Ensuring optimal performance of your operational technology (OT) network is crucial in today’s rapidly evolving smart building technology environment. As networks become more complex, traditional monitoring and troubleshooting methods fall short. This is where Site Scopes, an advanced OT network diagnostic tool for Optigo Visual Networks, comes into play.
But what makes Site Scopes indispensable? Let’s delve into the advantages for facilities, the ROI for Systems Integrators, and how you can get started with this powerful tool.
What Are Optigo Networks’ Site Scopes?
Site Scopes are next-generation OT network diagnostic tools available as an add-on for Optigo Visual Networks. They unlock a level of deep observability into your OT network that’s unparalleled in the industry. While OptigoVN gives you the unrivaled ability to diagnose nearly all of your network issues from a packet capture at no cost, Site Scopes drill down to the individual devices that might be the root cause of your troubles.
When we call them “next-generation” diagnostics, we mean it.
What are the Advantages of Adding Site Scopes to Your Facility’s OT Network?
Are you a facilities owner or manager? Then you likely understand the pressures of managing OT systems that make building environments and operations the best they can be for your tenants and your employees. Your partners in IT likely have a network monitoring and management system in place, but chances are there’s no dedicated solution in place for your OT network.
Adding OptigoVN is a smart first step in bringing your OT networks into a modern overview and troubleshooting environment, but adding Site Scopes allows you to achieve the sort of benefits that your IT partners consider table stakes.
Let’s look at why with some specific examples.
Unparalleled Network Visibility and Insights
Site Scopes take your network visibility to the next level. With the ability to drill down to the device address level, you gain a comprehensive view of your network’s health. This granular visibility allows quicker identification and resolution of issues that could cause prolonged and expensive downtime. That crucial extra level of diagnostic insight can slash time to resolution, eliminating the need to capture and test multiple times to zero in on the issue.
That crucial extra level of diagnostic insight can slash time to resolution, eliminating the need to capture and test multiple times to zero in on the issue.
Take this result for example. It’s one thing to find out that your network may be experiencing traffic issues due to excessive broadcast traffic, but with Site Scopes, now you know which device is the culprit — a great place to start your troubleshooting.
Rapid Problem Resolution
If you’ve had to troubleshoot a BACnet MS/TP network, you don’t have to imagine the frustration that comes with manually sifting through packet capture (PCAP) data or splitting networks in half to try and pinpoint a problem. Site Scopes streamline this process, making it faster and more intuitive than traditional methods like Wireshark or trial and error.
A network anomaly that could take hours to identify manually can be detected and resolved within minutes using Site Scopes. You’ve probably seen this scenario: You’ve traced hardware issues back to a BACnet control system. Checking your BAS, you see that devices are sometimes working, sometimes not. What do you do? If it’s an MS/TP network, it’s up the ladder to start bifurcating the system by hand, isolating sections of your network until the issues go away. Then it’s a manual process of checking each device to see if any problems are obvious. Nothing yet? Then it might be a check of configuration files. Then maybe a hardware swap. And on and on until you think you’ve got it. Then you’re undoing all that bifurcation and retesting the whole chain to ensure it’s fixed. Time: hours, maybe days.
Or.
You run an OptigoVN network health check with a packet capture you uploaded yourself from Optigo hardware or software traffic capture tools. The results tell you definitively the issue is with duplicate device addresses, and your Site Scope identifies the device instances of the two controllers in question. You assign new addresses and retest a new capture to ensure the issue is resolved. Time: minutes.
We highly recommend using our plug-and-play, Optigo Networks Hardware Capture Tool for all BACnet MS/TP packet capture activities, or installing our free Optigo Networks Software Capture Tool (available as a Windows or Linux application) for BACnet IP or BACnet Ethernet captures.
Imagine what you could do with all that time back.
Proactive Alerts
A Site Scope empowers you to move from reactive to proactive network management. OT network management prioritizes uptime over anything else—the systems OT networks control can be both sensitive and essential to human health and welfare. By adopting a preventative approach, you’re now identifying issues before they become a network disruption. No more waiting around for things to break.
By providing real-time alerts, you can reduce the effects of human error and mitigate almost all potential issues before they escalate. This proactive approach ensures smoother operations and minimizes unexpected disruptions. As the team at Next Hop Solutions explains, “By continuously analyzing network traffic, device performance metrics, and system logs in real-time, proactive monitoring systems can identify anomalies, security threats, and performance bottlenecks with precision and efficiency.”
With the ability to marry diagnostic issues to their sources, you begin to expand how you care for your system. These include:
- Seeing regular issues like lost tokens and slow response times can give you early warnings about hardware that needs service or replacement.
- Intermittent or offline device alerts can point you in the right direction to solving physical connectivity problems without having to trace lines in the walls.
- Router backpressure warnings might mean it’s time to look at expanding network capacity or review your routings.
