CommScope: Is Managing Your Remote Sites One Of Your Headaches?

Used with permission from CommScope Blogs. 

Information flow is now second only to cash flow in the success of many organizations. To secure the information needed to run the business, network connections in every part of the organizationmust be constantly monitored and managed. 

This may not be as large a challenge at offices with local administrators and technicians present to handle MACs (Moves, Adds and Changes) and to deal with network security issues. However, in smaller branch offices with no network support staff it’s a different story.  When infrastructure MACs or checks are required at these dispersed sites, delays can occur while waiting for technicians to arrive from other locations. In organizations with many remote offices, technicians’ travel time and expenses, together with the extra delay in solving problems, are costly.

We believe intelligent infrastructure management can solve these problems by providing remote monitoring and management of the network connectivity.  It avoids time consuming manual methods of checking the integrity and security of the network physical layer. Instead, you can have complete, up-to-the-minute connectivity maps for your whole organization, together with automated alerts, one button tracing of connections and many other features. 

Administrators in North America can, for example, see connectivity maps, updated in real time, for branch networks in Europe or Asia.  Auto discovery of network equipment also tells you how many cards are on each switch as well as the number of copper or fiber ports per card, and which ports are in use.

By combining this information on infrastructure with network management systems helps make every aspect of the network more reliable.  Consolidating connectivity information helps cut Mean-Time-To-Recovery (MTTR), a key indicator of network management efficiency. 

In multi-site and multinational organizations, the payback on intelligent infrastructure management can be as little as two years.  And, from day one, it gives the peace of mind that comes from knowing your organization’s entire cabling infrastructure is constantly monitored and efficiently managed.

What other major infrastructure headaches do you have to solve?