For the third year running, we’re proud to be supporting Harrison’s Fund. Harrison’s Fund works tirelessly to get as much money as possible into the hands of the world’s best researchers, who are working to find a cure for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy – the most common fatal genetic disorder to affect children around the world. Part of our strategy to support Harrison’s Fund is by running donating £1 for every order placed over £100 in the month of December. Following our most successful ever December, and year to date, we’re proud to announce that we’ve donated over £1200 to Harrison’s Fund. It is an absolute privilege for us to support such hardworking, and dedicated charities such as Harrison’s Fund and we look forward to another year with them. To find out more about the work Harrison’s Fund do, or to donate, be sure to visit their site. https://harrisonsfund.com/

Good cable management makes common sense from every angle but unless you plan your network, allowing for future growth it can be difficult to maintain long term. Here are some reminders why cable management should be embraced as an integral part of IT Networks planning and ongoing processes.  Good Cable Management1. Time to trace & repair improvedWhen the network comms room cabling is in a mess, invariably the documentation is in a mess or worse still non-existent.  This means what should be a relatively simple task of tracing and re-routing a cable as part of a MAC (Move & Change), becomes a real headache potentially leading to costly and avoidable downtime to the business. 2. Optimization of rack space improvedReal estate costs can be astronomical so minimising rack space and ultimately the floor space required makes good business sense. Good cable management practice using the appropriate vertical cable & horizontal managers can save significant floor space.3. Optimizing Airflow increases hardware life & reduces energy costsNetwork switches and servers need to exhaust their heat away from the rack as efficiently as possible. Impeding air vents with bunches of cables can cause hot spots in the rack which can potentially increase energy usage or reduce MTBF (mean time between failure) of network hardware.4. There are standards for labeling and administration of cablesStandards compliance is good practice. This includes labeling and documentation of network cabling. What happens when the guy with all the knowledge in his head is not available?  For guidance on planning and installation of administration and labeling,  International standards ISO/IEC TR 14763-2-1:2011(E) &  ISO/IEC 14763-2:2012 should be consulted.   Bad Cable Management1. Image & reputation can be impacted if IT cabling looks uncontrolledEven if your IT suite is hidden away in a back room, unsightly cabling may be questioned internally. Why not showcase your investment to customers and stakeholders?2. Access to hardware & connections is more challenging Running cables in front of active equipment, even if just the mounting screws increases the time to swap out hardware e.g. switches, routers etc  & make MACS. Planning patch cabling to utilise cable managers rather than point-to-point will avoid this practice.3. Poor Bend radius control of cables can lead to signal loss or connection failuresStretching cables or allowing them to mix in an uncontrolled manner will likely lead to reduced bend radius at the plug or cable kinks, potentially affecting signal transmission or increasing failure at the connector4. Switch port utilization is lower when redundant cables are not removedNetwork switches are expensive. When cabling gets out of control, there is a tendency when provisioning new ports to avoid the risk of disconnecting undocumented/ unlabelled cables and just ordering another switch if fully populated. Recovering redundant switch ports can save large sums over time.

A lot has happened in the 6 months since we announced our move. in fact, in that time we've managed to move over 1 million meters of cable in just three days, completed a £1 million refit of our new facility, acquired another company, migrated 7 warehouses into one space and kicked off a new year, all without any downtime. It's been a busy 6 months but we've done it, we've completed our relocation!We've said it before, and we'll say it again - we're incredibly proud of our roots and where we started. but we're equally as excited about our new facility and the commitment to the future that comes with this move. So without further ado, here is our relocation story.