Cisco Meraki
 | |
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Networking, IT |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Founder | Sanjit Biswas, John Bicket, Hans Robertson |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA , U.S. |
Key people | Todd Nightingale (SVP, GM)
Chris Stori (COO) Bret Hull (CTO) |
| Parent | Cisco Systems |
| Website | meraki.cisco.com |
Cisco Meraki is a cloud managed IT company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Their solutions include wireless, switching, security, EMM, communications, and security cameras, all centrally managed from the web. Meraki was acquired by Cisco Systems in December of 2012.[1]
Meraki (muh-rah-kee) is a Greek word that means doing something with passion and soul.
History
Meraki was founded by two MIT PhD students, Sanjit Biswas and John Bicket, along with Hans Robertson. The company was based in part on the MIT Roofnet project, an experimental 802.11b/g mesh network developed by the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Meraki was funded by Google and Sequoia Capital. The organization started in Mountain View, California in 2006, and was then located in San Francisco. Meraki employed people who worked on the MIT Roofnet project.[2][3][4]
In 2007, Meraki selected San Francisco for their community-based Free the Net campaign. They started putting gateway devices in the Lower Haight neighborhood to provide Internet access and giving away repeaters. In the first year of the project, the growth of the network was primarily in the Mission District. By October 2007, they estimated 20,000 distinct users connected and about 5 terabytes of data transferred in this network. In July 2008, Meraki said 100,000 people in San Francisco used its 'Free the Net' service. Since then, Meraki discontinued this public service, though many access points remain active, but with no connection to the Internet.
On November 18, 2012, Cisco Systems announced it would acquire Meraki for an estimated $1.2 billion.[1]
See also
References
- ^ Constine, Josh. "Cisco Acquires Enterprise Wi-Fi Startup Meraki For $1.2 Billion In Cash". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-11-17.
- ^ "Sequoia - Companies". Sequoia Capital. Retrieved 2016-11-17.
- ^ Fehrenbacher, Katie (2006-08-02). "Meraki Cooks Up Wireless Mesh Router". gigaom.com. Retrieved 2016-11-17.
- ^ "Google-Funded startup to offer free WiFi in San Francisco".