A leading property company has linked its network of 15,000 staff to the cloud as part of a “global technology upgrade”.
Cushman & Wakefield — which has offices in London, Shanghai and New York — decided on the cutting edge update to help it stay ahead in what it sees as an increasingly competitive commercial market.
In a recent press statement it predicted: “The global office market is poised for slow steady growth in 2014, while 2015 should be more robust as recovery takes hold and business gains renewed confidence. Jakarta, Dublin and Boston are the regional leaders among the top cities forecast to see the highest office rental rate growth through 2015.”
And to help it stay ahead the company has implemented a cloud-down redesign and restructuring of its office and mobile computer systems. Virtually all of its communications and data storage has now been shifted to the cloud, using remote servers rather than costly office-bound equipment.
“We eventually embraced cloud computing because we wanted to avoid capital investment in new infrastructure,” said John McKeown, the company’s European chief information officer.
Speaking at the International Data Corporation’s Consumerisation of IT Conference he explained how his company has adopted a “mobile first” strategy, redesigning its website to ensure it was optimised for use on mobile devices and commissioning the development of applications to provide real-time information for its clients.
One major challenge during the 18-month process had been migrating employees mainly from Blackberry handsets, once seen as a business status symbol, to other devices.
“There is a lot of competition in the mobile data market, and we found our providers were willing to help us get to our future state, which meant we could migrate 7,800 BlackBerry users to a ‘choose your own device’ programme at neutral cost,” he added.
Coordinated from its New York headquarters, corporate email has been switched to Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365. Customer relationship management is now through Salesforce’s online software suites and Box.com was chosen for data and image storage.
McKeown advised businesses to start small and expand as knowledge and experience grow. Cushman & Wakefield started by inviting employees to buy their own devices, adding: “At first, we empowered users to choose their own devices, layering in a company data plan.”
While the strategy worked well in the States, he did admit there had been some “pushback” in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, where employees would prefer the company to provide the devices.
Selling the technology change, both to staff and clients, was also important. And, particularly to employees, there was a need to, “Emphasise why the change is important for the future of the business.”
Companies and organisations should, however, expect to use four to seven times more mobile data than before and forestall any problems by building in relevant data plans, including roaming usage, into contracts.
Correspondingly there will be a huge increase in the use of company Wi-Fi and it was important to ensure there was enough Wi-Fi capacity to meet the demand of any increase in business.
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