Written by Karen | 28/02/10 00:00
Office relocations tend to be demanding tasks and for most companies involve a high degree of thought and planning. IT and Telecommunications are increasingly integral to business operations and no doubt form a substantial part of a companies moving checklist. However, from my experience at Fluidata, it seems relatively few investigate the access to internet connectivity they will have at premises before signing contracts. Given that geographical location and exchange availability dictate the speeds one achieves from internet services, and subsequently the price a company will have to pay for fast broadband and the time frame required for provisioning, this is very surprising. I’ve witnessed, on more than one occasion, the alarm and panic of an IT Manager when I’ve informed them what’s available at their new site and wondered why we hadn’t been having this conversation a month or so before. After all a quick site feasibility assessment could have, at the very least, provided them prior warning. Of course office relocation project can actually present a very good opportunity to re-evaluate ones current IT setup. Gartner research shows that 79 per cent of businesses overpay for their telecoms, so this is a great chance for a canny IT Manager to deliver cost savings and to reassess the suitability of their connectivity requirements both now and moving forward. Fluidata’s impending relocation is being planned to the very last detail and in true Fluidata style we are keeping true to our ethos of ‘practicing what we preach’. Our 100 Mb/s fibre line is due to be migrated across within the next 45 days whilst the new office is being fitted out. The IPs will stay the same so the transition will go as smoothly as possible and up until the day we move we will continue to use BURST in the office. Our VoIP phones will just need to be taken to the new office and plugged in much like the rest of our IT equipment so no changes to configuration are required. Such careful planning is unsurprising given the nature of our business, but with all companies becoming increasingly reliant on the internet, and a burgeoning interest in services like VoIP, video conferencing and cloud computing, in the future it should become more common for companies to investigate connectivity options prior to making decisions on premises.