Infrastructure Management: How Airports Unleash Their Digital Potential
Digital transformation of the aviation sector is forcing aircraft manufacturers, airlines, and airports to act. The latter in particular often find themselves grappling with an IT infrastructure that fails to meet modern requirements in terms of transparency, agility, and efficiency. Cable management is one crucial aspect: it’s far more than just a functional necessity with a database of visualized assets. Efficient monitoring of critical resources is a prerequisite for resolving technical faults with minimum disruption, leveraging the full potential of IT infrastructure, and seizing business opportunities as they arise.
A firm grasp on IT infrastructure helps to minimize disruptions
Cable management is not just a ‘nice to have’ aspect of infrastructure management. On the one hand, it supports new business opportunities arising from digitization of buildings, aircraft, and travelers that necessitate effective IT infrastructure management. On the other hand, it helps to minimize disruptions that would otherwise cause major problems. Consider a recent storm at a London airport that resulted in failure of the display boards and check-in systems. Travelers were warned via messages on the monitors: “Do not rely on the information on these screens.” Flights had to be cancelled and chaos ensued. The technical problems lasted for several hours. Outages like this are not unusual and can damage the reputation of any airport operator.
Luggage transport is another important aspect. A huge application supports the baggage conveyors. If there’s a cable fault affecting this area, the baggage reclaim stops – and that would make headline news. Rapid fault-finding and rectification is essential to contain the damage; the field service team must be dispatched to the right location within the airport site, which often spans several square kilometers.
But what if you knew exactly where every cable is located and which services depended on it? In this ideal scenario, the cause of the fault would be easy to find in the digital system and the field service team would be sent to the right spot immediately to resolve the fault. At the same time, there would be complete transparency about which services are effected, what the shortest work arounds are and how business continuity for all services could be upheld. This is exactly what a comprehensive cable management solution provides.
Underground or behind ceiling panels: Transparency matters
Transparency is achieved when a cable management solution that offers graphical support is implemented. A unified data model allows cable network operators to keep pace with growth across all levels, from buildings through the physical layer to virtualization and business services. The benefit is that a customer doesn’t have to source a new system every time requirements change. Instead, they can leverage a use-case-oriented solution that supports modular expansion as needed.
Airports that have documented the purpose of every cable are able to answer all the key questions immediately: What happens if that cable breaks? Who can’t make telephone calls, or use the point of sale, who loses their IT services and Internet access?
Example for a comprehensive system: German airport Fraport
Germany’s Frankfurt Airport (Fraport), the third largest travel hub in Europe, has been using a centralized management solution of FNT for more than 20 years. From the original nucleus of cable management, functionality has grown continuously over time. Today, it encompasses not only infrastructure, but also the airport’s value-adding activities.
The airport implemented FNT’s infrastructure management solution in 1999 to replace an existing alphanumeric system. Since then, the initial client-server system has evolved into a web-based solution that is so critical it counts as one of the airport’s 30 most important systems. It offers an overview of the location’s entire IT infrastructure via the cable paths, from navigation lighting systems to the individual workstations inside the building.
Furthermore, it also covers the two data centers on the campus itself and their simple power supply systems. Using an interface to a geo-web system, the airport can manage the routing of trays and nodes, accessible cable ducts, and shafts. 50,000 telephone lines are also managed via cable management at this airport.
Documentation offers security and compliance
At another terminal emerging in the Persian Gulf, FNT is working on the cabling of this new build. FNT joined the project in the planning phase, and this early involvement has multiple benefits for the operator. It boosts the quality of the documentation, and the operator will have a comprehensive plan of the infrastructure. Both will be instrumental in optimizing ongoing operation of the cable network.
Documentation is particularly valuable to this airport in terms of compliance and security since it bridges the gap between the planned and as-built status. In contrast, automated documentation procedures often fall short, because they fail to take proper account of the cabling plan. As an additional benefit, the customary reverse documentation is no longer needed. Since operation usually begins before the documentation is updated, many changes will typically have been made in the meantime, creating further problems.
Overall, the airport’s IT management team looks after around 150,000 copper and 65,000 fiber connections, a data center, two central comms rooms, around 170 distributor rooms, and 1,000 racks within the terminal. FNT’s cable management software is used in conjunction with an intelligent patch management system from CommScope to support optimization of patch management in the field. The airport enforces strict monitoring to enable immediate intervention in the event of a problem.
The digital passenger: Creating the best possible travel experience
The digital passenger is one driver behind ongoing digitization of airports and adjoining services, the aim being to provide travelers with the best possible services and high levels of satisfaction. Passengers need to receive relevant information tailored to his or her specific needs and interests, as it pertains to their journey.
