How Meraki APIs enable intelligent, cloud-connected IT

Let's take a brief walk down memory lane, shall we? In the not-too-distant past, server technicians always had a console cable at the ready. A key tool of the trade, you never knew when you'd need one to connect to a terminal to | | | manage devices.

But now your old console cable is gathering dust in a drawer, and for good reason. Cables-by and large-became a thing of the past when businesses started moving to the cloud, famed for its ability to deliver innovation and efficiency.

The cloud is great, we love the cloud, however, that love comes with a need to manage increasingly complex IT estates. Today's networks are filled with tens of thousands of devices, if not more. Deploying, managing, and monitoring each of these applications and devices can quickly become cumbersome and disorganized. That's where Meraki APIs come to the rescue.

Business is easy as pie with the right API

With APIs, companies big and small can intelligently manage and monitor their infrastructure with speed and efficiency-regardless of application, device, location, or logistical hurdle. But, where Meraki APIs truly shine is in helping teams handle more tedious tasks quickly and easily.

Meraki APIs enable enterprise-wide automation. This allows organizations to make large-scale changes with just a few clicks. They can optimize network and device migration efficiently and with minimal human error, and monitor, configure, and report-all from one place.

With this kind of management at scale, the possibilities are endless. With the Meraki dashboard API, you can manage tasks like provisioning, bulk configuration changes, monitoring, and role-based access controls-often in a matter of seconds.

Like retiring the old console cable, we're doing away with repetitious manual network processes.

APIs in the real world

For real-world applications, it isn't enough to simply automate. You have to know what's happening, which is why our APIs go beyond day-zero provisioning to provide insights for workflows and drive the analytics behind better business decisions.

Sound too good to be true? It isn't. In fact, the most popular uses for the Meraki API cover the full range of network operations use cases:

• Adding new organizations, admins, networks, devices, VLANs, SSIDs
• Provisioning thousands of new sites in minutes with scripting
• Automating the onboarding and off-boarding of employees' teleworking device(s)
• Powering custom dashboards for store managers, field techs, or unique use cases
• Delivering real-time location analytics data to inform branch staffing models

How to kick-start your Meraki API journey

We've barely scratched the surface of APIs here, but we have plenty of resources for you to dive into. Here are the top three ways to engage with Meraki APIs:

The best way to get started is to visit and browse our comprehensive Meraki Developer Hub. There, you'll find a wide array of APIs that are free to use and easy to integrate into other applications. For those ready to dive into the API deep-end, try our Cisco Meraki Marketplace, where you can browse and demo hundreds of partners and apps built on Meraki APIs.

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