Managing your cabling infrastructure is no small feat: it takes time, money, and manpower to implement. It is, however, an investment that has the potential to pay off in dividends (when the right software is chosen and implemented well).

Before you buy a cable management or outside plant (OSP) system, ensure it will scale with your organization. By ‘scale’, what do I mean? For some organizations, scalable OSP software means a solution that can track a large network of cables and fiber that encompass the outside plant — in addition all of the cables insideyour buildings (or inside plant).

If your organization is, or will be, also looking for a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software that encompasses cable management (with the ability to manage fiber down to its strands), it’s likely that one solution would be more efficient and cost effective for your organization (instead of looking for two separate solutions – aka cable software and DCIM).

With netTerrain DCIM combined with the netTerrain Outside Plant (OSP) module, for example, you have the ability to:

  • Avoid having to invest in two different solutions — which saves you money in the long run
  • Avoid implementation of two separate systems (and associated costs)
  • Save money and increase performance across the entire plant: reduce overtime, fix issues quickly, meet SLAs, and more
  • Get complete end-to-end coverage, across your entire campus: track both inside and outside of the buildings

From documenting fiber and its strands inside and outside the buildings, copper, and really any cables you have in your infrastructure, netTerrain is one of the few solutions out in the marketplace that provides a cable management solution that encompasses the entire cabling infrastructure. Create and place conduit, cabinets, tower or poles, with manholes and place them on the dynamic maps, with specific lat/long coordinates, and view the fiber strands of each fiber – together with a DCIM solution so you can also manage your data center rooms assets, capacity, power, and cabling.

By having just one solution, the amount of money you save in deployment and staff education (just one system to deploy, just one system to learn) allows you to realize significant savings while avoiding the headaches that may go along with two different solutions.

When deploying one solution that handles both DCIM and OSP, invest the necessary time to learn how to use it! Graphical Networks provides private training classes so your staff can quickly learn, use, and implement the best practice methods. For more information on the training classes offered at Graphical Networks, please visit our courses here. Implementing one new system can take weeks (depending on the scope of work and the amount of data that needs to be imported or created manually); however, if you need to take on two implementations, the time to go live will undoubtedly be delayed.

With a complete view of your infrastructure, from across your entire campus: tracking cabling and IT equipment from inside and outside the buildings, netTerrain’s data and visual diagrams can help lead to better capacity planning, reduce costs, and help solve issues quickly. Collaboration and a central repository for both your DCIM data and cabling (inside and outside) can be an invaluable resource for your staff. You shorten the amount of time to find information quickly with powerful searching capabilities, boost collaboration amongst team members from different departments, and can even provide access (from no access, read-only, or editing privileges) to your contractors.

IT investments are the single-largest capital expense for most organizations. Mission-critical activities such as capacity planning, troubleshooting, resource allocation and purchasing all improve with a DCIM and OSP solution — no more fragmented, out-of-date, and inaccessible information. Bottomline? Provide the necessary data to your people!

About Fred Koh

As a seasoned sales executive, Fred Koh serves as Director of Sales and is responsible for Graphical Networks sales and channel partner program, marketing strategy, and operations.