Networking equipment giant Cisco has announced its intention to acquire Meraki, a startup whose technology allows users to manage their wired and wireless networks from the cloud.

Meraki was founded by a group of researchers at MIT, who developed the technology in order to build a WiFi mesh network around the university.

The company now offers WiFi access points, routers and security appliances, all of which can managed via cloud infrastructure hosted by Meraki itself. This, the company claims, makes managing network equipment much simpler.

In Gartner’s latest Magic Quadrant for LAN access infrasrtructure, Meraki was identified as a ‘visionary’. "A unique, cloud-based WLAN architecture coupled with intuitive mesh networking capabilities have won it a loyal customer base," Gatner wrote. "Meraki should be considered by organsations seeking managed services, and those with many branch offices or remote sites."

UK customers include Wellington College and property consultants Bidwells.

Cisco said that it would offer Meraki primarily to medium-sized organisations. "These companies have the same IT needs as larger organizations, but without the resources to integrate complex IT solutions,” said Rob Soderbery, senior vice president, Cisco Enterprise Networking Group. “Meraki’s solution was built from the ground up optimized for cloud, with tremendous scale, and is already in use by thousands of customers to manage hundreds of thousands of devices.”