Under the motto “Successful Together” the first FNT User Group meeting was held on April 15 and 16 at FNT headquarters in Ellwangen. 60 participants from 37 companies found their way to Ellwangen to share their knowledge and use cases involving FNT software products with other users as well as product experts from FNT.
After a brief welcome, Nikolaus Albrecht (CEO of FNT) explained the current internationalization strategy of FNT. Then a presentation of customer case studies followed regarding the use of FNT products. Mr. Stefan Preis from WDR showcased in his presentation “The TV show with the CMDB – Factual stories around WDR-Command” the inventory management process at WDR, a specific labeling solution for IT Assets and an extension of FNT Command for key management.
Mr. Horst Sonnenberg and Mr. Robert Wenzel from HUK-COBURG gave insight into their reporting solution for data center relevant metrics with a presentation “Key figures for data center management with FNT Command”.
After presentations on the subjects of IT asset management and data center management, a lecture by Mr. Thomas Pinkert of NetCom BW (EnBW) followed on “Services and active network connections based on FNT Command Telco module at NetCom BW”.
After a long break, and the opportunity to exchange many ideas between all participants, a discussion followed about the organization of the future FNT User Group and how the users can cooperate with FNT in the future. Among the 60 participants a “founding group” was elected consisting of the following 7 people:
- Brian Bade (Bayer Business Services)
- Christian Freund (IT & E Control Solutions – commissarial speaker)
- Simon Nölle (swissgrid)
- Thomas Pinkert (NetCom BW)
- Markus Pohlen (ITERGO)
- Stefan Preis (WDR)
- Andrea Robben (DESY)
This founding group plans to present more detailed ideas about the organization of the FNT User Group and the process of exchanging requirements and information with FNT during next year’s NetWork ’16 event in Leipzig (April 26/27), where a new a User Group Meeting will be planned.
On the second day, FNT opened the user meeting with a live glimpse of the new innovations of release 10 of FNT Command and release 3 of FNT Service Planet. Subsequently, the FNT product strategy as well as the current Roadmap was presented by Horst Haag and Bernd Pratschke.
As part of the following working groups with the topics “Inventory, network and FNT Command basics”, “Data Center Management”, “Telecommunication” and “FNT Staging Area, Integration and Interfaces”, all participants had the possibility to intensively discuss ideas and requirements with the FNT product management team.
In summary, the first FNT User Group Meeting was a successful customer event and offered all participants time to exchange ideas about the daily use of FNT products.
