Meraki MX Previous Solutions

AH
Production Operator at Al Ghurair Investments

We used the conventional Cisco routers.

View full review »
CB
Central Services Engineer at Liberty Technology

A medical provider had a terrible network going in. We swapped out all their old solutions: Fortinet switches and SonicWall Firewall routers. Sonic Firewall routers' user interface feels as if, with anything you do, that you could be lost at the next second. You don't feel like it is stable. It is very clunky and slow. So, we switched that out, and instantly saw, "We have loops here and bad traffic going this way." We started getting analytics on how we needed to route the network better and where we needed to put actual physical drops. They had a cable between two switches that should have been an aggregate cable or aggregate port, and it wasn't. It was just an Ethernet cable that was piping about a half or third of their organization's network, which was terrible.

A big deal with Meraki MX is phone systems. If you have to maintain a phone system with Cisco ASA, it is a lot harder than maintaining it with a Meraki switch due to the malleability of the Meraki switch, firewall, and router. Because you got to communicate with the phone gateway, and that all comes back on the Meraki firewall.

Usually, the military uses Palo Alto. I might have used Palo Alto at a different job, not this one. My experience with Palo Alto will be similar to any Cisco ASA device. The GUI is not there. You have to do everything with command line as well as rebuild Access tables. That is the only way to modify those things, which is not fun. It is not something that anyone wants to learn or go do. It always has that extra level of effort. Meraki MX removed that. 

Maintaining firewalls will never be joyful, but Meraki has made the quality of life for someone who has to maintain a firewall much better.

View full review »
Spencer Malmad - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Tech Exchange

I've previously used Juniper, Checkpoint and HP Aruba among others.

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Meraki MX
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Meraki MX. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Rohit Ghorpade - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud network engineer at Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd.

Meraki MX is the first SD-WAN solution I am using. I had done a PoC for Fortinet, but I don't know how the support is from Fortinet.

View full review »
Steve Richardson - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Digital KeepSafe, LLC

I have previously used Barracuda. For larger companies, such as banks and financial institutions, I use Barracuda firewalls. However, they are more complex. You have to have penetration testing. Every year we have penetration testing from external companies to make sure no one can get in because they have federal audits that come in and check banks. Barracuda is the better solution for this purpose, we've had great luck with them. We've always had perfect scores whenever we deploy them and we have external penetration tests. They have a 24-hour day, seven days week support similar to Meraki MX.

View full review »
SurendraSiddi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Enterprise Account Manager at Ninth Dimension IT Solutions (P) Ltd

I used to work with Cisco's standalone firewalls, such as the ASA and FTD firewalls. However, I am now predominantly working with the Meraki MX firewall.

Compared to other solutions, Meraki MX is easy to configure. We don't need to go for the CLI command prompt configurations. Everything is easy with Meraki MX since it has a completely dashboard-related configuration.

View full review »
ALFRED BABU - PeerSpot reviewer
System & Network Engineer at H COM

Previously, my company was using Sophos XG Firewall. My company switched from Sophos XG Firewall to Meraki MX. All our company's network devices are from Cisco, and with Meraki MX, we can actually add switches, routers, access points, and everything to the firewall, which in turn offers more stability and secures the network compared to Sophos XG Firewall. Sophos XG Firewall offered an IDPS firewall capable of stopping any kind of intrusion, but I was feeling worried about the switches and access point security. Since our contract with Sophos had expired, we moved to Meraki.

View full review »
MS
IT Manager at Caritas Baby Hosptial

I used the ADSL Cisco router.  It was a catastrophe due to limitations on users. Once we exceeded around 200 simultaneous users, we started seeing a lot of problems.

View full review »
TD
President at TJD Consulting Inc.

We previously used Fortinet FortiGate and Cisco ASA Firewall, we switched because Meraki MX offers ease of management. The Cisco and Fortinet firewalls are more complicated, requiring more knowledge and involvement to manage. 

View full review »
CM
Meraki Business Development Manager at Alef Nula a.s.

For networking and my personal use, Meraki MX is the first infrastructure I have experience with, but on a professional side, I use Cisco.

