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Meraki MDM - An Honest Analysis
June 25, 2018

Meraki MDM - An Honest Analysis

Mike Madsen | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Meraki Systems Manager

Currently Banyan uses Meraki Systems Manager to manage all of our iOS devices and our laptop and desktop computers. It is primarily used to provision the devices with apps and software but we also use it to remotely support our salespeople who are often out of state. One of our main products is an iOS app, and Meraki has allowed us to support our clients' iPads, keeping our app updated in a timely manner and all without our clients needing an Apple ID.

Previous to Meraki we had an MDM solution that was very limited in its ability. Meraki not only allows us to support our clients iPads but gave us unprecedented ability to support our internal people with remote assistance, meaning we no longer had to walk people through long and sometimes involved troubleshooting but can now simply login to their computer and help them directly. The funny thing is, we originally purchased Meraki simply to support our clients, but with the added functionality we've received from it, it has become invaluable to us on many other levels, including the aforementioned remote assistance ability.
  • App management is a very strong function. It makes app provisioning a snap without having to login with an Apple ID.
  • The remote login capability for computers really is a strong and capable function. Currently it is still in Beta but is such a strong and capable function I hope it is quickly made a standard function of the software.
  • The ability to geofence a device easily without having to jump through multiple hoops to do so has proved to be a fantastic function, very popular with our Enterprise level clients.
  • Currently the application addition to Meraki has gone through some changes that make it not as user friendly as it used to be but has improved some areas of the function such as easy of deployment.
  • It would be nice to have the ability to reset a users password from the control panel. This function is currently missing.
  • Some of the navigation within the panel is not the best. It is a little obscure at times where you need to go for certain functions. For instance, to manage users, instead of a nav feature just saying, Manager Users, you have to know to click on a link simply called, "General". This could be improved.
  • 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.
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.

For internal, remote support Meraki has been even more valuable. We often have sales people out of state and it has made supporting them a breeze!