Meraki switches up the networking game

I've been talking to many of you about Meraki for several years now.  My appreciation of this company and what they were going to mean to the networking market has been solid since day 1.  They understood the Cloud before it became a buzzword, and defined a way to make it help IT professionals make their jobs easier.  Are they perfect?  No.  But then for those of you dealing with Cisco, HP, Juniper and other, lack of perfection is something you understand.  If you haven't jumped over to the section of this blog and signed up for one of their webinars, do so now.  You can get a free enterprise access point for just attending.

The reason I'm bringing Meraki up again, is that yesterday they announced new networking products yesterday.  Products to tackle your datacenter...not only their cloud-controlled MX Security Appliances, but their new MS switches that are cloud-controlled as well.  Utilizing the same setup as their wireless cloud controllers, Meraki's new switches allow you to access how each individual switch is controlled from anywhere with web access (including your smartphone)...giving you the ability to handle multiple sites from one location with ease.  Actually though, being the switch-hound that I am, I love the built in cable testing, monitoring and alerts...because nothing is more fun than going out to test ports and cables on a switch that's acting wonky.

The big win here revolves around the MX Security Appliance line.  Note that these were routers, but they've expanded their capabilities to be so much more than just ONE thing.  Rather than have 6 individual devices, wouldn't you rather have one?  So instead of the single branch router, firewall, site-to-site vpn manager, content filter, load balancer and WAN accelerator...you can have one MX Security Appliance?  They have models designed for small offices (1-20), medium offices (20-250), or enterprise (250-10,000 users).

Look at this MX400...nice, simple, and directly something that every company that has more than 250 users can use.



Am I excited about this?  Of course.  It's a step in the right direction for Meraki, but most importantly it's going to force Cisco, HP and other manufacturers to start thinking differently about how their products are placed...because they can't buy Meraki out from under their primary investor, Google.

Go here now and sign up for the webinar next week on the 24th to learn more about their new networking products.  Trust me, I know how well these folks treat their customers...I think you'll be in for a good treat.

 

ioSafe – Disaster Proof Hardware and Data Recovery

Disaster Recovery (DR) is something that we all need to plan for…because if you’re not totally secure in your plan, and disaster strikes, it can almost undo a company entirely.  Statistics say that 80-90% of companies who suffers a major data loss will close within a year. (DTI/PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2004)  Couple that with the fact that 30% of small businesses in the US are affected by natural disasters (fire, flood, etc.)…there is a way around that kind of risk if it concerns you.

The folks at ioSafe have produced a series of drives that are fireproof and waterproof, up to certain extremes.  They like to call this the “black box” for your data…to further help insure its safety.  We all know that data retrieval companies charge a lot of money to bring back your data…and I would prefer to be better prepared than to have to pay later to fix something I could have helped prevent.

This may not apply to all of you, but for a little bit higher price than a normal drive, you can have a bit more piece of mind than before.  A friend of mine had a house fire a couple years back, and it devastated all of the things he had…except for everything he put in his fireproof safe.  Papers, documents, photos, even money and jewelry were safe there.  That little $400 investment saved him a small fortune.  Nothing says you can’t prepare for something like this in the IT world as well…here’s a solution for $220.  Have questions?  Give us a call right now and let’s talk about your DR plan. J