Member Article

How to choose workspace recovery services

Here at ITPS we have almost 20 years’ experience of delivering managed IT solutions and services, including business continuity and disaster recovery strategies. We often find there is one factor that clients overlook, and that is if your people can’t work, neither can your organisation.

If your business suffered a disruption – be it a flood, a fire, a malicious attack or an accident – have you thought about where your staff would physically work from, and how they would access systems and data?

Workspace recovery services come in all shapes, sizes – and prices. Here are our tips for choosing the right service for your needs.

Environment: Choose a high security environment. Our workspace centre is located at a £4m enterprise-class data centre, with Tier 3 ISO27001-certified status, audited by the FCA, NHS, Ministry of Justice and other bodies.

Secure 24/7 access, and remote working access give our clients reassurance that their business is safe in our environment. Extra features such as kitchen and meeting areas, local amenities and free on-site parking can help to make staff feel more at home.

Connectivity: High speed, high bandwidth connections are essential. Our facilities are the largest and best equipped in the North East, with features that include a backbone of 10Gbps peer to peer connectivity. A constant test and review cycle operated by our onsite network team is your guarantee of a secure, managed environment.

Extra resources: Look at the wider picture. As well as workstations with VoIP telephony, printers, copiers and even faxes, we built in extra space and facilities such as 20,000sq ft of project, build and repair areas, all equipped with high speed secure connectivity and support facilities.

Response times: How fast can your supplier get you up and running? Depending on your infrastructure, you could be looking at having business critical data and systems operational in a matter of hours.

Pricing: The last thing you need following a business interruption is extra, unexpected costs so look for deals that give you the flexibility you need, at a predictable cost. If a deal seems too cheap to be true, then it probably is.

Flexibility: You don’t need to wait for a disaster to get maximum value from workspace recovery contracts. Some of our clients use our facilities as an extension of their existing office space, running off-site training courses, workshops and events, or housing temporary project teams who need to communicate with colleagues as if they were on the same site.

Your circumstances are unique to your organisation, but in essence you are looking for the reassurance of an ‘always ready’ base from which to house your workforce should your premises be unusable, and one which gives your people access to all the systems, data and communication tools they can expect from their usual desk.

The right workspace recovery centre should give you everything you need to make sure your staff can work effectively, and for as long as they need to. And that gives you the confidence that you can get on with running your business, under any circumstances.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Julie Brammer .