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, starting with the site.
Site Choices
Connectivity: We have put this first as most companies cannot afford to be offline and links are typically long-lead items – up to 36 working days for DSL. Before choosing a new building or even an office area for your relocation, review your requirements for data and voice. How many Mbps of bandwidth do you need? Ask yourself how you can take the best advantage of position. Do you know which telephone exchange your new property is connected to? That will determine the options for DSL. Next, how far from the exchange is the property. If you are close to the exchange, you will get top quality connectivity in the available services such as ADSL, SHDSL or mid band ethernet. Fibre and wireless are also location dependent but not linked to the exchange. We can advise you on the exact location, sometimes down to the building number, where you can get the best speeds.
If network down-time is not an option, link your new location to the existing network or internet before you move. There are various technical issues in doing this, and the larger the existing network, the more difficult this will be. There is little opportunity to relocate existing equipment, so there is usually an investment in new hardware.
Security: Consider moving your servers to a shared data centre. Here is your chance to protect your computer room from power outages and to ensure the greatest amount of uptime possible. Your servers and other infrastructure are at extra risk of damage, loss and theft during relocation. Why not protect your investment by colocating your equipment at a secure data centre before you move. Co-location sites are protected around the clock by security systems and monitored video surveillance cameras. No one gets in or out without proof of identity and all visitors are checked against customer defined access lists. Moving your Internet-connected services to a data centre will also reduce your LAN's exposure to attack and will result in greater Internet performance for your staff.
Location, Location, Location. When evaluating a potential site, think about where your new office will be in relation to where your employees live. It is important to remember that, for some of your employees, moving office locations can be a physical and mental challenge. Also, remember that today’s employees are more aware of the time they spend at work and at home. A simple tool is a map of your local area. Use this map to plot out where each of your employees live. Ideally, the location of your future office will shorten the majority of your employees’ daily commutes. Saving 10 minutes on a one-way commute equates to an additional 83 hours per employee per year that can be spent at work or with family. Adjacency to public transportation is also an item to consider when selecting a site. Access to mass transit is an excellent way to ease your employees into their new office location and becomes more important the less parking your new site has.
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.