These days, Visio and spreadsheets shared via a shared folder or via SharePoint seems to be what many of the people with whom I speak are using to document the network. Are you using Visio and/or spreadsheets to document the network? If so, how is this working out for your company?
Being able to access accurate documentation and information about the network, as well as having the ability to share info with the team and to other key stakeholders, is important to the success of your business — and yet it seems to go by the wayside when it comes to the importance and priority of documenting your network. Engineers end up having to piece together solutions — such as shared files — because automation hasn’t been made a priority…
Why is that? Maybe because the costs of avoiding documentation or not doing it properly seem intangible at first — but it really does cost organizations time and money in the end.
Although using a shared folder with spreadsheets or SharePoint may be far better than nothing, what happens when things go south? For example: when something happens to your network, how long does it take to find the necessary information quickly? How accurate is the documentation when you do find it?
How much of an impact does the delay and downed network have on your organization? SLA’s not being met? Lost productivity time for your staff? The expense of the time and consequences is a direct cost of not having proper documentation. If you are sharing documentation info — chances are you have the need to stop relying on manual drawings and to find an automated network documentation/mapping solution.
Once it has been decided that your organization will fund an automated network documentation project, what’s next? What are your business’s specific requirements? Network documentation can mean many things to people. As you evaluate potential network mapping solutions, determine what your organization needs from the software — and not what the software can do. How do you need to share information between colleagues and with outside vendors? Are you looking for an on-premise or cloud solution? What do you need to discover?
netTerrain Logical, our documentation software which we’ll use as an example here, provides a web-based network documentation and network discovery to view your network assets and how they are connected — in real-time. Instead of using a shared folder with many files, you can use netTerrain as your single pane of glass view of your network infrastructure, where you can collaborate, make comments, and give permissions to users and groups on a per-diagram role access.
If you have a network documentation project and would like to test netTerrain discovery and documentation, contact sales at sales at graphicalnetworks.com or here.