Why is it

Why is it that companies who spend millions on hardware and software seem to forget the bits of copper joining the desktop to the comms hubs/switches/routers etc.

I have been in the industry for well over 18 years now and can count on the fingersof one hand the number of companies who pay cognisance to the level of importance the cabling is to a company.

Whilst I am the first to agree that cabling is not a very sexy technology it is nevertheless true that proper management and an appreciation of how important cabling is to the business is paramount.

To illustrate I will use two examples; The first was a company dealing in international delivery of flowers. The head office building housed approximately 250 users the bulk of whichwere involved in sales-order processing. If these users could not log on the company ceased to trade, it was as simple as that yet ALL of their cabling routed to the comms room via one access point. I repeatedly warned management that if they had a problem in this area they would be in real trouble. I was ignored and lo and behold, six months later they had a fire which completely burnt out the entire 10bT cabling running through this access.

The second example I will use was a hospital who failed to manage changes to connectivity due to office moves etc. They also singularly failed to label correctly any of the patch panels!!! The end result was that when they wanted to add users they found that they seemingly had no spare ports. Also when it came to troubleshooting network connections that lead-times for fixes were greatly extended because the technicians spent huge amounts of time trying to ascertain exactly which patch a user was cabled to and to what hub port. The wrong patch leads were used in a lot of cases making the comms cabinets a nightmare to check.