Item: Cisco Meraki MX
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Meraki MX Firewalls

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Transitioning from traditional firewalls to Meraki branded firewalls was more of an opportunity to enhance "usability" while still maintaining the strong Cisco name. The ease of manageability and not having an army of CCNA's with firewall knowledge was made easier using Meraki MX Firewalls.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Instead of complex rule-based ACLs, Meraki simplifies the creation of access rules through its graphical interface.
Deployed with other Meraki-based products, Meraki MX Firewalls provide complete visibility across the network from end-point to core.
Support is much easier to work with and updates are much easier.

Cons

Integrating into non-Cisco or other networks sometimes is difficult. We had to call support to correct a connectivity issue.
Although you can request features, sometimes feature requests never materialize.

Return on Investment

Much less expensive from our original equipment, with less cost and time to maintain.
You don't need to have a ridiculously certified staff member to operate which lowers the cost related to employees.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco ASA, Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series and Fortinet FortiGate

Meraki was within our budget and fit the size of our organization.

Other Software Used

McAfee Endpoint Security, Bitdefender GravityZone, Cisco Umbrella

Likelihood to Recommend

I feel that Meraki equipment is excellent for a small organization. I am not so sure it has the robustness of a larger, more powerful firewall to run in large organizations. I think it will get there with the Cisco backing but at this time, there are better products for organizations of that size.

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