Johannesburg, 03 Jul 2015
Jurumani Solutions became the first certified Cisco Meraki Partner in South Africa last month when its lead solutions engineer completed the Certified Meraki Network Associate (CMNA) training in Paris, France.
"Jurumani has been a Meraki partner for almost four years now. While we know the Meraki technology inside out, we wanted to show our commitment to being the leading partner in sub Saharan Africa by completing the certification," said Ni"el Malan, Director for Cloud Solutions at Jurumani.
About Meraki
Meraki is a range of cloud-managed networking equipment, including UTM Firewalls, Ethernet Switches, WiFi APs and Mobile Device Management (MDM); a portfolio they call Cloud Networking. The solution is wrapped as an "Instant IT" offering, with all the management, reporting and control elements built-in and deployed instantly via the Cloud Dashboard.
"All the Meraki products are managed from a centralised secure Cloud Dashboard, a single-pane-of-glass for your entire network, which is what makes the Meraki solution so unique. No CLI, no software to install, no per-user or per-feature licensing. It's the way networking should be. Simple, easy-to-deploy, easy-to-manage. It is truly amazing, and a real game changer for Africa specifically," said a clearly passionate Malan.
IT for Skills Scarce Africa
A number of recent studies have shown that the information technology sector is one of the sectors with the biggest skills gap in South Africa. When you move up into Africa, the problem gets even worse, with specialist IP networking, security and WiFi skills hard to find. Currently this problem is solved by flying in the required skills as and when required.
With Meraki, the proximity of the specialist to the actual equipment becomes irrelevant. The configuration and management of the Meraki equipment is done entirely on the Cloud Dashboard, and is independent of the physical hardware.
When asked about the complexity of initial setup, and if that is different to ongoing management, Ni"el responded: "In many cases, we set up the entire customer network while the equipment is still en route from the manufacturer. When it arrives, you simply plug it in and within minutes the network is up and running. In terms of ongoing management, we manage networks for customers from Cape Town to Zambia, all from our offices in Midrand."
Free MDM for SMEs
The Meraki portfolio includes a number of industry leading capabilities to manage mobile devices from both a BYOD and Enterprise Mobility Management perspective.
Meraki's Systems Manager Enterprise is a cloud-based MDM solution, for which customers can sign-up for free, for the first 100 devices. "For the majority of SMMEs, this will be enough to cover all their devices, and offers an extremely powerful solution. Businesses can use this to automatically deploy e-mail settings, WiFi settings, apps and security settings to BYOD and company-owned devices. Track device locations, and wipe them of company data if they are lost or stolen. It supports Windows, OSX, IOS and Android, and it's great for asset management as well," Malan explained.
Share