Most network teams don’t say: “We have an undocumented network knowledge problem.” They say: “Ask the person who installed it.” “It should be in the old Visio diagram.” “There’s a spreadsheet somewhere.” “Someone on the fiber team knows.” This “system” may work for a while—until that person is unavailable, retires, or leaves the organization. Then…
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It’s Tuesday afternoon and an email from the city manager lands in your inbox: “We’re finalizing the new fire station’s backbone connection. Can you send over the strand map and available fiber paths by Thursday?” You open the shared drive. There’s a Visio from 2018, a spreadsheet that hasn’t been touched since the last contractor…
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The call rarely comes with complete information. A classroom wing is down. A residence hall is dealing with spotty Wi-Fi again. The gym has an event tonight, and someone needs to figure out which closet, switch, fiber path, port, and IP range are involved before troubleshooting can even begin. So the search starts. One person…
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Unpopular opinion: a DCIM software search should not start out with a giant feature checklist. I have to be honest: almost anything can become a “feature” if you stick a label on something the software does. The problem is that a feature checklist tells you what the software can do inside a controlled demo, not whether it will actually hold up when things get real.
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The eagle lands again — this time bringing Air-Blown Fiber (ABF) modeling, dedicated workflows, and expanded visualization capabilities, along with support for Common Access Card (CAC) login and client certificate (SSL) authentication. Version 10.1 builds directly on 10.0 with focused enhancements across modeling, circuits, usability, IPAM, and authentication handling. Click here to check out the…
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The tool you use to track your network and IT infrastructure can make all the difference between smooth changes and daily firefighting. Many of the folks I talk to end up in one of three camps: spreadsheets, a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), or Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software. Yes…they do overlap a bit…but they’re…
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