Cisco Systems' $1.2 billion purchase of Meraki was pricey, but necessary if the company was going to make a wireless networking play and tap into the small- to mid-sized company market. Meanwhile, ...

Cisco is bringing some of the bells and whistles of it Catalyst environment to Meraki customers with hardware and software to help customers better support and secure distributed network resources.

In November 2012, Cisco acquired Meraki for a whopping $1.2 billion. At the time, most people thought that was a huge overpayment for a 330-person startup that made its living selling cloud-managed Wi ...