Making a New Connection: Ensuring a Seamless Office Migration was Essential to LinkedIn Canada’s Mission of Productivity and Network Growth.

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LinkedIn Canada, a  company focused on connecting people to make them more successful and productive, wanted to guarantee that connectivity was the goal during a recent Toronto office migration.

Representing more than 200 countries and territories from 150 industries, LinkedIn is a leading social media platform for professionals seeking to network, collaborate and grow their personal brand. The company’s Canadian office helps carry out the company focus on member engagement and helping recruiting, sales and marketing professionals leverage the platform to reach their goals. The strong growth of LinkedIn’s Canadian operations led the company to look for a larger facility for a budding workforce.

As Kishan Salgado, systems support analyst, who is part of the global technology services with LinkedIn Canada, explains, a decision was made to move to a larger location, specifically a new 38,000-square-foot facility in the heart of downtown Toronto. Making this move was a huge undertaking from an IT perspective. LinkedIn wanted to outfit the new location with brand new technology, and incur minimal network and communications downtime during the migration.

“Our backbone is technology, networking and collaboration. These are vital parts of our business, our staff and the user experience,” explains Salgado.

With these objectives in mind, the organization engaged CDW Canada with the project goal of running smoothly, on time, and on budget. This includes, Salgado adds, hardware and software such as desktops, notebooks, printers, mobile devices along with the unified communication platform used in the office’s video conferencing rooms. Sales and marketing staff rely on these technologies to keep in touch with clients and also for meetings and collaboration with the head office in Mountain View, California and other global sites.

LinkedIn Canada has a longstanding relationship with CDW Canada for its hardware and software needs. Working together during the migration was a natural extension of this existing relationship. “We’ve been working with the CDW Canada team for a few years now and they have always been responsive to our growing hardware and software requirements. We determined the logistics and the technologies that we wanted to procure and deploy in the new office, and worked with CDW Canada on the project — which was a smooth and efficient process,” says Salgado.

This migration and deployment involved updating the IT environment and implementing new technology and communications solutions for staff. Salgado and his team worked with CDW Canada to make sure the new technology would be delivered within a tight timeline. He notes that CDW Canada’s procurement team played a huge role in equipment arriving on schedule and also during the testing process. “We moved on a Friday and had the new environment up and running by Monday,” says Salgado. “This involved extensive testing and ensuring the network equipment, routers, switches and servers were fully operational – along with the video conferencing equipment for our 12 video conferencing rooms. We needed to be certain that our users experienced no downtime. There were a lot of hours spent to be certain that once Monday came, everything was ready to go,” says Salgado. Indeed, by the time staff arrived into the brand new facility, the IT environment was fully operational and ready for business. There were no major issues from an IT standpoint — the hardware and software ran smoothly and the network was up and running.

“Staff arrived to the new office on a Monday and all of the technology was brand new. It was a seamless transition. The biggest thing they had to worry about was finding where their new desk was,” he says with a laugh.

The sparkling new facility features the “latest and greatest in technology” and is ideal for a team environment. “The space is more open. It’s a great office with a lot more room for collaboration.” LinkedIn’s Canadian user base has grown from two million users to more than ten million and the new facility is a key part of the firm’s growth strategy. Moving forward, LinkedIn Canada expects to continue working with CDW Canada for ongoing technology and services support, Salgado notes.

“Our backbone is technology, networking and collaboration. These are vital parts of our business.”

“The sparkling new facility features the latest and greatest in technology and is ideal for a team environment.”

 

BY: Ryan Patrick