Cruising today isn’t what it was 20 years ago – not even close! As reliance on technology has taken root across the globe, cruise operators have had to pivot to keep up with the demand. While that’s good news for IT job stability, it’s a lot of work for you and your team. It’s not just the passengers that are drawing on the IT infrastructure: operators rely on technology for smoother operations — from those helpful interactive guides that are on each floor to allowing for digital ordering and even check-ins via facial recognition technology.
Operators need to ensure that ships have enough access points (guests don’t want a bad Internet connection when they’re at the pool on a lounge chair), USB port/wall jack connections in common areas, bars, restaurants, staterooms — and all of this draws upon the network.
Ships have data centers and robust fiber networks — all of which must be monitored and chopped up into actionable insights so you can troubleshoot quickly, prevent downtime, and accurately plan for capacity.
This doesn’t just apply to your ships: it’s also important to be able to track, map, and manage your small private islands or cays (which have all different buildings), POS systems, connections between buildings and cast member quarters..it’s like managing and documenting a campus!
IT visualization and documentation software helps cruise lines get the information they need to keep problems at sea!
How IT Visualization & Documentation Helps Cruise Operators:
1. Increase Uptime & Troubleshoot Faster
With so much technology today relying on the ship’s network, data center, and fiber, being able to quickly troubleshoot a problem (or prevent it in the first place) doesn’t just help the guest’s experience – it helps operations stay up and running smoothly.
When it comes to implementing fiber mapping software, I’ll be honest: there is some undertaking for this project. It’s not like a network discovery – where you can track all of your network devices in minutes. I will say that, to document your fiber plant, if there is no accurate information, it takes some time.
Many of our customers have a guy like Bob: Bob knows everything about the network and he’ll need to start to put everything in a fiber plant solution. Other customers have detailed spreadsheets that they import into netTerrain to help them build these diagrams…or they bring in a third party to start conducting site surveys and put the information into a tool like netTerrain DCIM with netTerrain’s add-on OSP Module.
But once all of the information is stored, this is where the ROI comes into play!
With netTerrain, for example, you can search for information about your network instantly to help pinpoint where an outage has occurred, figure out what else is impacted, and access the documentation you need to fix it (such as what’s worked in the past or vendor phone numbers and security patches). A customer called to complain their phone isn’t working in their stateroom, or their phone wont charge on a particular USB port? Easily run a trace report to see how these ports are connected to which switch, telecom or data room, and where the other end connects to.
Beyond troubleshooting, software like netTerrain helps you ensure you have the availability you need to help prevent problems in the first place.
Fiber strands are easy to view in netTerrain’s OSP module
2. Get Hours of Work Done in Minutes
With a properly documented fiber plant/cable management system to track all of your cabling infrastructure, from copper, ethernet, fiber networks, you can run circuit paths reports, trace routes, and see available fiber paths between two points, which will help you resolve issues faster and help manage capacity.
Stop heading out to a distant part of the ship to fix an issue when you don’t know exactly what’s there and may end up without the parts you need to fix the problems or spending hours physically walking to the cable and trying to find where the cable terminates too. When you have your fiber visualized in netTerrain, understanding what’s where, and what you need to fix something, is as easy as pulling up a diagram — in seconds.
3. Plan for Capacity
As ships continue to become more and more reliant on IT infrastructure, IT continues to expand. Are your ships going to dry dock to get new enhancement and maybe even growing the ship out with new sections? From data center rooms, to power, to fiber strands, software like netTerrain shows you what you have and allows you to plan out future builds in detail.
Having a tool like netTerrain will help your Network Manager and Directors help plan for new capacity, know what equipment is needed to be ordered (help reduce unnecessary costs), and where they should be placed in which telecom room or data center. You can tell, both in visual diagrams and in reports, how much power a rack is using (and if you can oversubscribe a rack), how much space capacity it has, and get a bird’s eye view of your physical floorspace.
Example of a data center floor plan visualized in netTerrain DCIM
Which Software Solution to Choose?
IT documentation and visualization software has enormous potential to streamline IT operations for cruise ship operators. That being said, the right software choice makes an enormous difference in an undertaking’s success. As we’re the vendor that makes netTerrain, we’re not experts on other solutions out there but we can share some of the reasons other cruise ship operators have chosen netTerrain:
Flexible Licensing
If you buy IT documentation software, you’re probably going to want to install it on all of your ships — or, at least, have the option to! With netTerrain, your license means you have the freedom to install it as needed – no need to buy additional licenses when you add additional ships to your line. You can learn more about netTerrain’s licensing here.
On-Premise vs. SaaS
Today, IT documentation/visualization solutions are often offered as on-premise or SaaS. Consider if you’ll need an on-premise solution ( if your IT folks can’t get access to your data due to sporadic and expensive satellite wifi as SaaS isn’t an option?).
netTerrain does offer both on-premise and Saas licensing options — learn more about that here.
Inside & Outside Plant in One Solution
Your ships and properties aren’t siloed – they are connected and complex IT ecosystems. When you buy IT documentation software, you don’t want to get siloed into purchasing one system that visualizes the outside plant and then having to purchase another one that visualizes inside.
If documenting your fiber plant is as important as documenting and managing your data center, do you really want to have to buy, install, and learn two different systems to do both tasks? A solution like netTerrain combines the best of both worlds: an easy to use Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) solution with the added features of managing outside plant elements and the features of a cable management solution in one! If you already have an existing DCIM solution, that is okay too, as stated above having a flexible license, so if you need or don’t need DCIM, it is really up to you!
For Cruise ship operators, having a DCIM and OSP solution helps your organization with fixing issues faster, lets your IT folks focus on more of their day to day duties, and helps you manage current and future capacity of your cabling and IT infrastructure.