The Smallworld Design Manager* engineering management product automates the plan, design, build and provision of service for electric, gas, water and telecommunications networks. Reflecting customer needs, GE has released a new licensing scheme of our Smallworld Design Manager product. Customers can now purchase Workflow Manager* as an individual product, allowing those who only have a need for enhanced workflow support within the Smallworld* products to leverage this Design Manager functionality. Smallworld Design Manager is now available as two licensing options:

Design Manager Workflow:

• Sample state model and state model configuration
• Design Browser and all project related functionality such as dependencies and phased completion

Design Manager Design:

• Design Manager Workflow
• Support for compatible units and related functionality including macro assemblies and bill of materials
• Design layout tools and sample design layout tools

This licensing change is in response to customer needs and now provides customers with the flexibility of purchasing only the part of the Smallworld Design Manager product that they require to meet their business needs.

At the Smallworld European User Conference in March, GE Energy announced the development of a new product in the Smallworld Network Inventory* portfolio called Smallworld Physical Resource Assignment* (PRA). The product is focused on accelerating the prequalification and assignment of the physical network to support delivery of services. Smallworld Physical Resource Assignment will streamline responses to service requests coming from an order handling or provisioning system via a web service, and the response will be automated to provide a fully connected physical path within seconds to the requesting system. Any resulting assignments that need to be implemented in the network, such as jumpering or customer drops, will feed into a workforce management system to support the scheduling and management of field crews to undertake the vital assignment activities in the field. GE Energy provides such a workforce management system with its Field Force Automation* (FFA) capability, so this will link neatly into the Smallworld Physical Resource Assignment product. The first release is targeted for Q4 2010. Please let us know if you are interested in this capability so that we can schedule a demonstration with you.

In November 2009, GE Energy announced the release of its new Smallworld FTTH module, based on the Smallworld Physical Network Inventory* product. The focus of this module is to accelerate the rollout of FTTH networks by automating the network design process. Since the release of the product, GE Energy already has three Tier 1 customers using the software, and early indications are that it can save about 70% of the design costs. In this growing space, many telecommunications operators are turning to Smallworld* solutions to design and deploy their fiber network, but this trend is not limited to telecommunications companies. Increasingly, utility companies are also deploying their own FTTH network infrastructure. GE Energy has provided a specific release of the FTTH module called the Smallworld FTTH^Agile product to enable smaller tier 2 and tier 3 telecommunications and utility companies to deploy standalone installations quickly and easily.

To learn more about the Smallworld FTTH module, click here to download the fact sheet.



* trademarks of General Electric Company.