Towering business overcomes growing pains...

What always surprises me about my job is that you should be wary of letting first impressions count – especially when it comes to IT!

A while back I met with a prospective new customer in a small, unassuming office in Loanhead Industrial Estate just outside of Edinburgh bypass. It soon struck me that they ran a great little business – doing some very interesting work worldwide - but they had some things they really wanted to sort out and to improve with their IT.

As always, I listened to them carefully and it became clear that they wanted to fix some annoying niggles in the short-term but that they also had a clear plan for growth which would involve updating much of their older IT kit. I reviewed and audited their IT and gave them an honest appraisal of what we’d found: - they had an aging server and some of their PC fleet required real care and attention. Very soon after that review Zenith SAS became a customer.

I guessed wrongly that we would be supporting the people using that outdated equipment for some time. The surprising part was that Zenith had just expanded significantly and had decided to rebuild a very large new office around the corner. To go with this upgraded new office, they wanted to refit the entire ICT infrastructure and bring it up to date.

Having fixed the pre-existing IT niggles and earned their trust (they told me we were chosen because we were the only prospective IT provider that didn’t want to talk about a ready-made solution in the first meeting), we were instructed to plan this major project with them. I started to flesh out Zenith’s requirements for their IT infrastructure as well as pull in different companies and contractors for the telephone system, cabling and paperless scanning solution.

This was challenging but also very rewarding. I loved making all of these distinct pieces of technology work together. My colleague, Paul, and I started to put together the various parts of the jigsaw (PCs, server, laptops, wireless network (with public zone) and so on).

On the actual day of the migration from the old to new office we had been asked by Zenith to minimise any downtime.  With lessons learned from previous successful projects (and our usual good preparation), we managed to migrate the data, create new working profiles and have a complete new site up and running within the same day. It was fun to have the freedom and space to work as a team. What was even better was watching the Zenith people come into work on the Monday morning to start work as if it was the same desk, seat and office as before.  No messing. Job done!

Do you want to upgrade or improve your IT. It always begins with a chat! Let’s put the kettle on and see how we can help you to grow…

Call us today on 0131 603 7910 for some straight talking.