Cisco acquires Meraki: how 3 guys from MIT transformed the networking industry | Hacker News Reader

Cisco acquires Meraki: how 3 guys from MIT transformed the networking industry

sequoiacapital.tumblr.com

63 pointshornbaker13 comments

Great news for the Meraki team, who have made a wonderful product. Unfortunately it means I need to find another wifi vendor, as my company chose to resell Meraki specifically to counter Cisco's portfolio.

Do you mind explaining that last part?

We're not a Cisco partner, so we became a Meraki reseller in order to be able to provide wireless gear. Now that Cisco has bought them, we'll have to look for another vendor as we're still not going to be a Cisco partner. We're the "not Cisco" guys, Juniper for switching, HP for servers, etc.

That's exactly why Cisco had to buy them. They don't want to lose partner channel sales to companies that won't push Cisco. I expect there are a lot of parties in that boat or at least a very similar one.

Once you've made the step to not buy Cisco for one product the dam is breached and all your purchasing decisions that would otherwise default to Cisco are up for negotiations and alternatives.

This is a strategy that I've been told is effective in getting acquired. If your business is a huge pain in the ass to the incumbent's status quo, then said incumbent will acquire you; they won't shut the product down explicitly, but it'll lead a marginalized existence thereafter.

Madsushi, I feel your pain. That sucks when the big boys try and make a squeeze play on you. Have you found another vendor?

>Quick: when was the last time you plugged in an Ethernet cable?

If I haven't plugged in my ethernet cable in a while, can't it just mean that my wired network is running smoothly?

discussion is here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4802147

So what exactly does this mean for Meraki and its customers?

See: http://www.meraki.com/company/cisco-acquisition-faq

In essence, everything is supposed to go on as before. What is really going to happen remains to be seen. Money changes everything, and there's a huge difference in company cultures between Cisco and Meraki.

What do they mean by multitenancy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitenancy - this?

Yes. This refers to the cloud controller, which all Meraki devices connect to, as opposed to the traditional appliance/software that you install and host yourself for your own devices only.

Now those vulnerabilities placed by design will NEVER be fixed...

So much for those late night chats with the engineers.

Those management packets will forever remain unencrypted... ;-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com