Cisco E-book Meraki Hybrid Work Experiences User Manual

Cisco E-book Meraki Hybrid Work Experiences

Hybrid work is here to stay

• As an IT leader, you help realize current and potential employees’ dreams about where and how they want to work by transforming your organization’s teams into a truly hybrid workforce.
• Challenges abound. From barking dogs to honking horns. From competition for bandwidth to cybersecurity breaches. These can cause literal and figurative headaches, like drops in productivity and declines in experience.
• Hybrid work encapsulates how employees, customers, and partners work and interact with each other. For many, the ability to work from anywhere is so pervasive that it’s now a decision factor when they choose a new job or decide to stay with their current position.
• At home, in the office, or on the road, you and your team always ensure employees are effective. Supporting this varied model of working with built-in flexibility and resiliency that protects everyone’s experience is what you do.
• By putting how customers want to engage with employees and staff at the center of decision making, choosing how to create an effective hybrid work environment becomes clear.

Work from home

Kitchen or bedroom

For some, working from home means a shared workspace in an environment that causes challenges when trying to complete day-to-day tasks.

• The Meraki Z3C delivers a complete in- office experience for teleworkers. With an enterprise firewall, VPN connected directly to hybrid cloud resources, integrated 802.11ac wave 2 Wi-Fi, and cellular failover, the only interruptions workers need to worry about are from pets or kids.
• The new hybrid work paradigm has accelerated the shift of many critical applications to the cloud. Using Meraki Insight, your team can identify whether remote workers are suffering poor experiences with any app, then use recommended steps to resolve them—before workers report the issue.
• Meraki Systems Manager sets the foundation for an effective zero-trust security model, serving as a bridge to connect network and cloud security, providing 360-degree security for your enterprise’s endpoints, networks, and applications.
• Paired with the Cisco Webex Desk Mini and a Cisco headset, work takes up less space in shared rooms like the kitchen or a bedroom, and when it’s time to change locations, it’s easy to move.

Dedicated home office
For some, working from home means a separate space with a closed door that ensures privacy. Beyond the physical barrier, employees tackling critical and highly sensitive information need the same level of safety and reliability at home as in corporate headquarters.

• With the ability to dedicate bandwidth for multi-cloud connectivity and back to corporate data centers, plus stateful firewall and VPN throughput, the Meraki Z3C teleworker device exceeds the needs of most at-home workers. The Meraki Z3C’s wireless backup connectivity, automatic VPN failover, and application prioritization mean all the work that must be done gets done.
• The Meraki MS switch, which is part of the Meraki platform, connects core home-office technologies like computers, wireless access points, and IP phones. Add a Meraki MR36 wireless access point to give employees better throughput and reduced power consumption, and get the most out of the latest Wi-Fi 6 technologies.
• You’ll also make employees’ in-home office equipment more versatile with the Webex Room Mini Kit that turns any TV or monitor into a professional video conferencing space—all controlled by the Webex Room Navigator. By activating end-to-end meeting encryption, you add another level of security for highly sensitive discussions.

Work from anywhere

Café
Some employees must travel for work and others may want a change of scenery. If distractions were a thing at home, imagine how unpredictable they can be in public spaces.

• As an IT leader, it’s important to consider the quantity and weight of equipment employees might need, no matter where they may work.
• Traveling workers can securely access resources in hybrid cloud environments with native IPsec or Cisco AnyConnect remote client VPNs—all without lugging around dedicated hardware. Using Meraki Systems Manager, IT teams can push out VPN configurations, Exchange ActiveSync profiles, application updates, and other configuration payloads at scale from wherever they are.
• Workers can have an incredible audio experience no matter where they’re getting work done. The Bang & Olufsen Cisco 980 headset eliminates background commotion with Advanced Active Noise Cancellation; by removing ambient noise in Webex, meeting participants won’t hear that loud coffee machine percolating in the distance.

Hotel room
It can be tough to find a quiet spot while on the road. Many seek refuge in a hotel room for the comforts of home and a high-quality experience. To enable productivity, reduce physical equipment required and simplify connectivity to the cloud and internal-network resources.

• For traveling knowledge workers, the Z3 teleworker gateway provides SD-WAN, wireless, and wired connectivity in a hyper-portable, small form factor device. Employees simply plug the Z3 into an available ethernet port in their hotel room and instantly gain access to an enterprise office experience without any user configuration or log in required.
• Want to empower employees to connect without dedicated hardware? Meraki Systems Manager enables teams to push out native IPSEC configurations to workers all over the world. Or, teams can use AnyConnect for a unified and frictionless VPN deployment. Regardless of your path forward, Cisco has a solution to connect all your workers—regardless of their location.
• Working remotely has often required two mobile devices—one for personal use and one for work. With Webex Go, you can equip employees to use their personal phones to make and receive calls with their business phone numbers, eliminating the need (and cost) of owning, operating, and managing multiple devices.

