What’s left? The small and home businesses! Meraki released a new line of access points aimed for the small shops called Meraki Go.
By the tap of an app on a mobile phone, a wireless network can be live within minutes. Taking some features from their enterprise dashboard, a business owner can set some basic application thresholds, security, and other settings.
Using the strength of the brand name and simple dashboard, Meraki is enticing users with competitive pricing on the Go access points.
This is targeted to really small businesses, no more than 10 people or 20 devices. The critical piece will be the simplicity of the app in configuring the network.
The problem will be in troubleshooting. I don’t see how a small IT shop can help manage the wireless network unless they’re sharing credentials with the owner or taking over the installation completely.
But is this a path Meraki should be taking? Creating another product line? Meraki should be focusing on making the current offering better, developing more APIs, improving the hardware, AP antenna offerings, I can go on.
I’ll say I’m not sure about this direction. It will pull resources away from their enterprise products. But knowing Meraki and Cisco, there’s a large customer base worth taking.
