A small graphic design agency, downsizing to a new office and needed to find a home for a whole room full of servers where the new office offered only a small cupboard.
Xgeneration had supported this company for decades helping with solutions for data, backup & email as well as facilitating office moves and the installation of networking infrastructure, however, these solutions never faced with the need to save space.
Transitioning from an office spread over 3 floors with a dedicated basement office set up as a server room, to an open-plan office over a single floor offering only a store cupboard to house the servers presented us with the need to take a fresh approach and be resourceful.
While it was possible to install a standalone air-conditioned server container, they were noisy and took up too much space. Xgeneration advised a more integrated approach using a Synology NAS for data, replacing a self-hosted email server with cloud-based MS 365 solution together with a VOIP telephone system. Each solution either aggregated functions or sent them off into the cloud and so the space required to house them and the energy needed to run them shrank dramatically.
Once installed a room full of functionality fitted comfortably into what would have been the cleaners' store cupboard, taking up less space and using less energy than the previous evolved systems. While at the same time there was no compromise whatsoever on functionality.
Agility at pace
When the challenge of lockdown came, this solution meant it took only a couple of hours of instruction to provide everyone with everything they needed to seamlessly transition to working from home, flexibility that would not have been achievable with the previous systems.
The insight here is that a foundational review of all your systems could uncover multi-layered savings in space, time and energy use, as well as freeing you as a company to operate with real agility in this hybrid world.
Xgeneration will be happy to visit your site to conduct a free audit of your office systems giving you a measured and realistic overview of your environment so we can present you with an affordable plan to take you forward. Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash