Item: Cisco Business 350 Series
Rating: 10
Author: David Peck

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Business 350 Series

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We needed a remotely manageable switch that we could quickly deploy to remote office locations to provide enough bandwidth per port to allow on-site technical people to lay down images onto laptops. The switch also had to meet or exceed our current security requirements so that it would not present any security vulnerabilities that we would have to deal with. It also had to do this at a reasonable price point.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Good throughput per port
Good manageability
Reasonable price point

Cons

Not every feature in the GUI is available at the command line
Software can only be updated via the GUI interface
It would be nice if the physical foot print were smaller

Most Important Features

Management
Security
Price

Return on Investment

We replaced thirty older switches for very little capital investment.
The new devices are compliant with our security needs, so we quickly cleared those issues.
The new switches were very easy for us to apply a standardized configuration that allowed us to get them up and operational in minutes.

Alternatives Considered

Cisco Business 250 Series Smart Switches

We are a big Cisco shop and wanted to use Cisco switches for this application. We knew that we'd be able to configure them quickly and the time saved doing the configuration would be to our benefit. Knowing that we wanted to go with a fully managed switch also was a major tipping point in Cisco's favor. Having used some of the other vendors' "managed" switch interfaces, nothing comes close to Cisco's approach. Having a better user interface will give us plenty of time down the road.

Key Insights

Do you think Cisco Business 350 Series delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Business 350 Series's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Business 350 Series live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Business 350 Series go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Business 350 Series again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Microsoft Visual Studio Code, BlueCat Integrity (Address Manager + DNS/DHCP Server), Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access

Likelihood to Recommend

This is a small business switch, and for me, that means that if all I need is just this one switch, then I am on the right path. I would not want to use this switch to support a couple of hundred people trying to access heavy local resources. It should be used when you have a few dozen devices and/or users and a fairly flat network.

Comments

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Looking for an affordable managed switch? Look no further than the Cisco Business 350 Series!