If your company is operating on a budget, you might ask your CRN team to only physically move your IT equipment.  To save some capital, you’d like to leave its packing to your employees.  Be careful during the process though, because you could lose data and cost yourself additional downtime. If you have your IT team do the packing, make sure they do this: 1.     Appraise Your Current Situation How many servers and PCs do you have?  Which are the most important?  Which should be moved first?  How long do you think it will take to move all of this equipment?  What possible hurdles could come up that might cause problems? By conducting a full appraisal of the state of your IT equipment, you can anticipate and avoid many problems that otherwise might happen.  You’ll also have a cohesive plan and relatively accurate timetable that helps you coordinate the rest of your move. 2.     Test the New Location Before MovingThis actually helps you reduce some downtime.  Test out all your cables, UPSs, switches, and routers at the new location prior to the relocation of your servers.  This eliminates a number of sources of problems.  When it’s time to relocate your servers and clients, you’ll have a good idea of where any problems with your network might exist. 3.     Plan for Downtime Even though you might do everything possible to prevent downtime, it’s still going to happen to some degree.  However, your careful planning and network testing helps reduce some of the downtime.  Some movers offer to do as much planning as possible up front, but does that time spent planning reduce your costs more than if you never planned and just lived with a little downtime? That’s a tough calculation to make.  Make sure you calculate a “worst-case” scenario that reflects how much downtime your business can afford.  Just make sure that your plan for moving can handle this amount of downtime. Remember, if you can’t do this on your own, don’t try to cut corners where possible.  It will be worth it to talk with your CRN team instead. Many companies end up using a professional mover because they tried to do the work on their own, but then found out they couldn’t.  That only costs you time and money. Instead, do it right the first time and pack your equipment on your own, or contact your CRN team member for help.