Cable Management Software
The Cable Management software from FNT allows you to efficiently document, plan and manage any passive network infrastructure, both inside an organization or across a campus. It is equally easy to map extensive cable and outside plant infrastructure of telecommunications or broadband networks (e.g., FTTx) across countries, regions or within a city. All types of fiber, copper and coax network topologies, including all deployed technologies, are covered. Integrated georeferenced and schematic representations of the network infrastructure facilitate planning, impact analysis and fault localization in case of failures. The FNT Cable Management software gives you complete transparency into your network infrastructures and the services running over them, making it easier to manage and operate even complex infrastructures efficiently.
Flexible software for different industries
Powerful features cover all aspects of data center cable management to keep track of the network backbone of your sites and between them. Manage all your passive cabling equipment and infrastructure including trays, master patch management and network port capacities. Optimize lead times for changes to the physical network and speed up support processes to keep network downtime to a minimum.
FNT's cable management software helps IT organizations document their structured cabling within buildings and between buildings on a campus in a central data model. The entire wide area network (WAN) infrastructure can also be documented within FNT Command, ensuring the important handover points in the network are captured in the central cable management repository. This holistic approach ensures all components of the infrastructure are managed and visualized holistically, for maximum transparency regarding patching, configuration, and the locations of active endpoint devices in the network.
FNT’s cable management software helps network operators efficiently document, plan and manage the entire passive inside and outside plant network infrastructure. In combination with FNT’s unified resource management this solution enables Service Providers and Telecom Operators to efficiently manage the millions of physical assets, logical resources, and connections in the entire network. It provides the complete view of the network infrastructure needed to ensure fiber-optic networks in the transport and mobile fronthaul, midhaul and backhaul, FTTx infrastructure in access networks, and HFC networks can handle the massive amount of data being generated. All network resource data of the passive infrastructure is documented in a central data repository that covers physical end-to-end connections and assigns services to signal routes. The software’s planning functionality includes auto-routing of entire media-independent signal routes and helps operations teams fulfill redundancy requirements from service to cable layer. End-to-end signal tracing functionality minimizes service disruption by facilitating re-routing of connections and services and speeding up impact analysis, fault localization and resolution when there’s an outage.
Advantages of our solution for Cable Management
Highlights of Our Cable Management Software
Our integrated, central data model encompasses data, relationships and dependencies across all technologies and layers from the building level through physical, logical, and virtual assets and resources to applications and services, including business services.
Our unified resource repository will provide a holistic and consistent view on the network and enterprises will benefit when it comes to operations and service assurance, design, planning and capacity management, as well as fulfillment and orchestration of their network infrastructure resources and services.
Interface functionalities for automated data exchange with third-party systems and the simple import of data from other systems together with an ETL Staging Area for data cleansing prior to import.
Experience continuous end-to-end signal tracing across the entire cable infrastructure in both actual and planning views, based on the relevant geo-referenced nodes and routes in the GIS representation.
Immediate impact analysis as well as faster fault analysis and repair, based on seamless integration between the physical network infrastructure and the assigned connections and services on logical and service layers
Efficient planning and analysis of redundant circuits, because protected services need to be based on diverse routed connections not only on the logical layers (active network resources) but also on the cable layer (passive network infrastructure).
Efficient ways to manage maintenance or fault and repair tasks; for example, by planning the exchange or replacement of components. By using this planning mode, work orders for the field force teams are automatically created to execute the tasks.
Our auto-routing capabilities on tray, duct and cable level enable optimal planning and routing of connections. Work orders for patches and splices, required to implement the planned connections, are automatically created within the planning mode.
FNT GeoMaps provides geo-referenced visualization of the network infrastructure out-of-the-box to support the as-is and planning mode. In addition to this georeferenced representation dedicated, task-specific graphical and schematic applications are required to efficiently execute activities and tasks relating to ducts, duct bundles, splice enclosures, cassettes and splice plans, distributor assignment, and cable and fiber details, as well as for the management of assets, equipment and components.