Work from office

Lobby
From setting the tone for new visitors to regularly welcoming back employees and guests, the lobby is one of an office’s most important spaces. Technology plays a key role in optimizing this space for convenience, security, comfort, and safety.

• An ever-changing variety of seating arrangements and artwork makes lobbies interesting, while unexpected changes in Wi-Fi can make them an unwelcoming experience. With Meraki MR wireless access points, IT teams can create
  a network with consistent coverage throughout the lobby area.

• In addition to Wi-Fi coverage, IT teams can proactively help ensure an optimal guest experience by being aware of multiple aspects of lobby usage and security. Combine insights from MT sensors with data from MV cameras to gain a more holistic understanding of space usage as well as occupancy, noise levels, sirens, or alarms. To round out comfort, additional Meraki MT sensors can monitor for temperature, humidity, and overall air quality, ensuring the best lobby experience.

• Meraki switches tie it all together, with application identification software for hundreds of apps, including BitTorrent and YouTube. This allows administrators to quickly identify individual users by device and tune network resources for optimum performance for everyone.

Meeting and training rooms
As organizations rethink their layouts to promote better collaboration, large and multipurpose spaces are proving central to these goals. From new-hire training and weekly status updates to executive briefings and strategy sessions, spaces must be comfortable in order to facilitate learning, socializing, and planning.

• The Meraki MX security and SD-WAN device supports on-premises UTM or Cisco Umbrella cloud security to bring insight with analytics while protecting cloud connectivity. MS switches and MR wireless access points add layers of protection and provide reliable and secure connectivity into and across the network by separating employee and guest network experiences.
• Meraki MT sensors help ensure comfort by monitoring temperature, air quality, and room usage. Ensure your teams can book the right space for their meeting and training needs with Meraki Marketplace applications.
• Cisco Webex offers People Focus, which works by using camera intelligence to detect people in a room, focus on them, and create individual video streams. This generates a clearer view of each person, making everyone inside and outside the room feel more connected.

Employee seating
Fewer employees in the office at any given time has allowed organizations to extend the space between desks, workstations, and cubicles. And the use of shared workstations by employees who alternate between working from home and the office (known as “hot desking”) gives workers the choice on where in the office to work.

• The broader suite of Cisco products—including smart cameras, ecosystem partners for applications, and Webex tools—makes it easy to find an available desk and headset (from the office or remotely) and connect individual profiles to access tools and smart webcams.
• You can equip the business to get the whole picture with the Meraki MV32 fisheye camera. A 360-degree view of workspaces captures how your enterprise uses a space and turns that knowledge into data to inform decisions.
• You can further power these innovations with the Meraki stack, including MR, MX, and MS. Provide superior connectivity to cloud and internet resources with high-density MR wireless access points designed for the office. Create an SD-WAN network to connect workers wherever they are and secure employees with UTM functionality built right into the MX. Connect these sensors and access points with MS switches for built-in redundancy and performance.

Network operations center (NOC)
Network operations centers are corporate nerve centers. Restricting access to key employees helps ensure this critical infrastructure is protected.

• Organizations can power their networks with the most advanced Meraki platform to date. It includes Meraki MX security and SD-WAN, stackable high-capacity Meraki MS switches, and integration with the broader Cisco portfolio.
• Your IT team can leverage Meraki MT sensors to ensure entrances and server cabinets are closed for security. The platform also integrates Meraki MV cameras and applications to verify that those who are accessing the space are authorized.
• ThousandEyes takes security a step further into the network itself. Embedded into Webex data centers, it gives you full-path visibility across the network. Whether on the business network or the internet, ThousandEyes watches out so issues are identified and resolved before they damage the user experience.
• Bring additional physical and network security to the organization with a secure Wi-Fi 6 network powered by high-density Meraki MR wireless access points. With this wireless network, IT teams have NOC access verification as well as rogue SSIDs, AP spoofs, and packet flood identification and resolution.

Now is the time to reimagine your workspace.

We can help.
Together, let’s inspire with workspaces designed for collaboration. Let’s empower with integrated technologies created for automation and analytics and delight with smartly designed solutions for every worker and scenario. Cisco Meraki. We power the hybrid workforce.

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