3 things to remember about your IT when moving office

Sometimes businesses find themselves with a problem that’s good to have: they’re growing too fast to continue operations in their current location. That means it’s time to either expand their facilities, or find a new location and deal with the challenges inherent to moving office.

Those challenges include a variety of IT issues such as Internet downtime, damaged computers and servers, and misplaced network and telephony equipment, without which you can’t work.

But this shouldn’t cause alarm, as it has been our experience that companies abiding by three simple suggestions rarely experience technology or telecom issues during their office relocation.

Have a hardware plan

Your office relocation needs a plan for the main hardware components like PCs and servers. You should determine which order they should be taken offline so as to minimize downtime, the best way to package them to minimize damage in transit, and the order they should be loaded into the moving vehicles -- you don’t want to arrive at the new building with your critical production server stored furthest inside the U-Haul behind 44 PCs and 22 heavy backup power supplies.

You should also take stock of all the cables and wiring that are required to get everything reconnected, figure out where all the electrical outlets are located and how many there are, and make sure you’ll have all the IT furniture you’ll need to set things up. Those brand new server racks you’ve ordered don’t necessarily have to be delivered and installed before you move, as long as you have a table or two that can support the weight of your servers.

Defend against downtime

No matter how smoothly the physical handling of your computers or servers goes, in order to get your guys back to work in their new digs quickly you need a carefully coordinated cutover for your Internet and phones.

This requires the same sort of forethought and planning as the hardware part of the process, and the first thing to investigate is whether you can move on a weekend. This way, if there are any unforeseen delays from connectivity issues they won’t affect you when your business is busiest.

Another thing you should do to minimize downtime during office relocation is have a contingency plan in case an unforeseen delay turns into a lengthy Internet outage. Guard against it by making sure your key players can work from home, reserve a co-working space so employees can still collaborate, and try to build in some overlap between your old facility and new one so the former is available if the latter has major issues.

Consult with an MSP

You can do everything in your power to be vigilant so your office relocation doesn’t result in prolonged periods of lost productivity, but it is practically guaranteed to be chaotic. Thankfully, a proper Managed Service Provider (MSP) like OC-IT will offer Service Move Coordination to complement your best efforts.

This includes helping you coordinate the disconnects and reconnects with your ISP, telco, web host, and any other IT infrastructure providers who are notoriously difficult to get working together on your behalf; we can help because we speak their language.

Just as you would before choosing the right moving company to transport all your IT hardware, a bit of research is in order before choosing an MSP. Do they have experience setting up networks in new offices? Are they available on weekends and after hours during the move? Will they guarantee minimum downtime and back it up in writing?

If you’re a small- or medium-sized business in San Clemente, Laguna Niguel, or Oceanside that’s planning an office relocation, give us a call. Or even if you’re not, we’d be happy to hear from other Orange County local businesses to discuss our other productivity-enhancing services like Managed IT and The Cloud.