An IT Support Blog from London

Relocations, in any aspect of life, are a stressful undertaking, and even with careful preparation and planning, they cost time, money, and energy. When it comes to moving offices, a lot has to be taken into consideration; furniture needs to be moved or replaced, important documents and files are to be shifted securely and valuable assets have to be relocated without being damaged, all whilst keeping the business up and running and enabling employees to continue working as best as possible.

One major headache for businesses is removing their existing IT infrastructure including PCs and servers and rebuilding it at the new location as quickly as possible in order to not disrupt ongoing business too much. Many companies merely shift their old system from one office to the other when in fact they could not only move offices but also move their IT to the cloud, resulting in various business benefits and a smoother, easier relocation.

IT security and systems availability

IT security is one of the biggest concerns of our time. It might be identity theft from individuals or the hacking of business and corporate networks on an industrial scale by unscrupulous nation states trying to obtain commercial IP or military secrets. Whatever the threat, securing networks against attack is high priority for IT teams.

Besides viruses, malware and hacking, if we look at other factors that impact operational availability of business dependent IT systems, then there are a range of issues which need to be addressed.

Server status and Windows Services, disk space and database sizes are all factors that could  influence a business-critical failure. Storage and back up, the availability of network devices, satellite offices and websites are all hugely relevant.

Commoditised services and low value

In these days of highly competitive marketplaces, customer satisfaction is often the key to business success. Generally we can say a customer is satisfied when the service received exceeds or at the very least matches expectations. But what shapes our expectations?

Quite often it is determined by the concept of ‘value’.In today’s competitive market places commoditisation leads to lower quality services. If the price is appropriate to the service level then the value perception may be seen as reasonable or adequate. However, when the cost outstrips the level of service, then the value perception is likely to be poor. Ultimately, we expect to get what we pay for.