Getting Acquainted with a Meraki Enterprise Agreement

All About Meraki Enterprise Agreements

The Meraki Enterprise Agreement is a license agreement for customers who spend significantly more on Meraki hardware than the typical SMB customer. In addition to a long-term commitment to Meraki, the Meraki Enterprise Agreement includes an agreement to pay maintenance fees on the existing Meraki hardware for the entire contract term with an up-front payment on the entire duration of the contract. The contracts are 3, 5, 7 or 10 years in length, and typically include at least 3,000 access points . Although additional access points can be added to the ECMP license at any time and after the initial agreement is signed, the original fleet or initial "tranche" must exist before the ECMP agreement is signed. These agreements are signed by Fortune1000 and Fortune500 companies. We anticipate additional qualified businesses will be added as the recently announced Meraki Enterprise License agreements continue to be deployed in 2016 and 2017.

Features of Meraki Enterprise Agreements

At the core of the Meraki cloud-managed infrastructure is cloud-managed platforms, seamless security integrations, and a number of support options. Features of the Meraki Enterprise Agreement for a customer include:
-Centralized cloud-managed platform
-Wireless LAN (WLAN), switching, routing for both the WAN and Edge, Security, cellular connectivity
-Ability to purchase and deploy Meraki technologies as one unified purchase or in a phased rollout
-Knowledgeable support specialists available day or night
-Automatic updates: Meraki devices receive auto-updates, including firmware updates and license renewals, without customer involvement
-Ability to schedule software updates
-Technical support through the Cisco Networking Academy (Cisco Certified Packet Tracer and CCNA Routing and Switching)
-Simple system management and budget forecast with the ability to select subscription terms through year 1-5
-Visibility: IT Operations can view usage statistics and user behaviors to assist business decisions
-Enhanced security: security policies are standardized across the entire organization
-Dedicated Meraki team in second location to provide continual network support
-Device lifecycle management performed by Meraki
-One web dashboard for application and end user visibility and management
Automatic License Renewal
The Meraki Enterprise Agreements offer the convenience of automatic license renewals and serial number to dashboard association. Go beyond MC software as a service model of one year licenses, and follow Meraki through the next 2, 3, 4 or 5 years with a single agreement. This provides an advantage of one renewal process, budget planning ahead of time, and cost savings versus purchasing individually.

Advantages of Opting for a Meraki Enterprise Agreement

The Meraki Enterprise Agreement is an appealing alternative for enterprises looking for a predictable, manageable and scalable cost structure. Most companies agree that the behavior of today’s workers dictate a need for mobility, indoor and outdoor tracking, segmentation, policy controls, and programmability. The standard approach would have been to deploy multiple vendors for wired/wireless/wide area networks/stacked switches/etc.
Putting all the above components into a single Meraki line means no more juggling multiple vendor contracts, pricing models, or discount schedules. It becomes much simpler to understand your pricing model and coverage. Most companies will find they are spending less over multiple years while getting more functionality from Meraki. In addition, most enterprises will find their acquisition costs are lower.
Consolidation to a single vendor provides advantages including: In addition, there are many intuitive dashboards available for a Meraki customer. Yes, there is a fairly robust command line that can be utilized. But that’s not the reality for most enterprises. Ease of use is a major factor in our current economic environment. Cloud-based infrastructure management is now commonplace and refreshing for enterprises. Having the ability to quickly and correctly interpret graphs and tables to make fast, informed decisions about network operation is crucial.
Any enterprise migrating or growing will benefit from the Meraki consistent API (application program interface). No learning curve, no new skills needed, just the same tools and flexibility you have experienced before with a single interface. Do you travel between office, branch, or data centers? Then centrally managed, rapidly deployed, extensive API support products will save you time.

Comparison of Meraki Enterprise Agreement Vs Other Offerings

When comparing the Meraki enterprise agreement with other solutions on the market, the competitive landscape looks relatively straightforward until you realize this analysis is subjective to an organization’s particular situation. Most of the other options are solutions that focus on an individual vendor or product line. Cisco Meraki, however, occupies a unique space in the market where multiple products are included in a single contract umbrella. All access points, switches, security appliances, and WAN connectivity can be bundled into one document with automatic license renewals.
There are compelling advantages to this streamlined approach, although its value most likely depends on the size of your organization. For establishments with hundreds of security appliances, hundreds of switches, and hundreds of access points, eliminating the need to track multiple product licenses is a major benefit. Even for smaller organizations, one benefit to a Meraki enterprise agreement is removing a single point of contact for all concerns – meaning if anything goes wrong somewhere within the organization’s Meraki network, Cisco can be alerted and track the source of the issue.
However, Cisco’s approach with Meraki is not everyone’s cup of tea. Other MSPs offer a very granular pay-as-you-go approach where enterprises license each device as they grow and install new equipment. For example, consider a manufacturer that starts with a switch and five access points. They can then buy another five access points once they decide to open a new location instead of buying 10 access points today for a future location that hasn’t yet been approved. Organizations that need the additional flexibility to procure devices in the future are better suited with a pay-as-you-go approach as these are some of the top Meraki alternatives.
Another advantage to the pay-as-you-go method is the possibility of more durable lock-in agreements. A single vendor can tie their services to a certain product line but fewer vendors are going to agree to an ironclad agreement if they are only offering software management tools for three or five product lines. On the contrary, buying five switches from Cisco’s one competitor then moving everything over to Meraki would be a painful expat experience at best. For this reason, Cisco’s Meraki portfolio agreement can provide competitive advantage for those who only want to engage with the Cisco brand.