These are the kinds of tactics needed for future-proof planning and the regular service elements to evaluate that will keep your network running in top shape, instead of dealing with the crisis and aftermath of a major incident.
Portability at Scale
We’ve made Site Scopes portable between OT networks. Site Scopes are assigned to provide deep insights into one OT network at a time. Need to monitor several at once? No problem, you can purchase and apply as many Site Scopes as you need to be up and running simultaneously.
But what if you don’t need all your OT networks monitored all the time? You can transfer Site Scopes to different networks at the beginning of each billing cycle (monthly).
What does that mean for you? You can get a lot of bang for your buck. Simply apply it to your network, use the Site Scope to dig deep and resolve your network issues, and then apply it to the next network you want to optimize at the start of the next month’s cycle.
Used this way, one Site Scope can monitor up to 12 different network segments in a year. No lock-ins. That kind of flexibility provides you with a customized level of management you can afford, and it’s ready to scale up when you need it.
There are Big Advantages with Site Scopes for Systems Integrators, Too
What if you’re on the other side of the table as a contractor or Systems Integrator (SI)? Like internal teams and facilities owners, time is still money to you. But while they have a focus on keeping costs low and productivity high, we know your chief aims are different.
Let’s look at how Site Scopes might be the secret weapon you’ve been looking for in your mission to increase client satisfaction, drive profitability, and win more clients.
Happy Clients Don’t Churn
One of the most valuable things to a service provider is a long-term clientele. After all, one of the biggest challenges and expenses in running a successful business is winning clients in the first place. With OptigoVN, and in particular, the extra layer of insights and speedy time to resolution an advanced OT network diagnostic tool enables, you can demonstrate in tangible ways the quality of work you provide and the attention to detail that clients have come to expect across all vendor experiences today.
With Site Scopes, you can show your clients how your work is contributing to a better network. Initial site reviews are faster, and can visibly demonstrate the need to bring in your services. Follow-up Network Health Score reviews put your improvements front and center.
There’s also the ability to move fast. With real-time monitoring and collaboration, you’ll be altered to issues as soon as OptigoVN detects them, and Site Scopes gives you the ability to zero in on the root cause immediately. This kind of service takes days, truck rolls, and repeat visits with traditional methods of troubleshooting. And that’s only after you realize a problem exists.
This kind of approach to customers builds satisfaction and trust. And trust makes you an invaluable partner.
Scale your Client Roster
Now that you’ve been able to speed up your time-to-resolution with Site Scopes and OptigoVN providing instant troubleshooting insights, you’ve got more free time. That means you’ve got more ability to serve more clients.
And with the ability to service clients more efficiently, systems integrators also enhance their reputation for reliability and promptness. This not only helps reduce churn among current clients but also attracts new ones through positive word-of-mouth.
Ultimately, OptigoVN with Site Scopes empowers Systems Integrators to scale their operations, take on more clients, and drive business growth without compromising the quality of service.
Multiply Your ROI with Network Health Monitoring Agreements
Most Systems Integrators typically offer a “one and done” agreement to deal with a single issue — installation, diagnosis, and fix for a single issue, etc. This break/fix model might be profitable, but only if you can keep new clients coming in the door. and that means you’re spending money and time on the hunt for new business, rather than running the business itself.
We’ve already talked about how moving to a SaaS-based solution like OptigoVN has a lot of advantages for SIs, but adding advanced OT network diagnostic tools like Site Scopes to the mix allows you to offer a whole new tier of service agreement to your clients—one where regular preventative health checks of their systems, aka Network Health Monitoring, becomes the new regular cadence of keeping OT networks optimized.
These consultation-like services allow you to provide more hands-on time with clients’ networks but also maintain a higher level of service for them. It’s also a potential cash cow for you, as you become a regular service partner with a recurring contract, instead of someone you call when the network stops working.
There’s some real ROI here. Remember how Site Scopes are transferable between networks up to 12 times a year? That sets up a very advantageous scenario for service providers:
- Apply a Site Scope to a client’s network,
- Run a deep diagnostic and provide services,
- Bill for that service,
- Move that Site Scope to another client’s network at month-end,
- Lather, rinse, repeat!
You’ve just used one Site Scope to potentially 12x your billings over one year.
How Can You Get Started with Site Scopes?
Site Scopes are available to any user with a free OptigoVN account, and can be added to any OT network in just a few easy steps.
Here’s a quick video walkthrough of the process.
Embracing the advanced diagnostic insights that Site Scopes bring to OptigoVN can revolutionize the way you manage, and service OT networks. By providing unparalleled network visibility, rapid problem resolution, proactive alerts, and scalable portability, Site Scopes ensures that your network is always performing at its best.
For facilities owners, managers, and Systems Integrators alike, the ability to swiftly diagnose and resolve network issues not only enhances operational efficiency but also translates into significant cost savings and increased client satisfaction.
Start leveraging the advanced OT network diagnostic tool Site Scopes today to transform your network management strategy and unlock a new level of operational excellence.