And today’s digital passengers are a demanding bunch: they want real-time information on a range of channels covering their flight, retail and dining options, navigating the building, and booking parking in advance. End-to-end digitization of the traveler experience from the website through to boarding means that traditional airport IT systems are now critical installations.
It can be a leap to connect issues like efficiency and customer satisfaction to cables on the property. An up-and-coming airport on the US West Coast and one of FNT’s customers, knows that regaining control of the infrastructure is essential to support digital transformation and meet the increased demands of passengers. The changes will enable passengers to be plugged in to the entire journey, starting when a ticket is purchased, to parking, when and where the shuttle bus will enter the terminal, how the new biometric system will work at check-in, and whether they can get through security without having to undress. Covid-19 adds a new and unexpected layer to the journey and will further reshape how we travel, as preflight health checks and touchless check-in must be integrated into processes.
Beyond the planes: Leveraging additional business revenue
Flight systems are obviously vital, but IT resources are also increasingly important for generating revenue streams in terminals and parking garages. Airports need attractive and innovative retailers, service providers and caterers to increase their appeal. This can only work with an optimized digital infrastructure.
A very often used model is to use centralized software to roll out IT services for dining and retail in the terminals. To achieve this, IT service providers are acting as infrastructure enabler and manager, while the airports provide its services on the shared software platform. The platform handles the complete work workflow management process, from the retailer’s request to the airport through to the IT provider. The latter plans the service in the software and passes the request on for implementation, documenting it as it goes. This opens up a wide range of options, allowing the airport to operate a WLAN hotspot, including troubleshooting, on its own.
SaaS: From infrastructure to service provisioning
Similarly, IT providers are also seeing new business opportunities to grow beyond infrastructure. They can offer airports the technical underpinnings to also provide services. In addition to WLAN hotspot infrastructure, full-service management based for example on the FNT platform could cover operation of the hotspot, together with troubleshooting and connectivity. The airport operator writes the order in the application and billing is handled directly by the relevant business programs. All processes are thus completely digital and documented throughout.
Such solutions are making an indirect contribution to the airport’s revenues. IT orders from boutiques, restaurants, and travel bureaus in the terminals are fed directly into the system from the order portal. All stages are documented, from order status through cable patching to billing. The solution acts as a digitization assembly line and is ultimately the enabler for provisioning of these services. Infrastructure is also critical when it comes to enhancing service quality. The equation is simple: To provide a higher quality service, you need better quality foundations.
Efficiency, safety, and increased revenue: Benefits of integrated IT infrastructure management
Coming back to Frankfurt Airport, which is increasing efficiency, safety, and revenue with a comprehensive cable management solution, when asked why they are deploying such a comprehensive solution from FNT software, Mr. Schultz-Fademrecht, Frankfurt Airport’s expert for cable management and IT infrastructure, answers: “We’ve been working on our system for more than 20 years now, accumulating around ten million data points in the database: every patch cable, two entire data centers, all the switches, and 160,000 data sockets, shafts, and routes, together with several hundred thousand kilometers of copper cores and fiber-optic cables are documented, including the services that run on them, such as telephony and VPN. All that effort only makes sense with a coherent system that uses the same nomenclature throughout and is fully integrated. It also means that the current assets making up the IT network can always be determined almost at the touch of a button, since all IT assets are also recorded with their commercial information.”
“Taking an inventory is effortless”, he continues, “because the delivery notes, storage facility contents (incoming goods, interim storage, scrappage), together with documentation covering proper disposal, are all logged in the system. It shows our entire lifecycle management system. Billing for our external service providers is also based on the data in the system. A fragmented solution just doesn’t deliver, especially if the aim is a high level of automation.”
Eight benefits of a state-of-the-art cable management solution
IT systems at airports are systems critical for success, not only for the airport operator itself but for airlines, service providers and passengers. A strategic, automated and integrated management of the IT infrastructure helps to optimize services, quickly correct errors and ensure a high level of security and availability. Thanks to the comprehensive and extensive documentation of the current status, airport operators obtain full transparency of physical and logical IT/telecommunications networks right through to business services. In detail, this results in eight benefits of a cable management solution:
1. Complete transparency into all physical and logical IT and telecoms networks and the associated services.
2. Reduced operating costs thanks to automatic infrastructure monitoring.
3. Greater efficiency as a result of precision integration into existing processes.
4. Maximum uptime through faster fault recognition and repair measures.
5. Higher quality due to detailed planning and documentation.
6. Optimal signal paths identified and established with auto-routing functionality that leverages infrastructure and services information.
7. Peace of mind due to a strong focus on legal obligations (corporate governance).
8. Less effort around compliance audits and audit preparation.
