Setting up a new office for business can be haunting. You need to make many decisions with the renovation company quickly: the choice of color, type of office furniture, placement of IT equipments and cables, any partitions for rooms, brand of air-cons and its capability, design of carpet, office layout and many others. A good planning of IT resources creates a stable technology platform to support business operations and you are able to focus on your core business. Insufficient or bad planning will end up with increased costs and time wasted. You would not want to pull another data cable whenever you increase staffing or have to relocate your photocopier due to wrong location of fax line.

When your renovation company has proposed to you the office layout, this is the time to look into the cabling placement. Usually, the cabling ­includes electrical, telephone, fax and data.

In general, one network point is required for each staff seating area. You may want to place additional network points first to cater for any new staff in the future. This is to minimize ugly trucking of cables and helps to save cost. The laying of cables is cheaper in bulk compared to laying few cables. If your company has several virtual networks, you may want to locate more than 1 network point for certain designated staff such as IT administrator or finance controller, so that they can simply switch to the right network by plugging into another network point. If you company has a flat and simple network, one network point for each staff is good enough.

Depending where you want to place your switch and server, the renovation company would need to pull all data cables to that area. You would need to think very carefully, as it would be a permanent position for the switch and server. Since your server is to be placed near your switch, there is no need for a network point installed.

As for meeting room, if you have a meeting table with openings at the center, do remind your renovation company to lay the data cables together with power cables and telephone lines from the floor to the center of table. It will be untidy if the network points are at the wall.

On the other hand, if you have a small discussion room, say for 3-4 persons, it is perfectly fine to locate the network point at the wall area. As the discussion table is portable, it is not advisable to fix the data cable into the discussion table.

If you are thinking of using wireless instead of network points, here are some considerations. A network point ensures stable connection and connection speed of 100Mbps. As for wireless, though it offers mobility, the connection may not be strong all the times due to interferences from electrical equipments or mobile phones. In additional, the typical connection speed is running at 54Mbps, which is running almost half the speed of using data cables. You would not want your accountant to keep telling you that she cannot finish the deadline as the connection is slow or unstable. Wireless connection is great for guests and users where internet or network connection speed is not vital.

Usually, the fax line is recommended to be used as the ADSL broadband as well. Do make sure you highlight this to your renovation company, so that they can prepare two telephone sockets of the same line to fax machine and broadband modem.

Should you be thinking of having your first server, this is the best time to start this investment. There are many benefits to own a server. The primary reason is that you can manage all your workstations and laptops easily. For instance, you can install new software via the server, without having to install the software at each machine; you are able to set controls whether your staff can install non standard applications; file sharing is possible without using thumbdrives and many more.

For more information on planning IT resources for your new office, you may want to contact info@connectbit.com