Cisco offers Meraki Systems Manager (SM), an enterprise mobility management platform supporting the monitoring, provisioning and securing of mobile devices across an enterprise network.
N/A
Trend Micro Mobile Security for Enterprises
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Trend Micro Mobile Security for Enterprises os a mobile device management (MDM) application, available standalone or part of the Trend Micro Smart Protection Suite.
The free tier of Meraki SM was excellent and we used it for a few years. We now use the paid version. Meraki SM is excellent for schools that need to manage large amounts of iPads without needing to maintain physical contact with them. We are a small primary school on a single site however Meraki SM is able to handle larger sites. Devices are able to be configured so that the permissions are automatically set depending on the current user, or the current location. This allows for excellent customization. In my experience, Meraki SM works best when used with iPads. It does have some features for managing other devices but I have not used it for this.
Mobile Security can be applied to any business and is relevant to all business today. The importance of controlling the endpoint cannot be emphasised enough especially with the rapid growth of PII laws across the globe. Looking at the applications, Mobile Security not the only reason for the rating but rather the total ecosystem you get with Trend. It must be noted that I was a fiercely opposed to Trend but once I seen this Ecosystem in place and working, with the people backing it, I am happy to say that I was wrong. Buzzwords / bragging rights aside I would rather have Trend defending my infrastructure than any other brand.
Limited ability for "command line" functions. For example, we had a laptop that was stolen and showed to be online, but we could not wipe it. We were able to access a command prompt, but it would not accept DISKPART or FORMAT commands to try and make the PC unusable.
The GPS location is not terribly accurate and frequently it "guesses" location based off of an IP address rather than actually activating the GPS on the device. This makes tracking lost/stolen devices very difficult.
Difficulty getting devices to correctly show their status in the dashboard. For example, I can have a PC that is online and connected to the Internet, but shows to be offline in the dashboard. Only after refreshing many times would it indicate that the PC was actually online, thus allowing me to administer it.
It has is easy to use overall and is very powerful. The learning curve for the system is very small and I have found it easy to train members of our team to use it. It can fit any size organization and the support is excellent. The ROI is well worth it. If you have a multiplatform ecosystem, this tool is near perfect.
We have found that Cisco Meraki has always had very good customer support. In the rare case, when we have needed assistance they have always been quick to respond and solve the issue.
It was the most affordable and provided our company with the features we needed. Even after multiple re-evaluations, we were still able to justify the on-going use of Cisco Meraki SM over the the more expensive options. The others provide some more features, but Meraki provides the most features a growing business needs at an affordable price.
Its not on the individual points where Trend stands out but the holistic security you get. In general other vendors buy solutions, sell then integrate into their product portfolio. This approach which leads to installation and interoperability issues as well as adding more screens to watch for the real life view on the endpoint. Trend, in my experience, do not launch immature applications to market and when it comes out it works well with the other Trend applications in the estate, it plays nice with others also.
Pretty much anywhere you have internet you can access the dashboard. Obviously, the device you are setting up or trying to push settings to will need to be on the internet in some way or another. Luckily if you don't have Wi-Fi accessible, most mobile device will be able to connect via cellular. Which means you can configure remotely from pretty much anywhere.
Our immediate take away has been a savings of thousands a year in MDM fees. We were paying around $3.00 a device with our previous MDM and our average with Meraki is about $1.88 per device. That while providing far more functionality than our previous provider.
