Inventory and workflow management systems
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc. /vijay
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:16 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
http://workflow.tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php http://www.openwfe.org I also suggest Zimbra with aggregate portal sites (Liferay is good), Ajax proxies, and/or RESTful web services. Cheers, Andre
On Apr 4, 2008, at 11:16 PM, vijay gill wrote:
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
/vijay
Seen loads of the running, (Granite's Xpercom which I have used a lot in the POS industry and which is a pain, Telcordia which back then was known to be even worse...), none of them was worth a dime... Then I saw that brilliant combination which was Comptel + Visionael, it did mass provisioning and inventory systems for a whole national DSL unbundling architecture in France. Takes some time and patience to mix/tune them together, but once done ... Greg VILLAIN Independant Network & Telco Architecture Consultant +33 6 87 48 66 14
Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:16 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
/vijay
On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 1:21 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
isn't it odd/lame that in many cases the answer to this is 'build your own' ?
On Sun, 19 May 2013, Christopher Morrow wrote:
On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 1:21 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
isn't it odd/lame that in many cases the answer to this is 'build your own' ?
I remember looking several years ago at a commercial fiber plant management application called Mapcom. It looked pretty good, but it was pricey, and no one wanted to spend the money on it. So... fast-forward to 2013.... and we're still using spreadsheets :( I haven't looked lately to see what's out there, but I'd imagine there *has* to be something. I can understand why many telcos ended up building their own systems, because many of them use(d) different or home-grown provisioning/billing/plant management/trouble ticketing systems, and different back-end systems in general, making a one-size-fits-all solution tough to do. jms
On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Justin M. Streiner <streiner@cluebyfour.org> wrote:
I haven't looked lately to see what's out there, but I'd imagine there *has* to be something.
I bet this is a market/cost thing... there are ~100 people who want this? it's going to take a few million in SWE resources to build, and probably recovery of that expense is going to be difficult :(
I can understand why many telcos ended up building their own systems, because many of them use(d) different or home-grown provisioning/billing/plant management/trouble ticketing systems, and different back-end systems in general, making a one-size-fits-all solution tough to do.
this MOSTLY gets to the ins/outs formats, right? 'billing system at $TELCO requires CSV output' (or something) and telco folk don't always like to think about 'standards'.
On Mon, 20 May 2013, Christopher Morrow wrote:
I haven't looked lately to see what's out there, but I'd imagine there *has* to be something.
I bet this is a market/cost thing... there are ~100 people who want this? it's going to take a few million in SWE resources to build, and probably recovery of that expense is going to be difficult :(
True, and would explain why the systems I've seen tend to be very expensive. I have taken a look at netdot from UOregon, and it looks like it has lots of nice features and an active development community. The main thing there is I need to really sit down and see how painful modifying the default DB schema will be to capture some of the fiber plant data I need, and preventing that all from getting blown away by the next cycle of software upgrades. Tying it into some other back-end systems we already have is another challenge that I really haven't had time to dig into yet.
I can understand why many telcos ended up building their own systems, because many of them use(d) different or home-grown provisioning/billing/plant management/trouble ticketing systems, and different back-end systems in general, making a one-size-fits-all solution tough to do.
this MOSTLY gets to the ins/outs formats, right? 'billing system at $TELCO requires CSV output' (or something) and telco folk don't always like to think about 'standards'.
That, and there can belots of general compatibility issues. Something like: The provisioning system is running on an old VAX mainframe, and $PROGRAM expects CSV with CR-LF, rather than just CR, but the billing system is built on a DB2 database on an IBM mainframe and doesn't know how to output the data in an acceptable format. A lot of it is probably centered around software engineering/DBA tasks, often requiring people with lots of institutional/legacy knowledge to get the appropriate pieces talking together correctly. In some cases, those people are no longer around, and consultants with the right skills (and often a pretty hefty hourly rate) need to be brought in. I would imagine that's why some of the telcos that went on acquision binges during the dot-com boom (coughcoughworldcom ;) ) never fully integrated the back-end systems of those acquired telcos into their own, even though it does/did make like more painful for their customers and their own ops people. Example: "Oh wait... that's an MFS circuit. I need to get into a different system to look at that..." jms
On 5/20/13, Justin M. Streiner <streiner@cluebyfour.org> wrote:
I remember looking several years ago at a commercial fiber plant management application called Mapcom. It looked pretty good, but it was pricey, and no one wanted to spend the money on it. So... fast-forward to 2013.... and we're still using spreadsheets :( [snip]
See, this is a problem.... standard spreadsheet programs are such a great competitor. How can you possibly justify the time and expense of developing software, if spreadsheet programs always wins against your product, because of its low price, so that there is no net income that is feasible to be made in that venture? Maybe the answer is, someone did make the program... it's just Excel, and developing more detailed custom software could be a good idea if it provides greater utility than the applicable cost of development -- once you have it though, maybe you don't want to sell it because it provides a competitive edge, and noone would be willing to pay enough for product and support anyways.... :) -- -JH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Morrow" <morrowc.lists@gmail.com>
On Sun, May 19, 2013 at 1:21 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
isn't it odd/lame that in many cases the answer to this is 'build your own' ?
