Planned or Unplanned, All Downtime is Bad

Estimates for average costs of downtime at an organization came in at around $9,000 per minute [1] last year. That number leaves little doubt that the direct costs of technical downtime can cripple a business. However, that number doesn’t even take into account the indirect costs of downtime, such as bad press and negative social media chatter that can add devastating insult to injury. This is why it’s important to have a high availability and disaster recovery (HA/DR) solution in place.

The impact of technical downtime

Whether planned or unplanned, technical outages are expensive at best, and totally devastating at worst. The Small Business Administration and FEMA both recently reiterated that 40% of businesses that suffer a significant downtime event are never able to recover. Those odds are not good.

Even if the cause of downtime is a disaster, insurance reimbursements likely won’t even come close to covering what a day of downtime costs, which is why many organizations just can’t bounce back. This hard-hitting quote from FEMA drives it home: “Insurance does not cover all costs and cannot replace customers that defect to the competition.”

Even planned downtime can be costly

While unplanned downtime from a disaster, hardware failure or simple human error can add up to total chaos, the costs and consequences of planned downtime aren’t much better. It’s important to note that only 10% of downtime is caused by unexpected events like natural disasters. The fact is, 90% of all downtime is planned.

From migrations and upgrades to installs and physical moves, planned downtime is an expense and inconvenience that most IT departments have come to dread – and for good reason. At least once a week, our experts at Vision Solutions hear stories of how a minor event, like a simple migration, turned into a major catastrophe. Sadly, by the time these organizations start looking for a disaster recovery solution, they’ve already lost thousands or millions of revenue and restoration costs, taken a major hit to their reputation, have had a lot of explaining to do to their boards and shareholders, and are facing fines for failing to meet compliance regulations.

How to avoid technical outages

The good news is that downtime, even planned outages, is an avoidable problem.

High availability and disaster recovery solutions, such as those from Precisely, offer automatic (or manual) failover to a real-time copy of everything on your server, storage solution and operating systems, etc. So when disaster strikes, or general maintenance work is required, you’re technical systems remain available.

And when it’s time to restore – whether that’s days or weeks down the road – just a few clicks brings everyone and everything back to the new or restored production servers.

In conclusion, protecting your business from downtime is critical, but it doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated.

Make sure you’re prepared for planned and unplanned outages with the right tools. Read our white paper: The Ultimate Buyers Guide to HA/DR Solutions

1. 2016 Costs of Data Center Outages, Ponemon Institute, January 2016