As an IT professional who has done his share of wiring up office networks, I have a few modest proposals for the construction industry when building offices.
Office parks should be fibre-ready
The builders of office parks should realise that, one day in the very near future, the businesses that set up shop in their buildings will require more bandwidth than is available using copper telephone lines.
Fibre optic cables – direct lines leading into the nearest telephone exchange – are expensive and disruptive to install (remember the last time you were stuck in traffic whilst they installed cable TV on a busy road?), but they fast becoming a necessity in our era of Cloud Computing and Google.
At the very least, lay out cable runs and establish a central “cabinet” in the park – in fact, think of fibre optics in the same way as electricity or gas: just another essential utility. Lay the groundwork, and when the first company on the site needs a fibre connection, they talk to the park owners who in turn can
Enterprising developers might even install the connections straight after construction, then lease bandwidth out to their tenants – essentially becoming a mini Internet Service Provider. If they don’t have the technical expertise to do this, another company could earn a living providing it.
Fibre optic internet is expensive – prices can start from £10,000 per year (compared to around £480 for ADSL). However, it offers a typical capacity of 100 mb/s as opposed to ADSL’s 8. Business Parks are in a better position to negotiate good deals using economies of scale, rather than each business on the park trying to negotiate by itself.
All companies need a server room
Even the smallest business needs space for a “network hub” (a device that connects you to the internet, and another that all of your computers can connect into to form the backbone of your network). More and more businesses own servers, and a small-to-medium enterprise can have three or four machines sat humming away in the corner.
More and more offices are being built with under-floor voids for cabling, which is a boon for anyone who has ever had the tedious task of wiring up an office; however, these cables need to go somewhere – they need a central room with space to install a communications cabinet, a PBX (telephone exchange) system, and internet routers. This is where telephone and (ideally) fibre-optic connections should be located.
Some offices have small “riser cupboards” which can just about fit some of this equipment in, but they are often too small to fit everything, and can become far too hot for the comfort of the equipment inside them.
What’s required is this:
- A moderately sized room, with easy access to the under-floor cabling ducts
- A clear pathway to run cables to the floor(s) above (or below, depending on location)
- If the office park has had the foresight to plan for fibre optics, a cable route from the park’s central “hub” should terminate here
- Masonry walls and a lockable fire door, for security and safety
- Located in a cool part of the building, without windows but with the ability to easily install an air-conditioning exhaust duct
Even if the company has no servers, this room would provide a secure storage location; if they do have servers, then they can place them in a secure, cool and well-ventilated location, rather than stuffing them under the office administrator’s desk (as so often happens).
Conclusions
Computer networks are a fundamental part of modern business – by investing in offices with proper support for networks and computer rooms, businesses will save money both on initial fit-out and on-going maintenance.
