Item: Cisco Meraki MX
Rating: 9
Author: Dakota Snow

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MX

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

So we use it as our primary internal firewall for our organization. And it is really simplified and streamlined for us. When we went to install the MX appliance, it was really easy to onboard and bring into our current organization policies into the MX. We operate with a very small team, so it makes it easy for just a few people to be able to manage a large organization.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Ease of use. It makes it acceptable or accessible for all skill set levels to be able to get in and manage an enterprise-grade firewall appliance without having to go into any CLIs or anything. You can do it all from the cloud interface dashboard and just simply create your configurations.

Cons

The Cisco Meraki product line and especially the MXs is great in their functionality where they make it really easy to use and really simplify a lot of things. I do feel that some of the more advanced features that some bigger organizations really need are lacking the ability to still have access to a command prompt to do custom configurations and stuff like that.

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Meraki MX delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Meraki MX's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Meraki MX live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Meraki MX go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Meraki MX again?

Yes

Return on Investment

Simplified Management

We run a very lean IT department where we only actually have three of us managing the entire organization's IT infrastructure. So just the ease of use of the Cisco Meraki dashboard makes it really easy for the three of us to manage our large deployment of MXs we have out in the field.

Integrations with other Cisco products

Cisco Catalyst Switches

They're pretty simple. They're just kind of plug and play.

Scalability

Because you're able to configure them even before you unbox them, before they arrive on site. And it doesn't require you to go onsite to configure a device. You can configure it, you can ship it out directly from the manufacturer or your vendor and have it arrive. Just have someone be able to plug it in and it just works. So it's a really great product.

Alternatives Considered

I've used the entire Cisco Meraki stack extensively and really enjoy all their products. I really like the MX because Cisco Meraki goes above and beyond making it really simple to deploy a very sophisticated, strong firewall solution.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think the best-suited dislocations are scenarios for this is rapid deployment. You can completely configure the product before it even arrives on site, and that way once it is connected, it will automatically download its configuration and start working as intended. Some of the downfalls is depending on where you're deploying the product, you might have issues connecting it depending on your connection to the internet getting it to download that configuration. And since you're lacking a command prompt to be able to log in is do custom configurations really without that internet access. You kind of can be stuck in some scenarios.

Cisco Meraki MX Feature Ratings

Comments

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Cisco Meraki MX Review