Organizing a Small Office Computer Environment

If you are in the world of small business then you already know that one of the hardest things to accomplish is staying organized while doing business.  It doesn’t take long for things to clutter up and take over the office.  This remains true for computer equipment.  Not so long ago, a small business in the town of Mercersburg, Pa contacted Ryan’s CCS for some house cleaning in their computer department.  When we arrived there, this is what we found.

In the image above you can see that the computers are located at the feet of where employees would be sitting, thus making good for being kicked and damaged.  The workstation to the far left is the point of sale (very important for a restaurant) system.	In the above picture this is the result of a sloppy Point of Sale installation from another company.  The Cat-5 wires were ran up from under the floor, however with no consideration for trip hazards and the holes were so small that some of the wires were beginning to wear down to the wire.
	To the left is a battery backup sitting on top of the P.O.S. System and barely sitting there also is the a router and a switch that controls the Internet and sales workstations throughout the restaurant.Anyway’s, we couldn’t believe the disaster that was awaiting this well established business, and knew that needed to do something right away.   What isn’t seen in these pictures as well is a inkjet printer and radio equipment is located behind the desk.  The solution Ryan’s Computer Consulting Services came up with was to simply leave only the monitors, keyboards, mice, and speakers at the desk, then move all other equipment onto a shelve across the room, out of the way and easily accessible.
Below is the end result of a long day rerunning wires and installing KVM (keyboard, video, monitor) cables.
	As you can see on the left, this is the end result of re-routing wires under a very historic building.  We wall mounted anything that could such as the router and switch.  The printer is easily accessible and not in the way of travel or backing into it with a chair.  The radio system was also relocated (upper right shelf.)  The KVM switch the allows the user to use a single monitor and keyboard for the POS system and the company data system is attached to the shelf and no longer at risk of coming loose from accidental jars and kicks.
On the right, this is all all that is under the desk now.  Now, the computer users can stretch there legs out without worry of kicking a computer.  The battery backup here is to keep the monitors working in the event of a power outage.  All wires are zip tied and organized.