By: Justice Godfrey
A global leader in cloud-managed IT solutions, Cisco Meraki, Tuesday, said it has come up with intuitive and simplified technology solutions to help boost the bottomline of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country.
These new offerings according to Cisco Meraki are designed to simplify IT solutions for small and medium businesses even in the absence of an IT specialist. The technology provides complete network visibility and control – no hardware controllers or overlay software required.
MSMEs in Nigeria are already limited in their scalability due to various constraints ranging from lack of funding for advanced digital solutions to inadequate IT specialists to manage these solutions.
In view of these challenges and digitization becoming a big trend, Cisco Meraki believes that is is important for businesses irrespective of its size to adopt digitization and is poised to helping businesses through its affordable IT solutions.
The configurations and management of these solutions by Cisco Meraki are easily performed remotely or on-site, while trouble-shooting can be done in a fraction of the time with advanced networking analytics, allowing businesses to focus on more projects that are impactful.
Speaking at the event, General Manager of Cisco Nigeria, Olakunle Oloruntimehin, remarked, “Cisco Meraki creates the simplest, most powerful solutions, helping everyone from small businesses to global enterprises save time and money. It helps organizations to rapidly roll out digital initiatives, delivering real business value.
We are committed to helping our customers overcome challenges and achieve their goals. Technology can connect us, empower us, and drive us.
“At Cisco, we believe that by simplifying powerful technology, we can free passionate people to focus on their mission and reach groups previously not utilizing technology”.
He assured that with 17,000 MSMEs on target, all Cisco Meraki devices are centrally and securely managed from the cloud using a single web-based dashboard.
Their feature-rich, intuitive architecture enables customers to save time, reduce operating costs, and scale as a business grows, Oloruntimehin said.
Some of Cisco Meraki set of solutions includes wireless, switching, security, communications, EMM, and security cameras, all managed through Meraki’s web-based dashboard interface which allows customers to seize new business opportunities and reduce operational costs.
Meraki started operations in 2006, got acquired 2012 by Cisco and has grown to become an industry leader in the IT space, with over 230,000 customers and 3 million network devices and counting online around the world.
Substantiating the importance of simplified IT solutions, Nick Malherbe is the territory manager for Nigeria, Ghana, east and sub-Saharan Africa, explained the need for businesses to use data smartly and securely for business success.
He said, “In Nigeria, small and medium businesses account for 84% of employment attesting to the fact that they contribute greatly to the GDP of the economy. The success of this sector is key for the success of our economy, it is therefore imperative that these businesses use IT solutions that are secure, simple and intelligent.
“With Cisco Meraki, these MSMEs can enjoy agility, operational efficiency, and most importantly, data security that they require to accelerate their digital transformations. Our goal is to help customers benefit from digitization by simplifying IT solutions”.
According to Steven Kewley, EMEAR Commercial Regional Manager, Cisco, Nigeria is a focus and big market to deliver simplified IT solutions that will help businesses increase their bottom line.
He said the company’s selling point revolves around reducing operational costs for Nigerian businesses while paving way for digital transformation.