Cisco Meraki officially landed in China, ushering in a new era of networking

Today, the Cisco Meraki new product launch conference with the theme of "Simplifying the Complex and Gaining a Global View" was officially held in Shanghai. Cisco Global Senior Vice President and Cisco Meraki General Manager Todd Nightingale, Cisco Global Vice President and Greater China Chief Executive Officer Xiao Jieyun, Cisco Global Vice President and Greater China Chief Technology Officer Cao Tuqiang, customers, partners, media representatives and other guests from all walks of life attended the conference and witnessed the important historical moment of Cisco Meraki's official landing in China. At the same time, the conference was live-broadcasted throughout the whole process, attracting nearly 480,000 people to watch and participate in real time online to witness this exciting moment together.

[[243490]]

Cisco Meraki was founded in 2006 and has more than 230,000 customers and 3 million devices worldwide. Meraki was acquired by Cisco in 2012, and its annual revenue has grown from US$50 million before the acquisition to more than US$1 billion in the next five years. Cisco Meraki provides a full range of solutions including wireless, switching and routing products, and all products are managed through a simple, intelligent, and web-based control panel. In short, Cisco Meraki's powerful network equipment enables easy configuration, debugging and monitoring, and can drive enterprises or organizations of any size.

The official launch of Cisco Meraki in China is an important step for Cisco to realize its vision of "intent-based networking". On January 31, 2018, Cisco released its second round of intent-based network innovations, launching powerful security products covering the entire network product portfolio. With major advances in mathematical modeling and panoramic insights, Cisco's major strategy of reshaping the network for fully digital business is fully accelerated. On April 13, 2018, Cisco Meraki officially landed in China, and at the same time released software products and multiple hardware products customized for the Chinese market. This fully demonstrated Cisco's forward-looking vision and efficient practices in building future networks, and will further promote China's customers and partners to embrace the new generation of "intent-based networking".

Cisco Meraki devices are managed intelligently and uniformly through a graphical control panel. Network administrators can perform daily network maintenance work through the Cisco Meraki control panel. In each step of product design, the core concept of Cisco Meraki technology is to achieve the purpose of simple, easy-to-use, intelligent and efficient management by emphasizing the efficient use of limited IT resources. For customers with high requirements, the high plasticity and customizable product services of traditional Cisco products represent the platinum standard of network technology. In fact, customers usually operate a diversified environment. For example, the customer's headquarters deploys Cisco's traditional network and data center technology, while its branch offices deploy Cisco Meraki technology, but overall, 100% intelligent centralized management is achieved through Cisco Meraki technology. With the help of Cisco Meraki solutions, customers in major industries around the world (especially retail, hotel, education and manufacturing industries) have effectively reduced operating costs and rapidly promoted the transformation of all-digital businesses. As a result, Cisco Meraki has received wide acclaim and recognition from global customers, including leading fast fashion clothing brand Uniqlo, InterContinental Hotels Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Coopers Brewery, a famous Australian brewery.

It is worth mentioning that the control panel released by Cisco Meraki in China is its first customized software developed for a single market. Users of the Chinese version of the control panel can not only enjoy the same simple, high-visibility and multi-functional experience as the overseas version, but also benefit from localized functions, such as the simplified Chinese interface and Baidu map integration. In addition, Cisco Meraki has also released the following hardware products in mainland China to better meet the needs of customers' business-specific applications with the best performance and best practices:

• MX Series Routers
• Z Series Teleworker Gateway
• MS Series Switches
• MR Series Access Points

Currently, Cisco Meraki has entered Shanghai, China, and established a Chinese sales, marketing, training and operations team. Cisco Meraki Shanghai Office is its fifth office in the world after San Francisco, London, Sydney and Chicago. In addition, Cisco Meraki has opened a Chinese official website (www.meraki.cn), providing a Mandarin version of the Cisco Meraki Network Engineer (CMNA) training program and a Mandarin service hotline.

Todd Nightingale, Cisco Global Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Meraki, said: "Cisco Meraki is committed to simplifying powerful technology. The launch of Cisco Meraki in China will enable Chinese IT teams to manage networks in a more intuitive way, freeing them from the complexity of traditional systems. We are very pleased to provide Cisco Meraki solutions to Chinese customers to help them increase IT efficiency, improve network agility, and most importantly, enable passionate IT talents across China to focus on their real mission. We look forward to bringing new intent-based network innovations to China together with the rest of Cisco's network portfolio."

"The official launch of Cisco Meraki in China today fully demonstrates Cisco's long-term commitment and determination to solve network problems for customers," said Jieyun Xiao, Cisco Global Vice President and CEO of Greater China. "Facing the vast Chinese market, companies are taking full digitalization as an opportunity, focusing on customers, and relying on innovation to gain differentiated advantages. Cisco Meraki is committed to unleashing the potential of customers' resources in terms of personnel, capital, time, etc. through innovation, so as to help them focus on investing in business models that can have a huge impact."