Hold Techniques · New
Excel as the authoritative network documentation
Workable as a stopgap, a risk as the environment grows.
Excel is quick to set up, and everyone can use it. As the environment grows, copies, naming variants and conflicting versions appear. Relationships such as cables, ports or the assignment of IP addresses to interfaces are hard to model properly, and automation cannot build on it.
Existing lists can remain as an interim solution. For new initiatives, we do not recommend Excel as the authoritative source, only for reports and exports from the source of truth.
A good fit if …
- the environment is very small
- the list only serves until the migration to a source of truth
- it is used for one-off analyses
Not a good fit if …
- several teams or sites maintain the data
- automation is planned
- audits require a reliable inventory
Which tools suit your operations?
In an initial call we review your tool landscape and show where a change pays off and where it does not.