increasing our home cable connection bandwidth, since the gateway will be able to handle it Stream ALL THE THINGS! Update the non-Meraki site tunnel to work (different organizations...    work can't have my Z3C!      ) Update Python to current on the home Alphastation DS10  (running OpenVMS) and work's OpenVMS Integrity servers Use said Python to see if I can get the Dashboard API to work via this unlikely, but endlessly awesome platform. If it works, set up our work VMSCluster to do the Meraki monitoring so we're not depending on some silly PC  (monitoring platform should be as or more reliable than the objects being monitored)   (*)   (*) subject to available period of time when silly PCs don't break down for long enough to allow said work to occur... this is rare.   ... View more