Member Article

Instant Internet and mobile workstyle

Mick Keeble is head of managed services at Perfect Image – an IT consultancy delivering tailored solutions to help bring real business benefits to its customers. Here, he discusses our reliance on instant Internet connectivity to support our increasingly mobile workstyle in business, and the benefits this can bring.

Remember the time when, if you wanted to track down a contact’s phone number, you’d consult your trusty Fileofax or riffle through your folder of business cards you’d collected over the years? What about if you wanted to contact someone in writing? No doubt you’d put pen to paper and write them a letter before finding the nearest postbox to send your correspondence on its way. And then there’s preparing for a new business pitch. How did you research the sector? Trawling the local newspapers and perhaps even reading some trade journals. How things have changed…

In our digital world, these scenarios are replaced by our mega collection of mobile paraphernalia. If we want to look up a phone number, we search online directories. Need to contact someone in writing? We drop them an email. Doing some research? Thank goodness for Google! Today, we’re totally reliant on the Internet just to function in our working environment. Think about it, if your Internet connection has ever gone down or there’s been a really slow speed, you begin to wonder how you ever coped without instant access to all the info and data you ever needed.

There’s nothing more frustrating than when there isn’t enough bandwidth or you’re not in a Wi-Fi zone to be able to access the Internet. And because we work in an increasingly mobile environment, instant connectivity at your fingers tips is imperative. We’re no longer tied to our desks working from chunky PCs, rather, we’re out and about or on-the-go, keeping in touch with our company through devices such as smartphones and tablets. Or when we’re at our desks, it’s usually working from a laptop. Connectivity has never been more important for businesses – fact.

Of course, this is where we’re faced with a bit of a conundrum. As a business, you want to open up your networks so that people can connect wirelessly and get on with their day-jobs. Yet at the same time, in opening up your networks, you’re potentially opening your business up to a number of security risks. The ideal would be to make your network easy to connect to while making it extremely safe and secure – at Perfect Image, we can make this happen.

We understand you want to be able to use all aspects of your IT systems – including mobile technology – when you want, where you want and how you want. After all, a wired network often hinders users’ ability to move around and interact, which in turn impacts productivity. That’s why we’ve partnered with Ruckus, a pioneer in the wireless infrastructure market, meaning our customers can always have access to the Internet. And coupled with our experience in security and compliance, our team of experts can work with you make sure your wireless network is totally safe from harm.

A secure wireless network using Ruckus managed by Perfect Image means businesses enjoy a better service experience, as the range and intensity of signal of signal is more widely spread, faster connectivity is maintained and network security is assured. This creates a dynamic environment to suit any type of working environment – Ruckus really does cover all business sectors and continually performs well for our customers in a number of different business settings.

So think about it – if you’re doing a really chunky piece of work that requires intense processing, you quite possibly would need a wired network to provide maximum bandwidth. However, for all the other ‘on the go’ business activities you can think of, wireless is certainly the way to go and you may be surprised by just how much bandwidth a modern wireless network can provide.

If you’d like to find out more about how a truly flexible mobile workstyle with Perfect Image and how it could benefit your business, visit: http://www.perfect-image.co.uk/

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Perfect Image .