There is a common misconception that Cisco technology is only for large corporations. Today we want to change your mind on this. In the last few years, Cisco has been focussing much of their effort on developing a portfolio in Collaboration, Networking and Security built for small and medium-sized businesses. These Cisco small business solutions are designed to directly benefit the way that smaller businesses operate whilst integrating Cisco’s renowned and award-winning hardware and software. The ability to implement affordable Cisco small business solutions has enabled thousands of firms across the globe to streamline operations, reduce costs, and rapidly grow their business; particularly in the case of small business networking.

Cisco was built upon the success of their networking products t hat were extremely revolutionary when they first hit the market. To this day, Cisco has remained a frontrunner in this industry and their networking portfolio has grown and improved substantially. In the last few years, we have seen a huge transformation in this market where the products are becoming software based as opposed to buying a physical box. This is a great opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses as the nature of software means you can purchase these fantastic products for a lower price based on your size. Here is how Cisco can help you when it comes to networking:

With small businesses, there is a definite favourite when it comes to Cisco networking solutions, Cisco Meraki. Meraki is a firm that Cisco acquired in 2012 that deliver products that focus heavily on ease of deployment and management. They offer a cloud-based management portal that allows you to manage your entire network through just one screen wherever you are located in the world, with an extremely intuitive GUI platform. It’s revolutionary technology.

For Cisco Meraki, one of their most popular set of products is the MS-series switches. The management aspect of these switches is why they garner so much attention in the market and especially among small to medium sized businesses. From a simple web browser, administrators of the network can rapidly manage, configure, and troubleshoot switches wherever they are. Every Meraki switch is automatically and closely monitored by Cisco from the cloud. This includes consistent testing for WAN connectivity, cable failures and much more. As soon as an issue is detected, you will be instantly notified of what the problem is and given valuable diagnostics to assist you in troubleshooting.

If you want to read a dedicated article on Cisco Meraki switches please click here.

You can learn more about Meraki Switches in this short video:

Another area of small business networking where Meraki excels is Wireless LAN or Wi-Fi. Meraki’s range of 100% cloud managed access points are great, similarly to the switches, for fast deployment, simplified administration, and richer visibility.

Once again, the main selling point of the Meraki Wi-Fi solution and their small business networking portfolio is their revolutionary management portfolio. When it comes to Meraki Wireless Lan the visibility you can into your network truly is outstanding. It’s built for simplicity and so everything on the platform is fully colour-coded meaning management and troubleshooting is a breeze.

Cisco Meraki Access Points are built from the highest grade components and optimised carefully to provide a seamless user experience. There are several benefits to using superior components including faster connections, greater user capacity, wider coverage and a drastically reduced problem occurrence. This Meraki Wireless LAN solution will even improve with time after you buy it. This is due to Cisco’s dedication to regular feature enhancements and upgrades to show how much they value their customers. You will get seamless over-the-web upgrades that deliver significant new features to your access points and management portfolio, constantly increasing the value of your investment.

If you want to read a dedicated article on Cisco Meraki’s Wi-Fi solution please click here.

You can learn more about Meraki Wi-Fi in this video:

If you are a small or medium sized business looking to upgrade your networking infrastructure then we really do recommend considering Cisco Meraki. We have helped deploy these solutions for a number of our customers with great success. The ease of management has proved extremely popular as the GUI interface means anyone can perform requires tasks. The scalability of these solutions is also important to consider if you are planning to grow your small business as you can rapidly and inexpensively add more hardware as and where it’s needed.

Contact us here if you would like to speak to us about deploying a Meraki small business networking solution.