In today’s rapidly evolving IT landscape, automation has become essential for organizations managing complex cloud infrastructure.
For Sansan, Japan’s leading SaaS company specializing in business card and contact management, the challenge of managing Cisco Meraki dashboard administrators across their growing deployment presented an opportunity to embrace Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles. Through a strategic Customer Success Engagement with Cisco, Sansan transformed their approach to network administrator management, ultimately developing their own production solution based on the collaborative proof-of-concept.
About Sansan
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Tokyo, Sansan, Inc. has grown to become Japan’s dominant provider of cloud-based business solutions. Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the company serves over 7,000 corporate customers, including the Japanese Government, with its flagship Sansan business database platform and Eight personal business card app.
In recent years, Sansan has expanded beyond business card management with Bill One, a cloud-based invoice management service for accounts payable, expense management, and receivables. Bill One has rapidly grown into a major revenue pillar for the company, reflecting Sansan’s broader mission of digitizing business workflows.
With its philosophy of ‘Turning encounters into innovation,’ Sansan represents the kind of forward-thinking enterprise that understands the value of automating operational workflows.
The Challenge: Manual Administrator Management at Scale
As Sansan’s Cisco Meraki deployment expanded, managing dashboard administrators became increasingly complex. The IT team faced several critical challenges:
- Manual provisioning and de-provisioning of administrators was time-consuming and prone to human error
- Tracking two-factor authentication (2FA) compliance across all administrator accounts required constant vigilance
- Limited visibility into API key usage patterns left potential security risks undetected
- Audit preparation consumed significant resources to document administrative access and changes
The Solution: Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
Cisco’s Customer Success team partnered with Sansan to develop a proof-of-concept solution leveraging HashiCorp Terraform and the CiscoDevNet Meraki provider. The solution brought modern DevOps practices to network administrator management.
Key Solution Components
The proof-of-concept demonstrated several innovative approaches:
Declarative Configuration: Administrators defined in simple CSV files, enabling bulk provisioning while maintaining version control through Git. This approach made configuration accessible to non-technical staff while providing full audit trails.
Security Monitoring Extension: Custom Python scripts integrated through Terraform’s external data source provider to query the Meraki Dashboard API for security metrics not available through standard Terraform resources—including 2FA status, API usage patterns, and last activity timestamps.
Risk Assessment Framework: Automated algorithms that evaluated each administrator account against security criteria, flagging high-risk accounts such as those with disabled 2FA or dormant API keys.
Customer Outcomes: From POC to Production
What started as a proof-of-concept became the foundation for something bigger. After working through the Terraform-based approach together, Sansan’s team took the framework and built their own production-ready solution tailored to their specific environment—exactly the kind of outcome that makes these collaborations worthwhile.
- Customer Innovation: Sansan developed their own IaC solution based on the POC framework, demonstrating successful knowledge transfer
- Automated Security Compliance: Continuous monitoring of 2FA status and API key usage without manual intervention
- Operational Efficiency: Declarative configuration reduced administrative overhead and eliminated human error
- Audit Readiness: Complete version-controlled history of all administrative changes
What Sansan Has to Say
To enhance operational flexibility, we proactively explored IaC for Meraki. Rather than attempting to automate everything at once, we established a strategic focus on administrator management based on our criteria of auditability, repeatability, and change frequency. Building on the foundational support from the Cisco CSM team, we evolved the solution internally to meet Sansan’s rigorous security standards. Looking ahead, we aim to expand our IaC footprint and embrace AI-driven automation to redefine the future of our network operations.”
— Kazutoshi Masaki, Corporate Engineer, Sansan, Inc.
“This project has dramatically enhanced our network transparency and governance. By implementing IaC, we have achieved full visibility into every administrative change, allowing us to meet rigorous audit standards automatically. I am confident that this success marks a vital turning point, enabling our infrastructure team to shift their focus toward more strategic and high-value initiatives that drive our business forward.”
— Toshimitsu Suetsugu, Infrastructure Lead, Sansan, Inc.
Technology Stack
The solution leveraged the following Cisco technologies and DevNet resources:
- Cisco Meraki Cloud-Managed Platform
- Meraki Dashboard REST API v1
- CiscoDevNet Meraki Terraform Provider
Looking Forward
Sansan’s success story exemplifies how Infrastructure as Code principles can transform network operations management. By automating administrator lifecycle management with Terraform, organizations can achieve consistent security compliance, reduce operational overhead, and maintain audit-ready documentation—all while freeing IT teams to focus on higher-value initiatives.
The comprehensive technical details of this solution is available on Cisco Code Exchange, providing detailed implementation guidance for organizations looking to adopt similar practices.
