Heathrow 3rd Runway

The House of Commons made an apparently landmark decision this week, approving the government’s plans for a third runway at London Heathrow. 

Headlines have inevitably followed, with themes running across Boris Johnson’s absence from the vote through to the environmental impact that hundreds more flights per day will have on west London and beyond. 

International connectivity is vitally important in the 21st century, but one thing that might be being missed by the commentariat in their discussions about the rights, wrongs and politicking behind the decision is that by the time that the runway is finished it could be obsolete, thanks to the rapid development of collaboration software and technology. 

While the various technologies behind video conferencing, online document storage and other office software packages have been around for a number of years, it is only comparatively recently that they have been brought together into a coherent whole that has a consistent business narrative. 

Microsoft 365​ includes collaboration tools such as Skype for Business, SharePoint and OneDrive, which allow for teams across the world to interact and edit their work in real time. And with investment in security increasing all the time then companies of all sizes have the confidence in cloud computing that they might not have had a few years ago. 

Granted, those companies for whom the cost of a few thousand pounds for a plane ticket between London and New York or Hong Kong are not likely to change their travel plans any time soon, and very little can replace those initial face-to-face meetings between customers and clients. ​

But smaller organisations may think twice about arranging those run-of-the-mill in-person meetings that underpin the day-to-day operations, when the same outcomes could be achieved within their IT budgets and without losing the working time spent stood in security queues and in mid-air. 

Here at Fuse we are experts at helping you make the most out of your IT budget to help create tangible returns in other areas of your business. This can include multi-person real-time editing of documents during video conferences, secure access to documents wherever you are in the world, and much much more. 

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About the author

Fuse

Fuse is a Microsoft Partner, based in Northampton. We help organisations of all sizes to maximise IT efficiencies through the use of Microsoft cloud computing solutions.