Get an IT makeover
May 13 2010
Business Need
RHWL’s IT director Dave Allerton reveals how he installed a new network and telephone system into a new office in just under three days.
“My name is Dave Allerton. I’m IT Director for RHWL Architects. We are a design company who work internationally with offices here in London, Qatar, and Berlin. We’re working on a wide range of international projects in the Middle East and Europe and we are currently probably about 130 strong in terms of staff. When we were looking to move offices from Covent Garden to St. Catherine’s Dock we realised we had a need to completely revamp our network infrastructure and our telephony system. So we went out and tendered to several companies, including BT, to offer us a one-stop-shop solution for all of our networking infrastructure. Our main goal from our IT infrastructure project was to keep as much flexibility as possible. One of the things that architectural design companies tend to do is work very closely in teams and quite often those teams have to migrate around the building so we need to set up desks and PCs quite regularly. So we wanted a solution that would give us that flexibility without too much management overhead. We also needed very fast network infrastructure. We use very large design files on the network so we need to be able to throw those around from server to PC very quickly. It was important to us.”
More on Unified Communications
Today your customers expect to reach you not just by phone and email, but via Instant messaging and even social networks.
Unifying your communications lets you do this fast. Features include:
- Retrieve and manage voicemail, email and fax messages from one mailbox
- Use ‘Presence’ capability to see peoples’ status and to find out if they are available
- Click on a contact from a directory, email or instant message and call them immediately from your PC or laptop
- Internal and remote site instant messaging between colleagues