In fact, I don't think it's all that odd. Ontology recapitulates phylology, as they say, and *all* carriers are sui generis these days, excepting possibly what's left of the RBOCs. So it's probably not all that surprising that there's no "template" to fit them into; the software has to be bolted on around the systems, rather than otherwise. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274
Off the shelf stuff? There are lots of options, but it seems like the general opinion of the IT groups I've worked with is that it's just as much work to customize and integrate them as it is to write from scratch so we tend to get further way from COTS all the time. You should take a look at Metasolv (now part of Oracle, I believe). We used it in one of our P&L regions for some regional products for over a decade and I was always impressed by how quickly they could roll out new workflows and products in it since much of the customization work could be done by a business process architect rather than having to be coded by a developer. We've also used Granite, which is from Telcordia, but I don't have enough direct or indirect experience to have an opinion on whether or not it's any good. Dave -----Original Message----- From: vijay gill [mailto:vgill@vijaygill.com] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 11:22 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Inventory and workflow management systems Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:16 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
/vijay
Beware of Metasolv license costs.. Beware of Metasolv in general. On 5/21/13 10:28 AM, "Siegel, David" <David.Siegel@Level3.com> wrote:
Off the shelf stuff? There are lots of options, but it seems like the general opinion of the IT groups I've worked with is that it's just as much work to customize and integrate them as it is to write from scratch so we tend to get further way from COTS all the time.
You should take a look at Metasolv (now part of Oracle, I believe). We used it in one of our P&L regions for some regional products for over a decade and I was always impressed by how quickly they could roll out new workflows and products in it since much of the customization work could be done by a business process architect rather than having to be coded by a developer.
We've also used Granite, which is from Telcordia, but I don't have enough direct or indirect experience to have an opinion on whether or not it's any good.
Dave
-----Original Message----- From: vijay gill [mailto:vgill@vijaygill.com] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 11:22 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Inventory and workflow management systems
Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:16 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
/vijay
On 5/21/13, Siegel, David <David.Siegel@level3.com> wrote:
Off the shelf stuff? There are lots of options, but it seems like the general opinion of the IT groups I've worked with is that it's just as much work to customize and integrate them as it is to write from scratch so we tend to get further way from COTS all the time.
Unless the requirement is quite trivial, or the usage quite small.. I would question 'write everything from scratch' -- now custom code for integrations makes sense; it doesn't make sense for every company to become a software company though and custom code all the bits of their systems, instead of customizing and reusing proven code. A solution implemented with mature OTS components doing all the heavy lifting may be more robust, if good choices were made. Customizing and integrating OTS components may be hard; once you do, you worry only about maintaining customizations and integrations. Chances are you get vendor support and well-tested software. :) That is, if the integrations/customizations made are supported ones, available through configuration of the software. With totally custom coded software, the org bears an ongoing burden of software reliability testing, for all the custom components. When one finds custom software cheaper than an OTS solution... one should probably ask... was ongoing testing, support, updates/security patches, and maintenance included? In other words... did the IT group just count the Initial cost to implement, or did they actually figure out a TCO, including changes to the custom software later required to solve scalability issues? The answer in some cases may be to figure out what products might fit the need/requirement in the most general sense, and find a consulting group adept with whichever products, rather than a local IT group. :) I am sure there are plenty of inventory management and accounting type products out in the world, able to be adapted for the unique requirements of inventorying different kinds of things. Chop up the problem sufficiently into bite-sized pieces, and I believe there are bound to be existing OTS options more useful than a spreadsheet. -- -JH
Not a personal experience or recommend but I've seen Pinnacle used for this purpose. TFA http://www.pinnsoft.com/services/operations-management.html Infrastructure Manager allows you to track every element of your communications infrastructure, from the outside and inside cable plant to the port assignment and availability of every network provisioning device. Just as important, Infrastructure Manager ensures that all records are immediately updated whether they are modified from inside or outside the service order and incident management process. By maintaining a single, central repository of all documentation, you'll be able to: Establish a centralized framework for documenting your entire infrastructure Eliminate data corruption and reduce the resources required to synchronize disparate records Provide a unified real-time perspective on the status of all communication records Facilitate proactive availability management for all ports and cable plant components Enable cost-effective capacity management Rationalize audits of your communications infrastructure Automate updates and prevent corruption -----Original Message----- From: vijay gill [mailto:vgill@vijaygill.com] Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 10:22 AM To: NANOG list Subject: Re: Inventory and workflow management systems Resurrecting this thread. Anyone? What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc. On Fri, Apr 4, 2008 at 2:16 PM, vijay gill <vgill@vijaygill.com> wrote:
What software solution do people use for inventory management for things like riser/conduit drawdown, fiber inventory, physical topology store, CLR/DLR, x-connect, contracts, port inventory, etc. Any experiences in integrating workflow into those packages for work orders, modeling, drawdown levels, etc.
/vijay
participants (10)
-
Andre Gironda -
Christopher Morrow -
Greg VILLAIN -
Jason Sherron -
Jay Ashworth -
Jimmy Hess -
Justin M. Streiner -
Siegel, David -
vijay gill -
Warren Bailey