Different reports have suggested that businesses lose from thousands to millions of dollars due to unpredictable downtimes every year. This is on top of the damage to customer satisfaction and company reputation.
If you look at some of the most high-profile cases, you will find businesses losing more than $150 million with a single incident. One of the most common cases is the systemwide ticketing outages with some American Airlines.
Even though these kinds of outages are reported and make headlines, other smaller downtimes are not known. Unfortunately, these outages are also disruptive and can lead to huge losses just like the known ones.
The Cost of Unpredictable Downtimes
The cost associated with these unpredictable downtimes can be overwhelming. For instance, imagine visiting an eCommerce site to make a purchase but then you encounter a slowdown when making a payment.
Chances are that you will visit a different eCommerce store for your purchase, just like hundreds or thousands of other customers.
At the end of the day, this business will have lost a lot of revenue because of unexpected downtime or slowdown. Before they can address the issue, their reputation will be damaged and their customer satisfaction will be affected.
Even though this impact might not be seen directly in businesses’ accounting systems especially when the downtimes are addressed in good time, they will be evident in the long run. This shows how expensive unpredictable downtimes can be.
American Companies Losing $700 Billion A Year Due to Unpredictable Downtimes
Advancements in technology and the changing customer demands have left companies in America and the world over with no option but to adopt innovative solutions. These solutions allow them to scale and address both their demands and those of their customers.
Some of the most popular solutions adopted by businesses are the hybrid cloud solutions. These solutions allow them to adopt a mixed infrastructure where they can have on-premise, cloud, and other infrastructures for their business processes.
However, these solutions are susceptible to unpredictable downtimes. Fortunately, smart companies have invested in hybrid cloud observability solutions such as the Solarwinds’ solution that allow them to implement observability and monitoring strategies. This helps them ensure that their systems are available.
It also helps in monitoring any downtimes, anticipating them, and addressing any issues that might lead to downtimes and the loss of revenue. Unfortunately, some businesses are still lagging and continue to suffer from unexpected downtimes.
The Cost of Downtimes
A report by IHS on the cost of server, application, and network downtime in America revealed that American companies lose approximately $700 billion every year from unpredictable downtimes.
The report looks at several things, among them the causes, cost, length, and frequency of unexpected downtimes experienced by companies in America. This includes network, application, and server degradations and outages.
The report used a downtime companion calculator that allows businesses to model the cost of unexpected downtimes based on the downtime profile, cost structure, and demographics of their businesses.
However, the cost of unexpected downtimes in businesses is substantial. Small to mid-sized companies lose about $1 million every year while large enterprises lose approximately $60 million every year. This is a lot of money and can lead to the disruption of businesses.
Unexpected downtimes are synonymous with loss of revenue and productivity. Fortunately, taking care of the problem does not cost a lot of money and resources.
All businesses need to do is set aside a small investment to ensure that their technology infrastructure is reliable to avoid downtimes.
How Can Businesses Prevent Outages?
Apart from using cloud observability solutions, businesses can also invest in different AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques. These techniques are combined with other automated analysis strategies that check businesses’ infrastructure performance.
Applications are checked to ensure that their performance meets expectations. In addition, businesses can detect and address any unpredictable downtimes before they can happen and affect the operations of businesses.
Did you know that more than half of unpredictable downtimes in companies in the United States of America could have been detected or predicted? Well, this shows that the affected companies have not implemented the right measures to address such incidents.
However, predicting downtimes requires businesses to implement an automated analysis of different metrics in their infrastructure. They also need to ensure that they understand the capabilities of their infrastructures. This makes it easy to predict, address, and eliminate downtimes.
With continued advancement in technology, we are going to see more solutions designed to address unpredictable downtimes. Businesses need to ensure that they have implemented a solution that meets their requirements.
