Cisco Wireless Vs. Meraki

[Rprouty]

I am looking at expanding our wireless presence in several different remote sites and head quarters. We currently have 25 Cisco APs deployed. I intend to go with a Cisco 5508 WLC and various APs for indoor and outdoor use. We are a complete Cisco shop with switches, ASAs and IPS. Our future plans include deploying Cisco ICE as well. But in discussion with other busniess unit managers I was hit with a suggestion to look at Meraki. Why would I want to deploy Meraki and are there any significant Pros or Cons in anyone else's experience? Thanks in advance.

[bossman]

@Rprouty:

 

Meraki are in fact Cisco as they bought them out, they are still running as Meraki but under the Cisco label as far as I am aware,

 

https://meraki.cisco.com/

 

Cisco buys Meraki for $1.2 billion: 5 reasons the deal makes sense | ZDNet

 

Happy days

[Rprouty]

@bossman Thanks for the reply. I know Cisco bought Meraki but that does not mean that it will integrate with other Cisco products. Too, there must be some difference since they are two different products.

[DMcCoy]

The 5508 is old and nasty. It's WLAN firewall ACLs are *stateless*, return rules are not something I've had to do for a very long time.

[Gaz]

Get some Meraki access points on Trial, you'll soon be convinced.

[Rprouty]

Do the Meraki's tie in with Cisco's ICE and LAN management software?

[bjsvec]

Meraki is very different than traditional Cisco, but in a good way Yes it integrates with ISE: https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2014/05/got-ise/

Sign up and attend a webinar to get a free trial AP with 3 year license to keep or if you are getting serious trial some quantity of gear.

Here is link: http://goo.gl/05SXsl

[Gaz]

Oh dear the blog title has a familiar sound to a famous internet site.

[bjsvec]

Haha, didn't notice that.