How to Implement a Meraki Enterprise Agreement

The steps to implementing a Meraki Enterprise Agreement are simple:
Step One: Provide the Enterprise Account Manager with the current license file exports, Sales Orders for active billing sites and any additional information regarding Active Directory synchronization and Cloud-Auth or purchased guest access requirements.
Step Two: In most cases, an email will be sent back containing an initiation date for the EA and any necessary information for expected cloud infrastructure changes that the Managed Service Provider will need to make in order to successfully implement the EA (such as Active Directory Synchronization and/or the Meraki Cloud-Auth process.
Step Three: Complete the current license file export to identify abandoned licenses by site and determine if there are other license types that could be consolidated within the EA. After determining the best course of action, confirm with the Account Manager that the desired actions can be successfully achieved through the EA.
Step Four: Site any needed network changes and alerts, and as necessary , prepare the infrastructure accordingly. An example of a simple change may be the reallocation of security appliance license keys, such as the replacement of a traditional appliance with a Meraki virtual appliance. In some cases, more complex wireless changes may be needed, such as updating the location of network access points, performing a heat map to determine the best position for Meraki access points, or replacing bad hardware. After the infrastructure has been changed as necessary, the Transition of the license(s) can be performed. Sometimes this process can involve hours of troubleshooting just to change a single license from one location to another, and the cause identification can vary. It is because of this high possibility of failure in part, that the need for a highly available system is necessary. The Meraki Enterprise Agreement is not an off-the-shelf method for providing a standard or Layer 3 solution on a highly available network such as would be expected out of FortiOS or Cisco IOS. Some users require further, even potentially custom development beyond the vanilla Meraki deployment in order to succeed.

Case History of Successful Deployments of Meraki

Several organizations have successfully implemented the Meraki enterprise agreement model, with statistically significant results. While there are many siloed networks that can be managed by individual network administrators at a medium or large organization, Meraki networks resemble a single seamless unit that has very high efficiency in monitoring, troubleshooting and maintenance for all devices. Here are a few case studies of success stories with Meraki enterprise agreements that are highly relevant:
A national Not for Profit organization has offices throughout Australia and New Zealand. The Head of IT was struggling with rising costs of maintenance, network management and support of their firewall and Wi-Fi networks. He turned to Meraki to lower costs and boost efficiencies. The organization previously required a third party IT managed service provider to manage the network solution. The level of service provided was satisfactory, and the location of network engineers was critical. The provider had 250 network engineers across 54 countries. The problem they were facing was that they didn’t have enough engineers in Australia and New Zealand. They had a small number of engineers in these markets that they were feeding their international work to, but it was not efficient. The Head of IT negotiated an enterprise agreement with one vendor and went out to bid for the firewall and Wi-Fi equipment. He had two main requirements for this agreement: single point of contact with one continuous support service; and one subscription to download firmware for firewall and Wi-Fi software upgrades. After careful consideration of potential suppliers with Cisco Meraki, they were awarded the contract. This agreement proved to be much more cost effective, not to mention easier for staff to manage.
A multinational manufacturing company headquartered in Germany has production facilities in Australia, Europe and China. The company is committed to expanding its worldwide presence and is dependent on a resilient and reliable network infrastructure. The company’s strategy for 2015 was to replace its legacy switch and router network with more sophisticated technology. Meraki was selected as the preferred technology because of total cost of ownership, ease of integration and ongoing management of the new network. As a result, the company has seen a 25% reduction in the overall cost of the switch, routing and Wi-Fi solution, compared with the existing technology. The simplicity of the administration model after the integration has helped the company’s IT team increase IT staff productivity by 33%.
The Danish Ministry of Transport and Construction was looking for a way to simplify the telephone system for their Head Office. The Ministry changed its phone system from Analog/Digital switch board technology and moved to SIP Trunking from the national telephone operator. SIP services were delivered from the national operator with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) provider. The provider was unable to deliver the SIP trunk quality that was promised and the Ministry faced frequent outages. The Ministry decided to change the phone system to heavily rely on SIP trunking. The Ministry decided to go with Cisco Meraki as the preferred supplier after very careful selection. All existing Analog/Digital endpoints were switched to IP phone connectivity, which removed the requirement for the CFO to manage an aging PSTN environment. The CIO now manages the entire phone portfolio from a single dashboard—easy to set up and use. The simplicity of the administration model post integration helped the CFO see a 32% reduction in monthly telecommunications services.

Queries Answered on FAQs on Meraki Agreements

Some of the most common questions I hear from clients and other tech and legal professionals relating to the Meraki Enterprise Agreement include the following:
Can’t I still go to Cisco.com to get a Meraki Quote and Cisco Terms and Conditions?
Yes, for now (assuming you have a Cisco account). However, Cisco is transitioning to the Meraki Enterprise Agreement as the standard terms and conditions for Meraki purchases.
Why should I sign the new Meraki Enterprise Agreement, rather than continuing with the Cisco terms?
There are a few main reasons to consider:
Will Cisco support me if I opt for a standalone Meraki purchase?
Cisco will, but it’s not clear for how long. Cisco is clearly investing significant resources into its Cisco DNA software, which is cloud-based with many of the same functions that Meraki offers . Cisco’s focus on Cisco DNA will likely lead to a diminished focus on traditional Meraki purchases. In addition, Cisco is going to stop allowing linear upgrades of these following the end of the current subscription term:
What does the Per-Outlet fee mean?
An outlet, as described in Section 1 of the Enterprise Agreement, refers to an IP address in the Meraki dashboard hierarchy. So, for example, if you are assigning IP addresses to devices in a particular location or VLAN, the first address in the space you assign could be the first outlet. This will be the start of that range of addresses. Any time the number of outlets changes, the customer needs to contact Cisco to either deactivate a license or add an additional license depending on whether you have increased or reduced the number of outlets.