NetBrain WorkStation, the first distributive network management system, has greatly increased the productivity of individual network professionals. Compared with the server-centric network management solution, NetBrain Workstation is much more flexible and allows each network engineer to work on his own workspace. Also we realize that network engineers often collaborate on their diary work and share their network knowledge. And therefore NetBrain Workstation is designed as not just a standalone network management platform, but also a collaborative Workstation.

NetBrain Workstations are able to collaborate and share knowledge with each other via NetBrain CMDB service. NetBrain CMDB Appliance manages the network data including device configuration files, route tables, ARP tables, MAC tables, CDP tables and other. A version control system is developed to manage the historical network data. NetBrain Workstation can upload the data to CMDB and download the latest version or an old version of data from CMDB. NetBrain CMDB service also provides functions for two Workstations to share a workspace. For a large company, a standard use case is: a super user who knows the network well builds a workspace and publishes the data to CMDB and other users download the data from CMDB.

NetBrain Appliance also provides a central service to benchmark the network. The Benchmark Appliance retrieves the data from the network periodically and uploads the retrieved data into CMDB Appliance. Workstation downloads these data from CMDB appliance if necessary. Having one central service benchmark the data from the live network can have reduce the affect to network devices from Workstations.

If no Appliance is deployed or accessible, NetBrain Workstations can still share data using features integrated into the system. For example, NetBrain Workstations can collaborate on the shared folder: one Workstation export the workspace into this shared folder and other Workstations import the workspace from this shared folder.

NetBrain Q-map also provides a good medium for the collaboration and knowledge sharing. Q-map contains not only the network topology but also full knowledge of all network objects shown in the map. It is a self contained network map and can be used to present a network design or a trouble shooting process. NetBrain Workstation provides functions to allow the user send the Q-map to another Workstation or to the other user via email. Upon receiving this Q-map, the other Workstation can open Q-map without problem and continue working on this Q-map.