The entire wide area network (WAN) infrastructure can also be documented, ensuring the important handover points in the network are captured in the central cable management repository. This ensures all components of the infrastructure are managed and visualized holistically, for maximum transparency regarding patching, configuration, and the locations of active endpoint devices in the network.
Comprehensive system-based plausibility checks of the combination of cable and connector types and the technology-dependent maximum cable lengths to ensure high planning and documentation quality.
Extensive component library of over 70,000 components from all manufacturers, including technical parameters.
Would you like to see how our solution for cable management works? Request a demo!
Network Documentation and Cable Management Checklist
Cables are a critical component of almost all areas of IT and telecommunications. Failures or defects can have serious consequences. Therefore, the larger, more complex and system-relevant cable infrastructures are, the more important their professional management is. Read what makes a modern documentation and management solution stand out.
Cable management: Keeping an eye on the critical connections within your infrastructures
You probably deal with cables every day. For such a simple word, it has complex and multi-layered forms, functions, and application scenarios. Cables are system-relevant in almost all economic, technological, institutional, and social areas. About 2.5 trillion bytes of important data flow through them every day. Errors or defects in and on cables can have devastating consequences and paralyze entire companies, cities, or industries. Cables are a passive, yet integral part of any infrastructure and network - be it enterprise IT, a data center, or a telecommunications network. Developments such as cloud computing or the Internet of Things do little to change this. The larger, more complex and more system-relevant cable infrastructures are the more important it is that they be professionally managed. That makes cable management an important subdiscipline of IT infrastructure management.
Software for cable management: Transparency is the basis for efficient management
Cable management software should create complete transparency across all cable and network infrastructures. This transparency is the foundation necessary to enable efficient management. The cable management tool provides the central data and control instance. It also has helpful tools for documenting complex cable infrastructures and network cabling in a completely transparent manner and managing them efficiently.
Modern cable management software is available to IT and telecommunication managers for this purpose. Fiber management software and fiber optic software are cable management solutions, as are cable planning and patch management software. All are classified as cable management software.
What does "complete documentation" mean?
Completely transparent documentation means that you must be able to map which cables are present (physical mapping), where they run (geo-referenced mapping) and which dependencies exist with applications and processes in the network or infrastructure (logical linkage). The last point is particularly important. Linkage is ultimately responsible for the performance and availability of your infrastructures. You must classify critical processes and the cable infrastructure over which these processes run and protect them by creating redundancies. To do this, you need to know all the logical dependencies. Every critical process relies on a cable infrastructure that is also critical. Cable management is much more than just mapping the physical level.
Central control from planning to incident
Transparency plays a major role not only in the operation but also in the expansion of cable networks for example planning new installations on a factory site, in buildings or in public areas. Unlike an Excel spreadsheet, professional cable management gives you precise and clear information and graphical overviews for planning. It also reduces costs, because every meter of cable laid costs money. With software supported planning no unnecessary cable will be laid. When autorouting functionality is integrated into the cable management system, for example, you can easily find the optimal route.
If the existing data can also be displayed graphically and linked to geo-reference information (GIS), you, your planners and service providers can see on a map all cables, their functions and connection points. This view is significantly better than confusing tables and supports intuitive work. People are now very used to working with maps based on visual impressions. Map applications from Google or Apple, for example, are standard on every smartphone or tablet. People use them to orient themselves at lightning speed in everyday life, and this is exactly what makes cable management software with GIS functionality so attractive. They clearly depict the network infrastructure and signal tracing graphically so that you, as well as your service providers, can quickly and easily find your way through the jungle of cables and the large and confusing terrain.
