Make New Years Resolutions for Your IT Network
By Jason Sherman - January 9, 2020Happy new year….it’s back to work again for most of us lucky enough to have had some time off for the holidays, and that means it’s back to the grind. If you’re a network engineer without good and up-to-date network diagrams and documentation, that probably means you’re back to fielding the daily headaches that go…
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5 Awesome Things You Can Do with Automated Network Mapping Software
By Jason Sherman - December 5, 2019It’s 2019, almost 2020, and what a time to be alive: we are on the cusp of robotic take over! Our robot overlords are coming but fear not. Before robots really take over we can at least use them to make our lives a little more simple. Put some automation in your life: it can…
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How Collaborative Network Diagrams Facilitate Teamwork
By Jason Sherman - December 2, 2019Who in the world wants to work as part of a collaboration? Boo! It’s all about me and that’s all there is to it! Well, ok now: that’s how I like to work (no wonder no one likes me in the office). OK…so maybe you prefer to be one of those radical people who want…
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5 Warning Signs You Need Outside Plant Software (OSP)
By Jason Sherman - November 29, 2019Ok, here we go with the lists again…(if you hate our lists, blame David Letterman and not me). At Graphical Networks, we make netTerrain OSP (outside plant software). Therefore, we get our fair share of folks who think they may need OSP/fiber plant software…but aren’t confident (we also get our fair share of folks who…
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Fiber & Outside Plant Software 101: What Is It & How Does It Work?
By Jason Sherman - November 22, 2019What exactly is fiber plant or outside plant software? As makers of the netTerrain IT visualization suite, which includes DCIM (data center infrastructure management), Logical (network diagrams and mapping), and OSP (outside plant software), we get our fair share of website visitors who want to know what outside (aka fiber plant) software is. In this…
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Don’t Make the Mistake of Buying DCIM If…
By Jason Sherman - October 21, 2019Ok…if you’re familiar with our company (we manufacture software: DCIM, OSP, and Logical network diagram/documentation software), you’re probably thinking “what???”. I admit: it’s a pretty strange title from a manufacturer of DCIM software. There is, I promise, method to my madness. Here it comes…the # 1 reason you should avoid buying DCIM software…. Let’s start…
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Why Not Just Use a Spreadsheet to Document the Network?
By Jason Sherman - October 18, 2019In 2019, it’s all too easy to start talking about network documentation, mapping, and diagramming as though it’s a new innovation that’s evolved specifically for getting, and acting upon, information about IT networks and infrastructures. Though automated network documentation, such as netTerrain Logical, is something that has evolved in the current age of information we…
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Don’t End Up a Prisoner to Your IT Documentation Software
By Jason Sherman - October 15, 2019How many characters can I fit into a field? Well…let me tell you: more than you would probably ever need. Wondering what the heck I’m talking about? Drumroll, please… I mean the data you can place into a field for an object: an object might be a building or a network device such as a…
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DCIM Software: How Long Will it Really Take to Implement?
By Jason Sherman - October 11, 2019“Yeah, it all sounds great but honestly, this seems like a lot of work: how long is this DCIM project going to take us?” The above is real question from a data center manager interested in purchasing data center infrastructure management software (DCIM), we hear questions like that a lot as vendors of DCIM software….
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Procrastinating on Network Documentation? Your Ultimate Self-Help Guide
By Jason Sherman - October 4, 2019I was recently reading (ok, ok…listening, I’m lazy…) to a book. So, it was a book about habits…maybe to get some less lazy habits going on in my life, but hey: I am going off topic already! Anyway, what does me reading a book about adopting less lazy habits have to do with network documentation…
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What’s in a Network Diagram? Choose Your Flavor
By Jason Sherman - September 20, 2019We get a lot of visitors to our website who want to know (Google tells us this, we’re not psychic), “what’s in a network diagram?”. This makes sense, as we make netTerrain, a leading IT and network diagram software solution — and we write about network and IT diagrams/maps all of the time. They are,…
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How Network Diagrams Help You Secure the Network
By Jason Sherman - August 6, 2019Just as the Equinox data breach seems to finally be on its way to being settled, Capital One gets hit with a massive data breach. In 2019, data is no longer just personal information: it’s a commodity that hackers want to steal and sell. For companies who are entrusted with keeping any kind of personal…
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