Cisco Meraki SM

One of the scenarios where we can apply Cisco System Manager is when our company has the need to manage, monitor and support mobile devices and portable computing equipment, allowing us centralized management and remote support for devices. If we have devices apple system manager has more features. A scenario where it does not apply is when we have mobile devices that are not compatible with the SM software.

If you have an enterprise environment with a lot of iPads, Cisco Meraki SM is a great value for money solution with a ton of features and great support from the Meraki team.

For a company that provides devices to their employees to monitor data Usage and implement policies for business applications like Webex or Jabber. And also locate technician staff on the road servicing our clients. It is also useful for whitelisting apps and provide access to documents and tools for all users.

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.

[Cisco Meraki SM is] great for a small company to implement a decent security policy for mobile devices. This solution will cover most use cases however, it doesn’t quite have the feature set that MaaS360 or AirWatch has, but it’s way more affordable. It’s particularly great if you use Meraki to manage your network, but certainly not required.

Cisco Meraki Systems Manager is well suited to organizations that want a budget MDM that covers most needs. It complies with the security needs for some cybersecurity schemes such as Cyber Essentials Plus. It is well suited for organizations that are also looking for an easy-to-setup MDM with low training requirements.

The Cisco Meraki Systems Manager is a very cost-effective solution for MDM, if you can tolerate "less than stellar" ability to manage/track your devices. This would be excellent for small businesses, but for our needs it has been a cause of more frustration than benefit. When it does work as expected, it actually works pretty well.

Works well for a business heavily invested in Meraki. We can see all our switches, firewalls, and access points at a glance. It makes them all easy to configure and monitor. While we do wish some of the tools were better, the are sufficient to get an idea of what's happening in your network.

Small business like a veterinary office might not take advantage of all the features. If the shop is a 'set it and forget it' kind of place, it might not have too much value.

Like any other MDM software, Meraki Systems Manager does a good job of monitoring any number of mobile devices from laptops to cell phones. It does a good job for administrators to manage data, applications, restrictions, and numerous other aspects that a business needs to worry about on company owned devices that may not be seen by the IT department after deployment.

The System Manager by Cisco is a powerful tool and is very reliable. The ability to manage the entire network remotely, along with the ability to gain a perspective on overall system usage, is great. Meraki is consistently improving the manager and providing a wider array of products that are a part of their offerings. Support is excellent and it is a full-featured manager.

For client support Meraki has been invaluable. For internal support it has been even more invaluable however. I have to admit when we purchased Meraki it was with the intention of simply supporting our clients but we have ended up using it more for internal functionality than we have for client functionality, though it does fulfill a critical role in supporting our app. Because our app is iOS it could be problematic if we were asking all of our clients to update the app themselves, especially those who lock down the use of the iPad more than others. This way we support our app in a way that is almost invisible to the client.