It makes good sense for large distributed deployments.
One page to update everything rather than have to connect to each device and push a config.
The controller also "back-ports" the configuration as appropriate for a given device. Declare a vLan once, don't have to worry about which cli version is running on a given switch and adjust your command accordingly.
These things don't matter much when you only have one physical location / few devices but if you're an IT guy that manages networking across every physical building in a school district...
Since the device tries to phone home, it's also a NAT buster which is invaluable when you're drop-shipping equipment to customers and have little control over your environment but need to be able to promise some level of functionality.
One page to update everything rather than have to connect to each device and push a config. The controller also "back-ports" the configuration as appropriate for a given device. Declare a vLan once, don't have to worry about which cli version is running on a given switch and adjust your command accordingly.
These things don't matter much when you only have one physical location / few devices but if you're an IT guy that manages networking across every physical building in a school district...
Since the device tries to phone home, it's also a NAT buster which is invaluable when you're drop-shipping equipment to customers and have little control over your environment but need to be able to promise some level of functionality.