An office that relies on wireless connectivity sounds like a dream — but make sure you ask yourself the necessary questions before making the transition.
It sounds like a dream: an office that is entirely reliant on wireless connectivity rather than wired connections. There would be no need to be tied to a desk with wires and plugs; instead, every member of the team could work wherever they liked, connecting to the network and to the internet no matter where in the office they might be. It would streamline meetings, make presentations easier than ever before, and make it easy to relocate at need. Think your office is ready to be completely wireless for connectivity? There are a few questions you might want to ask first.
How many people are you connecting to your wireless system? If you’re only connecting half a dozen people, it will work much like a home wireless internet connection: that is, it might get a little slow every once in a while when every device is connected at once and everyone is streaming video simultaneously, but for the most part, it will work as smoothly as you could ask for. On the other hand, if you’re working in a large office with twenty, thirty, or forty individuals who need to connect via your wireless setup at the same time, you might experience slow connection speeds and a host of other problems.
How fast do you need your internet to be? If you don’t need to use the internet that often in your office, you can afford to be patient with slower connection speeds. After all, that guy down in the billing department doesn’t really need to be able to stream Netflix on his break, right? On the other hand, if you need instant access to everything that the internet has to offer (including such things as cloud storage solutions for your business data), then you might prefer to maintain an old school wired connection for most of your devices. Remember the days of dial-up services, when you could brew a pot of coffee while you waited for your computer to connect to the internet? You don’t really want to go back to that…do you?
An office that uses its wireless connectivity primarily for inter-office communication and sharing documents might quickly discover that it can function with fewer problems than one that requires access to videos, websites, and graphics. Be sure that you evaluate your needs carefully before making a final decision.
What technology are you trying to use? Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, wireless technology can be very effective and very efficient. In fact, Intel made an announcement last year that they’re attempting to design an office that is entirely wireless–one that is free of the traps of wires, and looking for the necessary adapters to connect everything during meetings and other events. Unfortunately, that technology isn’t yet available on the market, so depending on your technology needs, it may be some time before you’re able to make your office completely wireless. Also, consider the reality that even with wireless connections, some technology might not be entirely compatible; so making an entirely wireless office might require making some shifts in the hardware that you’re using.
How much of an investment are you willing to make? While one piece of equipment–a router–will go a long way toward making your office wireless, there are a number of other things that you might need to streamline your wireless connectivity and make your office run as smoothly as possible. Be prepared for that initial investment before you go diving in–and consider making the investment a piece at a time, rather than trying to do it all at once. After all, wireless connectivity might be the setting of the office of the future, but that doesn’t mean that you have to dive in immediately.
Looking for tips and tricks to help make a wireless office work for you? Contact us for more information, or for tips and tricks to streamline your office so that wireless connectivity goes from being impossibility to something that you can implement.