Remote infrastructure management solution

Why are network power and cooling remote infrastructure management solutions important?

For any telecom network operators or ISP service providers, a common challenge is communicating information quickly to the right decision-makers. Whether it’s field technicians urging to replace defective HVAC equipment, network planners requiring power and rack space allocation to deploy new IT or telecom equipment, or a finance department looking to optimize capital expenditures, remote infrastructure management is key. For reference, 64% of operators say their Capital Expenditures spending is driven by technology, not business objectives.

All network operators are striving to improve customer retention, but without the proper tools in place, service assurance remains reactive, and network operators lose valuable time for probing reliable data source, analyzing and preparing information for the decision makers. As the networks grows and evolve, it becomes more and more complex to fulfill network inventory awareness with excel spreadsheets which is rarely up to date.

Nevertheless, one of the important sources of data network disruption is related to dependability and availability of your critical site power and cooling infrastructures found in every small pole site (5G, HFC), OSP cabinet (DLCs), cellular site (LTE, 4G) and especially in data centers and large ISP network facilities.

Power and cooling system data is lost in translation across preventive maintenance tasks complexities, facility managers, CSRs, building engineers and the NOC staff. Diverse power and cooling data may be found in different department or groups or systems, when it ought to be remotely accessible securely from a central portal. Manually entered, this data must be audited before it can be trusted. Disparate data from network sites and outside plants locations, from various manufacturers, and from miscellaneous technologies are trapped in separate software entities. It’s no wonder that 62% of telecom executives surveyed believe their network operations could be more efficient.

Whether your network operations are worldwide, national or local, you need global visibility to control and plan activities to support your business goals. Fortunately, today’s FIRMSuite™ can:

Automatically aggregate any data from power and cooling systems and provides coherent data into intuitive graphical representations;
Proactively notify network planners of pending abnormal capacity usage, estimate backup reserve times;
Enable forecast budget scenarios for power and cooling addition/replacement to sustain growth and corporate initiatives.

Essentially, FIRMSuite is a powerful real-time interoperable management software that adapts to both network operations and network engineering ever changing needs to provide data intelligently, to the right people, at the right time. Modular and flexible, it provides remote, yet global visibility into critical power and cooling systems across your enterprise to optimize Capital Expenditures investments and Operational Expenditure spending.

FIRMSuite is at the center of telecom power and cooling infrastructures projects, connecting people, activities and data. Network operators can gain the efficiencies that come from eliminating data inaccuracy, data silos, and reactive management.

Benefits of Multitel’s remote infrastructure management solution

Centralize your power and cooling network view

Cooling is a major cost factor in telecom center. If it is implemented poorly, the power required to cool the space can match or exceed the power used to run the telecommunication equipment. Working with too many applications or needing to log into separate systems to identify potential hotspots, view the capacity usage ratio for your HVAC and power systems can severely impact your ability to sustain the growth and deployment of new technologies, such as 5G equipment. A centralized network view of all your power and cooling assets, along with their telemetry data, historical data graphs, capacity usage levels in one accessible place to quickly help you determine what equipment you have and its condition. This allows you to quickly justify equipment addition/replacement projects while cutting costs, increase uptime and overall efficiency.

Let data and analytics (D&A) improve how you run your operations

Overall, our decisions and actions are fundamentally based on data we have available to us. Whether is it managing dispatched resources to a regional area affected by an outage, taking the decision to postpone an equipment replacement, or replacing a battery right after the end of its warranty coverage, D&A has greatest impact on how telecom organizations run their operations. Getting access and making use of real-time telemetry information and calculations, such as capacity, site loads, reserved time and more, allows teams to quickly identify the conditions and state of health of telecom’s site power and cooling asset.

Using FIRMSuite’s proactive notifications based on your business rules, standard reporting and visual graphs of your network’s state of health will help you to detect abnormal situations more effectively and plan efficient corrective actions.

Break the silos between engineering and operations groups

Ensure consistent communication between engineering and operations groups throughout work processes by getting alerts about updated notes and approval requests in the remote infrastructure management solution’s message center panel. Automate recurring maintenance and audit periods. Be notified about upcoming maintenance that will exceed the interval in one place, where both groups can access this information. Track routine workflows and a network’s status. Allow NOC technicians to access power assets and battery reserve time upon prolonged outage events.

Battery end of life: Knowing how to decide

Having access to battery preventive maintenance data and real-time status conditions will help you identify and determine when batteries have reached their end of life. Depending on the system configuration, FIRMSuite can keep track of battery critical parameters, such as float voltage, ohmic value, strap resistance and temperature. Data is aggregated automatically from battery monitoring system or by simply importing periodic battery test set data from preventive maintenance operations. A battery state of health (SOH) condition is automatically calculated based on your business rules. The SOH value is then used to impact the battery’s end of life expectancy and modulate the battery reserve time calculations accordingly. The automated process reduces human intervention, breakdowns and unplanned power outages—all while enabling trusted yearly battery replacement budget forecasts.

FIRMSuite’s battery maintenance feature can identify bad cells or jars within a string, allowing network operators to take advantage of battery warranty claims and save capital expenditures on a recurring basis. On the other hand, cells or jars having reached the expected end-of-life date—but still identified as in good working condition—can be left in the network for capital expenditures deferrals.

Remote infrastructure management solution key features

Comprehensive critical infrastructure asset management

FIRMSuite is addresses the challenges related to telecom DC power equipment and management of battery backup power. However, AC power systems, such as mains, ATS, generators and UPS (along with HVAC systems and many others) can be created and managed. Site floor plan scans be uploaded, with power and cooling equipment positioned on them displaying their color-coded capacity usage levels. Rack management features enable the tracking of network and IT equipment to quickly identify usable space and stop wasting rack space on power. Battery preventive maintenance data helps users to efficiently track maintenance progress, view battery state of health conditions, and forecast accurate battery replacement budget scenarios. FIRMSuite’s capabilities are:

Power and cooling asset planning

Strategic planning is a structured, yet continuous process, which provides finance and network management staff the budget requirements needed to sustain growth and maintain the reliability of the network. By understanding the current power and cooling capacity usage for each piece of equipment, you can drive economy of scale by deploying new equipment at underutilized locations.

You can also easily justify the roadmap for adding capacity, increasing power back-ups, and boosting rack space requirements to financial decision-makers. FIRMSuite gives visibility on the current and projected utilization, including equipment additions/replacements and their future impact on current capacity. Our solution is also a place holder for tracking power system and battery projects. Use of equipment models (templates) enables quick inventory setup and adjustments so that you can easily track and locate discontinued equipment through modernization programs.

Data gathering for compliancy auditing and risk management

FIRMSuite offers a simple, yet effective data-gathering feature. It enables network operators to capture information you want to know more about—from critical infrastructure not readily available through to remote telemetry devices. You can create your own audit or inspection forms, track the auditing process completion, and automatically provide scoring based on your business risk analysis requirements.

Furthermore, you can set your preferred auditing frequency based on your business or industry requirements (ISO, PRC—05, etc.). Data can be easily transferred to spreadsheets for further analysis and reporting.

Related products

FIRMSuite is an asset management software that enables companies to oversee capacity and rack usage so that you can better manage infrastructure all across your entire network.