Bangkok--23 May--Aziam Burson-Marsteller
The Unacceptable Costs of IT Outages
Rungroj Mateedulsatit,
Business Manager, Business Critical Systems (BCS)
Hewlett-Packard (Thailand) Ltd.
Today there is virtually no type of business that does not rely on its IT system for multiple business-critical processes and this trend will only become more pronounced in the years ahead. The growing reliance on enterprise IT to provide the applications, data, and analytics that drive real business value, combined with the explosion in the use of cloud and mobile technology has set the stage for a golden age in business computing. But, what happens when the system fails? It is important to have in place a solution that is specifically designed to keep critical systems running, a solution like HP ServiceGuard portfolio of products that provides resiliency and accelerates disaster recovery.
Imagine the impact of having a key database or service unavailable—for hours or days— and the impact that would have on your business. During 2012 this was the sad reality for many companies— a reality that ended up costing, on average, $181,770 per hour of downtime, which is up from $110,000 in 2010. Further, the average outage in 2012 lasted one hour and required two hours to restore up to 90% of system functionality.[1]
In May of 2011 Channel Insider magazine reported that the average cost of data center downtime was $5,000 per minute.[2] While back in April 2010 Business Computing World quoted a Dun & Bradstreet report that found 59% of Fortune 500 companies experienced a minimum of 1.6 hours of downtime per week. On average businesses lose between US$84,000 and US$108,000 for every hour of IT system downtime.[3]
While the above referenced reports clearly indicate that there are serious financial impacts associated with IT system outages, this is not the whole story. For organizations that rely on their IT system to serve as a key interface with customers and/or partners, an outage can erode their confidence and damage the corporate reputation, both of which will have negative consequences for the business over the long term. This ‘reputational risk’ from outages is particularly critical for organizations that use IT to connect with large numbers of consumers, such as banks, telecom providers, e-tailors, airlines and of course government departments.
All of this leads to an important question: Is downtime really just a part of doing business? When it comes to the mission-critical applications that dictate the survivability of a business, the answer should be a resounding “no”.
The risks from downtime, both financial and reputational, will continue to be a growing concern as businesses increasingly adopt x86 systems for their mission-critical workloads without having an adequate high availability solution in place. Interestingly, more than a few organizations that I am familiar with do not have appropriate disaster recovery and service availability solutions for their increasingly vital IT systems. When it comes to Linux-based environments this problem is even more wide-spread and the risks even greater. So it is vital to have a solution that is tailored for these unique operating environments.
CIO’s and other C-suite executives should have a zero-tolerance policy for IT system outages and make it a priority to deploy a solution to improve system robustness and recoverability.
The example from my own organization of such a solution is the HP ServiceGuard portfolio, which is designed to keep mission critical systems, like SAP, up and running including those operating in a Linux environment. Specifically, HP ServiceGaurd for Linux includes key capabilities such as built-in resiliency, dynamic reconfiguration, and immediate recovery from outages.
As organizations increasingly rely on x86/Linux infrastructures to run more of their critical workloads, the reliability that they are currently accustomed to will not be enough in a competitive environment where compute uptime is a pre-requisite for organizational survival. While we all know downtime can happen in any IT environment, the goal is to make IT operations as seamless and robust as possible so customers and partners never have to worry about it. Investing in the appropriate availability assurance solution for your IT infrastructure will pay long-term dividends in terms of risk mitigation, improved financial performance and a stronger corporate reputation.
[1] Datacenter Downtime: How Much Does It Really Cost?, Aberdeen Group, March 2012
[2] Unplanned IT Outages Cost More than $5,000 per Minute: Report, Channel Insider, May 16, 2011
[3] Assessing The Financial Impact Of Down Time, Business Computing World, April 20, 2010