Amazon, Google, GCHQ and NASA, are among those who have invested in the SergeantClip, a network and infrastructure cable management system, which can save companies millions of pounds in downtime and loss of service.
The SergeantClip is designed to help IT engineers ensure that once a cable has been removed from a device it is replaced in the correct port, reducing the risk of human error, speeding up the process and potentially saving customers money.
The clip is slipped around the cables, making it straightforward to plug them back into the right space once the work has been completed. Risk of plugging them back into the wrong port is literally eradicated.
The device is the brainchild of 39-year-old IT expert Mark Costigan, from Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, who recognised the scale of the task facing engineers removing – and re-plugging - large quantities of cables.
“They have to put in a lot of painstaking work upfront to identify and document the correct ports to plug them back into,” said Mark, “and the potential for error in this situation is considerable.”
“Someone innocently plugging a cable into the wrong port could literally bring an organisation to its knees and the implications of that can be far reaching.
“The SergeantClip removes that possibility and at the same time significantly reduces the time – and the cost – usually involved with this kind of work.”
Orders for the SergeantClip have come from organisations including Disney Cruise Lines and the Las Vegas Police Department and it is also being used by a number of educational establishments in both the UK and the USA.
Mark’s hope is that, long term, the use of SergeantClip – which is manufactured in the UK - will become standard practice for all networking or cabling.