Named Cabcentric, the product is a complementary application to CMPIC, Cloudis’ Cable Scheduling, Routing and Installation Management software.
Cabcentric is aimed at companies and organizations which have massive cabling infrastructure but where the requirements for the routing and installation of the cables are of less importance than the management of the connectivity and termination points of these cables. The Cabcentric Cable Management System was designed using Cloudis’ own V9 development environment, which is based on two technologies – Java and Oracle. The rules of how the data is structured, edited and accessed are all held in the Oracle database. Since the rules are also held as data, this offers tremendous flexibility in how Cabcentric can be customized and adapted as requirements emerge and change.
The software is already in production use at a major US University.
Cabcentric Key Features
- Database documents the totality of the cabling infrastructure with records relating to locations, cables, devices, ports, faceplates, terminations, patching, associated documents etc.
- Items such as wall-mounted faceplates can be documented on intelligent AutoCAD floor-plans and then processed automatically to populate Cabcentric with device records to represent each faceplate, and cable records for each cable terminating there.
- An electronic document vault is used to store the AutoCAD drawing saved as a PDF, meaning that a cable can be highlighted in the Cabcentric Navigator, and the appropriate PDF file is then retrieved from the vault, opened in Acrobat Reader, and searched to highlight the cable on the drawing.
- Any type of document or file can be associated with an object in Cabcentric e.g. installation photographs, manuals, videos etc. These documents and files are then stored in the electronic vault and can be retrieved using right mouse clicks.
- Information on items such as Rack Layouts can be shown both in the Cabcentric Navigator, and also through Visio diagrams generated entirely automatically from data in the database. The layout is generated from templates and stencils which can be defined by the customer.
- Each device type has an associated detail form generated by Cabcentric which is used for populating and showing terminations and patches.
- All types of cables can be managed including individual tubes and strands within fibre optic cables.
- Connectivity can be traced from any suitable start point, through coupler panels, splices, and patches to end-point devices such as switches.
- The routes of cable or fibres are shown in the Cabcentric Navigator – e.g. face plate to patch panel, patch panel to duct bank, duct bank to man hole, man hole to duct bank, duct bank to patch panel, patch panel to face plate.
- Results of searches can be output to .CSV files for opening in spreadsheets.
- Data can be output for use in Microsoft Access.
- Access to data and functions is controlled by sophisticated roles and rules.
- The entire application is web-enabled, including integration with AutoCAD, and outputs to Visio and Access.
Ian Barnes, Sales and Commercial Director at Cloudis Ltd. says of Cabcentric:
“The flexibility of the software and its ability to manage millions of records we believe make it a very good fit for large organizations looking to document their cabling infrastructure. The fact that Cabcentric is Oracle based, open and web-enabled also makes it attractive where integration with other applications is concerned.”