In 2018, CIC has associated to RailGrup organisation. Railgrup is a Spanish cluster originated in 2002 with over 100 members worldwide. Railgrup represents its members from the Railway Industry sector facing an important mission. The cluster aims at increasing the competitiveness of railway companies, providing complete support to all its members by helping them pursue their interests. 

During the summer, the cluster invited CIC to participate in their webinars. So, on the 11th of June SGRwin as a CIC´s highlighted product joined Railgrup´s webinar. The topic discussed dealt with telecommunication management problems and concerns in the Railway sector. 

Webinar: Evolving and innovating dedicated network’s management

During the webinar we were represented by our Product Manager Javier Salazar. He structured his speech with the following topics:

• Past, present, and future of the network infrastructure and its management within the Railway Industry
• The most common concepts and trends
• SGRwin’s key features and case studies
• Short demo of our Network Management System

Analysis of the Railway´s network management and monitoring needs

There are different challenges facing the Railway Industry. However, Javier highlighted several issues as the key threats:

• Management and maintenance of multiple vendors and different technologies in the same infrastructure.
• Outdated and new equipment all in the same network.
• Numerous screens to manage and configure the network and its equipment.

In normal conditions, few customers replace old equipment by new one. If possible, users want to save money and try to extend the equipment´s life before replacing it. Actually, there are numerous companies using equipment more than 15 years old. Furthermore, mixing that obsolete equipment with new systems becomes a big challenge, also in terms of compatibility. To run the network in a proper way, it is essential to have all equipment communicating to each other. Also, it is necessary to highlight the existence of obsolete equipment that is not able to keep running in recent SO versions, becoming a huge headache for a many organisations.

Railway Communications

Railway communication infrastructure is complex, requiring different types of communications such as: train-to-ground, on-board, communication between interlocking and trackside objects, communication for signalling systems…etc. Therefore, it is important to have a single consolidated system for all data transport.

Why to choose our NMS for your Railway communications infrastructure?

There are different advantages that SGRwin offers to the Railway sector. From increased control, faster decision making and fault detection to system consolidation and convergence.

Our extensive experience working worldwide allows us to carry out projects efficiently.

National railway sector references:

• RENFE
• ADIF
• Ferrocarril Español Vía Estrecha (FEVE)
• Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valencia
• Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona
• Eusko Trenbideak
• Metro de Bilbao

International railway sector references:

• Iarnód Éireann (Ireland)
• Network Rail (United Kingdom)
• Chemins de Fer Rouains (Romania)
• Metroul din Bucuresti (Romania)
• Office National des Chemins de Fer (Morocco)
• Dubai Tram (Dubai)

The webinar ended with a lively Q&A where interesting questions were asked and responded.

We want to give thanks to all attendees and to RailGrup for promoting this fantastic initiative. We hope to repeat it soon!

If you are interested in the topics discussed in the Railway webinar, please do not hesitate in contacting us.