View full review »
RR
Network Systems Administrator at a non-tech company with 51-200 employees

We used to be an HPE shop. I pulled out all that equipment, and installed Meraki switches and firewalls. It’s been so nice. I have visibility into the network, as well as remote links.

View full review »
KS
IT-Systemadministrator at Laiqon AG
FT
IT Adviser/Manager with 51-200 employees

I previously used Cisco and I switched because of missing manageability.

I now use a central Sophos FW and this can be managed through the central AV and Protection Cloud Management if you use Sophos as AV client.

View full review »
PP
Supervisor of IT Infrastructure & Cybersecurity at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Previously, I managed Cisco ASA equipment and enjoyed these firewalls. The need to train other admins and deploy MSP clients was at the top of my list for switching to Meraki MX. The learning curve is much less steep for new security admins and the central dashboard allows collaborative efforts when admins are in different locations. Built-in change management makes it easy to see who made specific changes as changes are logged on the dashboard.

View full review »
MM
Senior Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

We sell the Sophos UTM solution to protect some of our customers. I am a certified Sophos architect and it is easier to set up than Meraki.

We are also resellers of FortiGate.

When it comes to reading the logs of other devices, it is much easier with Meraki, FortiGate, or even the Sophos XG firewall.

At the moment, all of the firewalls on the market are doing the same thing. Once you buy the license, it will cover everything.

View full review »
DA
IT Support Admin at KuehneAndNadel

We didn't have a firewall at all previously.

View full review »
JJ
DIRECTOR

Fortinet. We switched to Meraki because it lets you see what's happening in your LAN and WAN in a graphic and web environment. Our customers are very grateful because we let them log in to the Meraki and let them see their network activity.

View full review »
TK
COO at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees

We also have a Barracuda.

I worked with the previous, older router than was in the company and it was command-line driven. That was terrible, so I find that the Cisco Merki is a great improvement. Overall, I'm really happy with it, although I cannot compare it to any others.

My understanding is that all of the products have evolved from a command-line interface to being web-based and cloud-managed.

View full review »
PE
CFO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

Smaller devices: SonicWall, ZyXel, etc.

We switched to get the Auto VPN function and the brilliant administrator panel, where all devices are accessible from one place.

View full review »
it_user203934 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

I used Checkpoint, Cisco ASA, Palo Altos, Juniper. To configure the devices you need days, to spin up Meraki Firewall you need minutes.

View full review »
SF
Engineering Manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Yes. We used Cisco, Palo Alto, a bit of Fortinet, and others. Currently, we only provide Meraki and Meraki-related devices.

View full review »
MO
CEO at INNO VISIO

We did previously use a different solution. We switched because that solution wasn't stable. 

View full review »
LM
Network Security Engineer at TECHBASE

We are installing Sophos for clients as well. Because we had so many clients interested in the capabilities of the Meraki products, it was time for us to know more about the client needs and how we could help them. If they want everything integrated, like antivirus, the products are implemented differently and may be more fitting to the client's situation depending on the client's needs. 

In our organization, we only have one Meraki firewall. I bought an MX to explore using this product for customers.

View full review »
it_user1084710 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Administrator at AJINOMOTO-OMNICHEM

We previously used Cisco ASA. We switched because it was an all-in-one solution. With Cisco, we couldn't configure the ASA-1, so we needed special equipment. It became an expensive solution. Meraki is also expensive, but it's a little bit less expensive and it's easier to configure than Cisco ASA.

View full review »
ÚĐ
Cloud Networking at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Some older solutions which we had before, we converted to this solution and used old technology that was difficult to control.

View full review »
it_user1072938 - PeerSpot reviewer
LTE RF Optimization Sr. Engineer at Spectrum

I was using Cisco and FortiGate.

View full review »
it_user394371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Co-Founder at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We also use Meraki MR and Aerohive devices.

View full review »
JM
CISCO and AVAYA Product Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Our organization had a traditional WAN. We had routers to connect our branches, which was a very complex solution. 

Now, with Cisco Meraki MX84, we have a SD-WAN, and we only need Internet in all our branches. Thus, we have an easy solution to connect new branches and it is very fast.

View full review »
Buyer's Guide
Meraki MX
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Meraki MX. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.