Patch and Incident Management
Patches and incidents are part of every IT manager's daily routine. You can improve patch management with cable management software. The software creates automated work orders that detail where patches and splices need to be inserted. With the help of documentation, you can also plan replacement cycles for obsolete components in a structured manner. You can also accurately identify problems and perform targeted maintenance. The improved overview and increased efficiency can significantly reduce operating costs and expenses for incident processes. Savings of up to 50 percent are possible with modern cable management.
Professional cable management also offers a decisive advantage for maintaining compliance with service level agreements (SLAs) vis-à-vis your customers. The transparency created by the software helps you to analyze very quickly which services are affected by a fault. Based on this, you can develop recommendations for action: Which people and services are affected? Who needs to be informed and in what order? Where to send the fault clearance team? On large sites such as production facilities or airports, pinpointing the exact location of the fault is crucial to keeping downtime and costs as low as possible.
Increasing complexity in cable management
Cable management is a very complex task. Many companies maintain many kilometers of copper and fiber optics both inside a building or campus ("inside plant") as well as outside of it ("outside plant"). Outside plant often involves cables hidden in underground routes, empty conduits, cable shafts, etc. Cables often connect the inside and outside plants. A cable management software should therefore cover both as well.
The complexity is increased by the large variety of different cable types and their functions. In addition to the classic copper cable for power supply and optical fiber (FO) such as fiber optics or FTTx for data transfer, companies are using individualized, hybrid cable types.
Another trend is converging systems. This means that many services are mapped simultaneously via a single cable, making the logical links more complicated. Even companies that advocate a cloud-first strategy are not completely cable-free because of this. They often outsource central computing services to the cloud, but at the same time still operate on-premises data centers. In this case the cable network plays an important role.
The basis for efficient cable management: Uniform data model and interfaces
The basis for efficient cable management is provided by an integrated, central data model in which all dependencies, from the site or building to the physical, logical, and virtual assets, to the applications and services, are stored and can be analyzed, from the infrastructure facility to the business service. Only then can you obtain a consistent picture of your entire cable infrastructure as a function of the processes running on it.
Since in practice the data for cable management usually comes from different sources - from lists, upstream systems, external planning offices or surveying systems from service providers - you need open interfaces to transfer all the data from these external systems and databases into your uniform data model. If these are available, you reduce the effort for integration and help to create uniform documentation according to the single-source-of-truth approach.
Conclusion: Inside view into your cable landscape
Software that is based on a uniform data model, provides many interfaces and, as an integrated system, covers documentation, planning and incident management, makes your daily work with the cable infrastructure much easier. It ensures cost savings and greater stability of your systems. So, it pays to take an inside view of your cable infrastructures. Find out more about this in our white paper "The Future of Cable Management”.
Further Downloads
Would you like to know more about cable management? Then you might be interested in the following:
The world is becoming more digital: network infrastructures are constantly growing and their complexity is increasing. The IoT and Industry 4.0 brings billions of new connected devices. At the same time, security and availability requirements are increasing. One thing is clear: managing network operation and expansion efficiently in the future will require an inside view of the infrastructure. Learn more in our white paper!
Companies are faced with increasing data volumes rapidly growing networking. As a result, the digital infrastructure is becoming increasingly complex. Not only is the complexity of the network infrastructure is growing, but so are the demands placed on it. Ensuring fault-free functioning is more important than ever. Failures of individual devices or services can quickly cause serious problems and high costs. For this reason, keeping track of the complex IT, network and device infrastructure is key. In this white paper, you will learn from two real-life examples how companies can achieve holistic network management through the combined use of the FNT Command Platform and Stable-Net.
A major international airport places particularly high demands on network infrastructure and solutions for its management. Not only are IT operations safety critical, but pressure of time and pressure to succeed are enormous. Therefore, Fraport AG, operator of Frankfurt/Main airport, relies on FNT Command for the management of cables, cable trays and similar. “FNT Command is the central memory of our communications infrastructure”, says Klaus Schultz-Fademrecht, Senior Manager Networks at Fraport AG.
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