Judges Choice Awards 2024, Acquisition International | 10 Migrating to serviced offices Businesses that are experiencing growth or are already at a mediumsized level, tend to be already discussing their next steps. Usually driven by the increase in energy prices, higher borrowing, operational costs, and evolving work patterns, they tend to reassess their property portfolios. One focus has been the migration to serviced offices. Lambert Smith Hampton, Commercial property specialist cites Mordor Intelligence forecasting: “that the UK market will grow by 8% per year during 2022-27.” There also been an ‘exceptional rise in demand’, for flexible offices in the UK, according to Savills reports. It also highlights that the increased demand has led to an increase in prices by 15% and enquiries are up by 17%. Despite that, issues have begun to arise with serviced offices. With critical business technology being operated within a shared space, restrictions have emerged. First off, serviced offices are rarely equipped with the necessary infrastructure and connectivity to host high-growth company needs. The power supply is shared throughout the entire building and can therefore be insufficient. Also, connectivity options and data management capabilities tend to be at a bare minimum. Shared offices also lack the necessary physical and cyber security assets. With the demand in costs, a serviced office typically has less physical security than a data centre and on-site staff aren’t comprehensively trained in cyber-security. From a technological Digital Infrastructure Strategy: Comparing On-Premises with Cloud and Colocation When it comes to digital infrastructure, deciding between utilising either ‘on-premises’ or cloud remains to be a divide amongst all business decision makers and both sides have their benefits, depending on which way you look at it. Considering cloud for example, its often believed to be a runaway success. The UK Regulator Ofcom had produced a report into the domestic cloud service market and noted that the UK cloud infrastructure market is expanding, with overall revenues increasing from a rate of 35% to 40% annually. Despite that, Synergy analysts have discovered that by 2027, enterprise data centres will still account for more than a quarter of data centre capacity. This year, there were 350 UK IT leaders involved in a 2024 research project, which recorded 93% of its respondents who have been involved with a cloud repatriation project in the last three years. Furthermore, 25% of those businesses have already migrated half or more of their cloud-based workloads back to an ‘on-premises’ infrastructure. However, for many businesses, especially those experiencing growth, SMEs and medium-sized enterprises, the reality is there are two types of ‘on-premises’ infrastructures. Some businesses (usually within technology) will host their own data internally within their own data centre and there are others that will host their entire IT infrastructure within their own office. The latter group of companies are often seeking solutions to manage their servers and treat it as a critical asset which they need to protect.
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