Tube strikes on Monday; snow and ice today; I can’t be alone in having had meetings cancelled this week. Looking at the news, I’m quite glad I’m not travelling to Newcastle tonight – even though it is one of my favourite cities, it doesn’t look much fun at the minute.
Watching BBC News this morning (on the iPad of course, while I was making my daughter’s sandwiches!), they were again talking about people working from home – not just during periods of snow, but generally to save on transport infrastructure, time etc. Back-to-back with that, there was an article on how Hogg Robinson, a corporate travel company, had doubled their profit as travel increases. (I’m assuming this isn’t just down to the ridiculous costs of train fares!)
We’ve got a video conferencing system at Softcat – it’s really useful for talking to the Manchester team without a three hour drive. We use Office Communications Server, so we can communicate across offices and see where everyone is at a glance. We have remote access systems powered by Citrix, or just OWA for those that don’t need business systems. Last year in the snow, I really think we picked up a load of business as other organisations just weren’t there. We had people working from home, from our offices, from wherever – and we got the job done!
Isn’t it time to look at your unified communications and business continuity strategy?
Sam Routledge's Blog 
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