Five tips to a successful IT Relocation
Most company executives are new to the moving or relocation process, let alone the IT relocation process. Here are some tips to ease the pain —based on our industry knowledge and practical experience. Moving is a real opportunity to set up your new office exactly as you want it and to take advantage of new technologies. We look at a series of business decisions that need to be made, including infrastructure choices.
Infrastructure - Green your IT infrastructure to achieve cost savings
Review the IT infrastructure and communications needs of your firm, including upgrades for phone systems, WAN, server rooms, computer rooms and other office equipment. Relocation is the perfect time to make network and network security improvements, virtualise your environment, phase out old server and storage platforms, and to consolidate your IT.
Put this ahead of your facilities planning, it is essential IT dictates requirements rather than architects, project managers, cablers or electricians, etc. We have had too many cases where computer room racks were specified by facilities personnel rather than IT, resulting in last minute purchases of new racks that would actually fit the equipment.
A few simple measures that will green your network and help your bottom line are:
* Virtualise. This is the ideal time to bring in virtualisation as a solution to excessive energy consumption. Virtualisation makes it possible to consolidate multiple applications onto a single server. That is, apps that currently run on dedicated systems can be moved en masse to a single server that consumes less power -- generally, far less power -- than that required by the dedicated servers. 
* Purchase IT products that perform several functions instead of one. They are easier to manage, cost less, and use less power than multiple single-purpose devices. For example, the functionality of seven separate devices--router, firewall, VPN, switch, WiFi access point, telephony gateway, and voice messaging—is built into one Cisco platform for small businesses. (Put redundancy measures into place as well… combining functions should not be done at the expense of network downtime.)
* Put in teleworking and telepresence measures. VPN technology is built into business grade routers and firewalls and you have the choice of IPSec or SSL VPN for remote or roaming users. Similarly, by organising meetings as an online conference, you can reduce carbon emissions.
* Purchase energy efficient equipment. For example, the Cisco Catalyst switches have been proven to cut energy costs and consumption by independent studies. The switches were “Certified Green” by Miercom for their efficient power draw under various real-world network conditions and the power supply operation with intelligent power management capabilities.
Please email us if you would like us to identify your IT relocation goals and help you get to that “better place” with your IT investment.