Office Relocation 2.0

I started working for my current employer on August 15, 2005. For those of you who don't have the energy to calculate that, that's 9 1/2 months.

When I started, we were already outgrowing the space we were in and the owner had just purchased a historic local building (it used to be the public library) that had previously been owned and renovated by another company. After some new carpet, a little bit of electrical work and a fresh coat of paint, we occupied the building in mid October. That was Office Relocation 1.0.

When we first moved in, there were two tenants still oocupying parts of the building. One moved out by November 1 but the other was a group attached to the local university whose lease didn't expire until December 31. As fate would have it, their grant ended and they packed up and were out by December 15.

When we first moved in, we did not refurbish the basement. Since it wasn't a space we didn't immediately need, we also did not immediately refurbish the basement when the tenants moved out. It was mid-March before we started any work on the Basement.

After the shuffle, my office is now in the basement - right outside the server room. I am about 90% moved in and it will be nice because my assistant and I are the only two down there until Thursday at 1pm. Why did we get to move early and what happens at 1pm Thursday? It's all related.

Almost as soon as we moved into the new building, my assistant and I realized we were going to outgrow our PBX (phone) system very quickly. My assistant started looking at options right away so that, when the time came to replace the existing PBX, we would be ready with a replacement.

It didn't go well.

A traditional PBX with larger capacity and voice mail was going to cost us $20,000 to $30,000. VoIP (Voice over IP) systems started at $65,000 and went up (way up!) from there. The sad part was, there was no clear winner either in systems or vendors. They were all about the same in features, price and service. We really wanted to go with a VoIP system because it would give us the most features and scalability (growth potential) but it was just too expensive.

Then, my assistant stumbled on IP-PBX. It's a PBX system that uses a server as its control instead of specialized, dedicated hardware. Because it uses a server, it also uses phones that communicate over your network rather than traditional phone wiring (VoIP). Using a server as the control center also means that phone and system features are all software. If an upgrade comes out, we load a patch and we have a new feature. We don't have to install any new hardware or change the whole system. (Of course, we're paying a pretty penny for annual maintenance.) Plus, the phones can be used with virtually any VoIP system. If we change vendors in 3-5 years, we don't have to invest in new phones. The best part is, the cost is similar to that of a traditional PBX system. (If you want to know which IP-PBX system we're using, why we chose it and which systems we considered, just drop me an email at joe dot fusco at oceandental dot net [it's all spelled out to avoid spambots] - I'll be happy to fill you in on all of the details.)

Anyway, we presented these findings to our executive team about 3 months ago and they gave us the green light. We spent the better part of the last month reconfiguring the wiring in the basement and finalizing the configuration of the server with the vendor. The system arrived a couple of weeks ago and we'll be activating the PRI circuit (digital phone line, essentially) on Monday. On Thursday at noon, AT&T will transfer our main number from the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) wires to the PRI. At that point, we'll have all of the phones set up and ready and people can start moving to where their new phones are.

So, why did my assistant and I get to move early? The engineer from the vendor will be on-site for one day and we need to maximize our time with him instead of relocating our offices.

It was kind-of nice on Friday afternoon. I was cogitating and realized I had kicked my feet up on my desk and was quite comfortable there. I think I'm going to like this new space.