For their first Meraki deployment, Lam ordered 12 MR32s and 2 MX100s for the Malaysia office. Lam remembers this network refresh: he decided to deploy the Meraki wireless and security solution together with on-premise, non-Meraki switches. After experiencing the ability to manage his wireless and security for the Kuala Lumpur office using the single-pane-of-glass Meraki dashboard from his office in Singapore, Lam was encouraged to try out the cloud managed Meraki MS220 switches.
Lam was initially unconvinced, as he thought the MS220 was the same as any Layer 2 switch in the market. But once he understood there was a full integration with the Meraki MS switches and the Meraki dashboard, this was “the decider and I was sold on the Meraki MS switches.” Thanks to the ability of the Meraki switches to clone switch configurations and to duplicate port configurations, Lam has replaced all his non-Meraki switches at Grab and now has 98 MS-series switches, in addition to a few hundred MR wireless access points and MX security appliances all over the entire Grab network across 6 countries.
Meraki Switches: cloud managed switches that enable remote troubleshooting
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Lam was attracted to the cloud controller because it eliminated the need to build a network management system, which saved Grab months of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. “The cloud just makes the network so much easier to manage,” he added. He sees that both Grab and Meraki are “children of the cloud,” Grab being a ride-hailing service that relies on cloud-based technology, and Meraki a service that is powered by the cloud. Both harness the power of the cloud to enable centralised control at scale and speed.
Lam has general level-1 IT technicians across the different Grab regional offices (around 2-3 in each office), but he is currently only network specialist at the company. Being the only Network Manager at Grab, having a Meraki cloud-based network goes a long way in helping Lam, a one-man networking operation, manage 35 sites. With the simplicity of deploying Meraki and pushing configurations through the cloud, all that Lam needs from his level-1 IT technicians is to get the Meraki devices online, plug the devices into the correct ports (per his written instructions), set the static IPs, and then it is all good to go. “This is an example of great automation since we can plan and manage the whole pre-deployment process from our HQ in Singapore. Lean IT, is what people call it.” Lam mentioned.
The speed to deployment was crucial for Lam and Grab. In his previous role at a multinational company using non-Meraki devices, it took him more than 6 months to set up the network of a new site. With the cloud-based solution, Lam has experienced how easy and quick it is to deploy his network. For new site deployments, Grab typically racks a couple MX100s, a few MS220s, and a dozen MR42 or MR52s, depending on the density of the sites. With Meraki, the Grab IT team was able to rack all of the hardware in one day and got the network up and running within 24 hours.
Reflecting on the speed of deploying with Meraki, Lam mentioned that “even pre-scripted, cut-and-paste CLI on legacy systems cannot beat the speed of deployment of Meraki using its dashboard.” For him, to be able to reduce the deployment time for a whole network from 6 months to one day with Meraki is a game-changer.
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