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Industry
Depot, warehouse and field-force IT where the network reaches into environments that were never designed for equipment.
The context
FMCG and distribution IT lives in places office equipment does not survive: warehouses with dust and forty-degree afternoons, loading bays exposed to rain, cold storage, and depots on industrial estates with unreliable power and worse broadband.
The engineering answer is different in every one of those. Industrial-rated equipment where it matters, cable routes planned around forklift traffic, UPS sized for the actual power quality on that estate, and connectivity designed on the assumption that the primary link will fail regularly.
The constraints
Generic IT advice fails here for specific reasons. These are the ones that change the design.
Dust, heat, humidity and vibration destroy commercial-grade equipment at a rate that makes the cheaper purchase the expensive one.
Industrial estates have poor power quality and thin broadband. Equipment fails from voltage events as often as from age.
Warehouse operations depend on peripherals and integrations that are invisible until the moment they stop.
Sales and delivery staff work from phones and tablets on cellular networks, outside any network you control.
Loading bays, gates and stockrooms need surveillance that produces usable evidence, and vehicle movement that is logged.
Our approach
Specific design decisions, not principles. This is what actually changes in a deployment for this sector.
Industrial switches, IP66 enclosures, correct cable types and mounting designed around forklift traffic and washdown areas.
Online UPS with measured runtime and, where the estate warrants it, proper earthing and surge protection at the panel.
Broadband plus cellular failover with SD-WAN, so a depot keeps dispatching when the primary link drops.
Vehicle movement logged automatically at the gate with entry and exit images, integrated with the surveillance system.
Field devices enrolled, restricted to work applications, remotely wipeable, and cheap to replace when one is lost.
A typical engagement
Switches were failing every few months in the warehouse — dust ingress and heat, in commercial-grade equipment mounted in an unventilated cupboard. Depot dispatch stalled whenever broadband dropped, which was weekly at two sites. We re-specified for the environment and added cellular failover.
Client details are withheld deliberately. We do not publish client names or site specifics without written permission — particularly for security work, where publishing what we installed and where would be indefensible.
Full capability
Most clients in this sector start with the pillars above and add others as the estate consolidates.
Other sectors
Tell us the constraint you are up against — a site, a deadline, a compliance requirement, an audit finding — and we will tell you what is realistic.