How Did We Get There? The Story of SGRwin

Innovating since 1990. A little bit about the creators of SGRwin

CIC Consulting Informático (hereafter CIC) is a Spanish company that has, since its inception, focused its efforts on providing results oriented innovative technological solutions to satisfy its clients needs.

The company was founded in 1990 and began to work in Cantabria, a region in the north of Spain.

The company has been so successful that today it boasts two headquarters in Spain and has more than 300 employees. Due to an extensive network of partners it is able to offer services and technological solutions to its clients worldwide.?

A concept became a solution - that′s how SGRwin originated.?

Since its inception CIC has proved itself to be a trustworthy partner to its clients.? Among the first was Electra de Viesgo, a major utility company in northern Spain, that used many of CIC′s IT solutions.

There was a clear need and challenge in the region at the time: To be able to monitor a heterogeneous communications network, made up of multiple manufacturers and technologies.

That′s how SISUR Project (Integrated System for Network Supervision) came about and became operational in 1993.? It was based on the SNMP protocol and some powerful HP platforms, combined with a UNIX operating ystem and implemented by an Openview user interface.

But…

With that environment in mind, many companies did not have the budget to make such important investments.?

With that in mind, in 1995 CIC found a way to package a product and make it affordable.? This was done by taking advantage of the launch of Microsoft Windows NT the same year. This novel operating system allowed for a better IP protocol, it was also multiarea and came with a windows environment, etc.

It was at this point that CIC began to develop SGRwin backed by Omnilogic Telecomunicaciones, as its first sales partner, both here in Spain as well as in South America.

In the 90s, Omnilogic Telecomunicaciones was a top communications engineering company.? Furthermore,? it was Nokia′s main distributor in Spain as in Latin America, as well as a prestigious manufacturer of IT products that was well established in the utilities sector.

Why is it called SGRwin? What does the acronym stand for?

In English a network management system, like SGRwin, is called a NMS.

In Spanish “SGR” stands for Sistema de Gestión de Redes, translated into English as Network Management System (NMS). Since the chosen operating system was MS Windows, CIC decided to add the "win" suffix.

What type of companies were the first users?

Our first clients in Spain belonged to diverse sectors: utilities; electricity, water and gas companies as well as the railway industry.? After our initial success with Electra de Viesgo, an important electricity provider in the north of Spain, our second launch was in Durango (Vizcaya) for Eusko Trendibeak (Ferrocarriles Vascos) the main railway company in the Basque Country.? From there, other companies, all leaders in their sector at the national and international level, became converts; RENFE, Endesa, Enagás, Canal de Isabel II etc.

Why was SGRwin so successful?

Before SGRwin came into existence, the only systems available at the time were, at best, rudimentary.? They were based on text displays and data that had to be manually fed by a person using very specialized cryptic abbreviations.

CIC did something revolutionary at the time. SGRwin was designed as a complete solution, using graphic representation windows which was key to its success. Furthermore, Spanish was used, as well as, the documentation was adapted.

What were SGRwin′s first functionalities?

• Collecting and storing alarms - Any network issue or problem is represented in various ways, which allows the user to use filters and do consultations.
• Friendly and intuitive interface that shows you the network through symbols joined by lines that represent the connections.? The colour indicates the state of each element that displays the hierarchy of locations, equipment and ports.
• Diverse automatic processes to save on manual labour, which simplifies operations and reduces human error; for example self discovery of equipment in a region and also the description of the dynamic structure of modular equipment.?
• Multiple users working on different computers simultaneously, controlling security by means of a password and different access levels for users.
• Tool for executing commands remotely for computer equipment in the field. We also added an ingenious tool called “runway”: The idea is that the tools use a runway, allowing for software to be used at a distance and not only locally as it was initially conceived.
• Another innovative aspect of SGRwin is action automation. It allows for regrouping commands and runs temporarily or as a reaction to a command.

How has the product evolved in its first 5 years?

After its initial success, CIC has continued to invest in R&D and listened to our customers' needs. The result has been as follows:

• Circuit management (End to End): Tracing existing routes, provisioning new services, automatic downloading of charts, discontinuity assessment, etc.
• NBI (Northbound Interface): Ability to send alarms to overhead collections systems.
• Enlarging our integrations catalog, adding new manufacturers and technologies: TETRA, SDH, xDSL, PABX, etc.
• Virtual equipment: Extra equipment to complete inventory, with the possibility of including circuits and carrying out indirect alarms management.
• Automatic map generator: Simplifying the updating procedure.
• Multi Language support is included to make SGRwin accessible to the world by cooperation with partners such as Omnilogic Telecomunicaciones.

After 30 years SGRwin is still growing.

SGRwin has come a long way since its inception.? It has over 400 features.? It is used in more than 35 countries worldwide to over 130 clients and is currently being used by more than 1000 users. Here our several references:

The solution is constantly evolving, adapting to the paradigm of technological changes and trends.As of today, SGRwin is working on the 8.9 software version. Every day new bigger and better features are being added.

SGRwin empowers you to address evolving network needs while maintaining legacy management. Our suite of solutions provides an array of advanced network management features.

After 30 years we′re still as motivated as we were the first day.?

We want to continue progressing and meeting the needs of clients. Our goal is that our technology will add value to any company.