Case Study: Florida Department of Environmental Protection achieves rapid deployment and simplified network management across 100+ state parks with Cisco Meraki

Simplifying the network enables small team to focus on more impactful projects

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which manages 175 state parks and 16 million acres, faced limited IT capacity — a small team (two senior, one part‑time and two junior engineers) and legacy unmanaged switches that provided no visibility. To simplify deployments and day‑to‑day management they evaluated vendors and selected Cisco Meraki, using Meraki switches, outdoor access points, MX security appliances and the Meraki Dashboard for rapid rollout and centralized management.

Cisco Meraki was deployed across 100+ state parks using template‑based MS switches, MR access points and MX appliances tied back to an MX100, enabling remote configuration, VPN backhaul and simplified firmware and user‑auth management. The result was faster, lower‑cost deployments, reduced operational effort and help‑desk calls, and the ability for junior staff to configure sites — freeing funds and staff time to focus on park services while maintaining secure, centrally managed networks via Cisco Meraki.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Arthur W. Wilson

Network Engineer