Written By Imran Idrees, Senior Marketing Manager, Global SP & Enterprise, Cisco Meraki

Time to market. This is likely to be one of the top answers a service provider will cite when posed the question, "what is the most critical aspect of launching a new service?" And it's not difficult to see why.

Time to market directly impacts a service provider's bottom line: spend too long building an app for iOS 8 and half of your market will have migrated to iOS 9 by the time you launch. It's not a perfect metaphor but you get the idea-delays in a launch result in missed revenue opportunity in the increasingly fast-paced tech world.

When you probe a little further, you find that time to market must be coupled with low cost of delivery and high customer experience for a successful launch.

So, enter Meraki -Cisco's cloud networking solution and one of the company's fastest growing groups with triple-digit YoY growth.

Meraki enables zero-touch provisioning meaning service providers can get end customer sites live almost immediately after receiving an order

The Meraki cloud-managed networking architecture is ideally positioned to support successful launches for service providers. Meraki dramatically reduces thetime to bring a service to market through an extremely efficient installation process with zero-touch provisioning. Plug-and-play Meraki wireless access points, switches and security appliances can be deployed across multiple locations in days and at a fraction of the cost of traditional architectures. This also means that an end customer can be up and running with their service in a matter of days after placing an order.

Meraki hardware is managed entirely via an intuitive, centralized GUI that requires zero training

Meraki hardware requires no on-site configuration so there's no need for trained IT personnel on-site to get devices live. Configuration is completed entirely via an intuitive, centralized GUI that requires zero training. Service providers can customize the dashboard with their own branding so it can also serve as a limited, monitor-only portal for end customers. This is another big saving on cost of delivery as well as adding value to their service.

There are tools built into the dashboard to allow networks to be deployed and managed on a massive scale. Meraki networks can scale very efficiently by cloning from a template, configuration settings can seamlessly be pushed to thousands of locations by creating a master configuration template, and support cases can be resolved remotely using live tools such as packet capture and cable testing.

Meraki provides an out-of-the-box solution for service providers to deliver a high quality customer experience. Customers can be up and running with their service in a matter of days after placing an order, have access to a limited view of the dashboard to view powerful network analytics, and have support cases solved in real-time.

Sound too good to be true? Meraki really has to be seen to be believed and we've actually only begun to scratch the surface of capabilities so drop by the Cisco booth at SCTE to get a live demo of Meraki!