X
Home & Office

Cisco's Meraki unit expands to the phone, launches Meraki MC

Meraki manages Wi-Fi deployments, cloud networks and IT. Next up: A voice platform.
Written by Larry Dignan, Contributor
meraki-mc.jpg

Cisco's Meraki unit, best known for managing enterprise wireless and cloud networks, is branching out to more end points with a voice platform.

In a blog post, Cisco said Meraki is evolving toward voice services based on customer requests. Meraki has evolved to manage information technology too.

Meraki's voice platform includes a simple phone that's managed from a cloud dashboard for remote changes. The phone, dubbed Meraki MC, is managed from the same dashboard from the rest of the company's portfolio.

Pablo Estrada, director of Cisco's cloud networking unit, said the Meraki MC is designed to appeal to midmarket companies and remote locations with distributed infrastructure. "This is designed to be easier to manage and deploy," said Estrada, who noted Blue Apron was a beta customer.

"We're expanding beyond switches into communication," said Estrada. Here's a look at pricing.

meraki-model.png

In addition, the voice platform is built based on SIP architecture and includes an endpoint, cloud license and service from a provider. Initially, IntelePeer is providing service in the U.S. Ultimately, Meraki plans to integrate with Cisco's collaboration tools such as Spark.

The company also added two indoor wireless access points with more capacity.

meraki-access-points.png
Editorial standards