Are you prepared for the Olympics?
The Summer of Sport is already upon us with the football European Championships beginning this week set to bring the first of months of potential disruption to businesses.
Many of the football matches taking place over the next month will kick off inside traditional UK working hours leaving business owners in a dilemma, close early or risk an unproductive workforce, putting drains on it’s IT infrastructure.
Even since the FIFA World Cup of 2010, the prevalance of streaming media options to keep up with the footballing action has moved on dramatically, but the watching of streaming video puts a massive drain on bandwidth resources, particularly in an organisation where tens of people may be trying to sneak a view during work-time. So businesses need to be aware and need to be smart about limiting resources or at least ensuring that ‘non-productive’ uses of the internet don’t threaten the stability of their essential services.
Later this summer comes London 2012, the games of the 30th Olympiad, will see the eyes of the world focused on the UK, including many of those inside the home nations hoping to stream some of the action onto their work PC. With full day events, the potential issue is not only bandwidth drains but also productivity drains with another potential distraction for employees.
This article by Webfusion’s own Thomas Vollrath suggests a number of ways businesses should prepare to overcome the unique problems that the summer of sport will challenge business owners with, including major transport headaches across the capital.
The key is to plan and plan some more. Establishing or re-establishing rules about ‘personal’ use of the internet would be a wise starting point for any business, remembering that overall use of the internet – especially via 3G networks is expected to be at record breaking levels due to the summer of sport.
What action plans do you have in place for the months ahead?
