@Donatom3 Yes, I logged a call and the chap I spoke to was helpful, but in the end my network was too complex for him to really get to grips with: 8 switches Meraki Netgear and a single Aruba Instanton. He wanted me to draw a diagram in MS Paint as a diagnostic tool
I tend to agree with your opinion - I had hoped that Aruba would be a replacement for Meraki - right now they are miles away in functionality and need to do a lot of catching up.
A fairer comparison would be Ubiquiti - Aruba Instant-on has a similar price - maybe a little more expensive. However if you have sufficient technical expertise to set up a Unifi dashboard in the cloud - the functionality is closer to Meraki.
So after jumping ship from Ubiquiti - I may be going back. Yesterday I waiting for about 30 minutes for a AP11D to be adopted to a new site - thats just too long..
As to your point of local management - to me that defeats the point of Instant-on. I could get the same or better functionality from a Netgera managed switch at half the price.
Lets keep hoping!