Why cloud-managed IT is the future
Thursday 18th March 2021
The last 12 months have turned working practises upside down. As employees dispersed and working patterns changed, IT was suddenly under more pressure than ever before, and keeping up with the support demands of a large, remote workforce became a huge challenge. Access issues, countless extra devices, unstable applications, bandwidth limitations, security concerns and lack of visibility all added up. Many organisations had tight budgets and a lean IT set-up before the pandemic. And the extra workload stretched both to breaking.
We feel your pain
At Bytes, we’ve seen first-hand what businesses and IT are facing as they try to adapt rapidly to a dynamic environment, and we’ve been by their side to help them make positive, pain-saving moves. What has helped many of our customers is rethinking their network and making the move to cloud-managed IT.
A network that’s ready for your future
Businesses have been forced into accelerated transformation. But now homeworking looks set to stay, businesses are realising future success depends on expanding the digital workplace seamlessly into home offices and to every device employees use. This is where cloud comes into its own.
Leading the way with smart, cloud-managed IT solutions is Cisco Meraki. We’ve been using Meraki’s cloud-controlled Wi-Fi, routing and security to solve key challenges for our customers, and we’ve seen how it can advance productivity, enhance security, improve the employee experience and, crucially, lift the burden on IT teams.
Visibility and control
Meraki was built for lean IT. It provides unified management of mobile phones, tablets, laptops, PCs and Macs across the entire network from a single pane of glass. Offering a complete, cloud-managed IT portfolio, Meraki gives IT teams everything they need to take back control and bring efficiency to managing a remote workforce.
Meraki makes it simple to deploy software and apps, enforce security policies and perform remote troubleshooting on devices. With built-in support for BYOD, you can enable the use of personal devices without worry. For businesses, it means optimised connectivity that supports consistent performance and productivity, and up to a 90% reduction in operational costs.
Meraki’s user-friendly dashboard gives IT teams game-changing visibility across the network. For instance, the ‘topology’ feature gives you a detailed display of your network and what’s happening at that moment. From the dashboard, you can also manage all devices and interactions from a single interface. This saves time and effort, enabling IT teams to spot potential issues before they derail productivity.
Simplify security across your whole network
With the rapid transition to remote working, many organisations have struggled to maintain security across their networks. Cybercriminals have been exploiting gaps in protection, particularly endpoints and email.
Meraki provides simple, powerful security across every layer of your network, leveraging the world’s most effective protection from Cisco. It enables you to secure critical infrastructure, from the perimeter, through the local network and onward to your remote workers. At the same time, it’s designed to lighten the workload for IT teams. Meraki VPNs let you build IPSec VPN tunnels between sites in a few clicks. You can set security policies quickly and easily, ensuring that appropriate access to information is granted to each employee. Being cloud-managed, Meraki means you don’t have to worry about updating and patching of devices as they are deployed in real-time across the whole network.
Next-generation Wi-Fi
Meraki brings Wi-Fi right up to date with Wi-Fi 6. In terms of employee experience, this is very good news. This next-generation wireless solution provides higher performance and greater efficiency, with more capacity for high-density indoor and outdoor environments. This means enhanced application performance, the ability to deliver new mobile experiences and fewer support calls. IT teams benefit from intuitive multi-site management via the cloud, eliminating the cost and complexity of traditional on-site wireless controllers.
Bytes as your trusted partner
At Bytes, we’ve helped customers of all sizes make the move to cloud-managed IT and reap the rewards. We know how to analyse the challenges you’re facing and create a simple, effective solution with Meraki.
We’ll work closely with you to ensure you get maximum value from Meraki’s capabilities, future-proofing your investment and setting up your business to move forward with confidence.
Get in touch with us to try Meraki for yourself.
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