There was a time when tech behemoth Meta could do nothing. Their biggest social media and messaging app service: WhatsApp and Instagram, totally went offline a while ago. We had no way of foreseeing this happening, but we can certainly deal with it fast once it does. Nevertheless, Meta lost more than $100 million due to the downtime.
Companies of all sizes, not only Meta, must gnaw on their nails during outages. Additionally, Amazon lost up to US$34 million in sales during an hour-long outage in 2021. On the other case, even though it was just 20 minutes long, Alibaba lost billions of dollars that same year due to outages.
Even for massive corporations like Meta, Alibaba, and Amazon, suffering financial losses due to downtime is a nightmarish scenario for doing business. Furthermore, downtime has additional significant consequences that must be managed competently. The potential causes of downtime will be investigated in greater depth throughout this article.
What You Should Know About Downtime
The term “downtime” refers to the time period during which an information technology system is inoperable. There are two common categories of downtime: IT outage and brownout.
When a computer network is operating at a “brownout,” it is performing at a subpar level. Let’s say, for instance, that you own an online marketplace that totally depends on various web and mobile apps. However, your business customers have trouble loading the website or using the app, or they are unable to access some in-app functions.
Meanwhile, an IT outage occurs when such a system is completely inaccessible. This means that you truly had a crash on your website or business app. The cause may lie in the underlying infrastructure, which fails consequently.
Technology downtime is scheduled for system administration. However, most downtime is unanticipated and occurs during peak traffic times, system failures, or cyberattacks on IT infrastructure.
The State of Downtime in Digital Age
The Uptime Institute’s 2022 Outage Analysis Report states that many businesses are increasingly affected by downtime.
It’s estimated that over 80% of businesses have suffered downtime in the previous three years. About 20% of those polled additionally reported having a “severe” outage on top of a “serious” one. A serious incident is one in which there is an interruption in service that might result in financial loss, while a severe incident is one in which service is fully disrupted and could result in even more significant financial loss.
As of March 2020, 51% of IT executives reported an increase in downtime. 59% blame the rise in mobile computing for disruptions, while 57% attribute the pressure of digital transformation for causing outages.
More than 40 brands and retailers should expect some type of disruption in 2021, most notably website crashes and performance slowdowns during the sales and holiday seasons. Brands like Walmart, GameStop, and Office Depot are among them.
Impact losses as a result of downtime have skyrocketed, and not merely in proportion to the increase in the frequency of downtime. ITIC predicts that the cost of downtime would rise by 2% annually beginning in 2021. They go so far as to say that figure will only increase until businesses learn to plan properly for outages.
Calculating The Massive Costs of Downtime
Forrester published research into the consequences of downtime losses for organizations. Based on responses, 53% stated they experienced a drop in revenue, 47% said productivity went down, and 41% said they saw a decline in customer trust and brand reputation.
Moreover, the loss in question may have both long- and short-term repercussions. The results showed persistent, concerning secondary losses. Several examples will be shown below.
–53% of IT managers agreed that if there was a major outage, news outlets throughout the country would cover it, perhaps damaging the company’s brand even more.
-Some 31% of respondents expressed concern that it would be challenging to regain customers’ trust considering the damage to their reputation.
-About 30% of businesses state that outages have impacted their stock price.
Ultimately, it was Meta who took a major hit. Recently, the share price of the company dropped by 5% as a result of some downtime. Perhaps Meta is one of the lucky ones. As a result of downtime causing financial losses and damaged brand perception, 16% of IT leaders said many businesses have collapsed in the last three years.
The Major Cause of Downtime
The report from the Uptime Institute details many of the most common causes for downtime. It was found that power outages accounted for 43% of all downtime, with software, network, and cooling system issues each contributing for 14%.
In addition, the survey notes that 63% of third-party commercial operators including cloud, hosting, and colocation providers had suffered downtime in the last five years. In 2021, this percentage have risen to an absolutely staggering 71%.
Some of the causes of downtime, as described by the questioned IT executives, were also addressed. Some tackle network failure concerns (such as web hosting providers), increasing traffic using services on websites or applications, cyberattacks, and human errors such wrong coding or expired domain names.
Benefits of Mitigating Downtime
A lot of companies fret about downtime, but it’s possible to prevent it. A subsequent poll confirmed this finding, discovering that 51% of IT experts believe downtime and outage can be avoided if the organization has a solid strategy in place.
Forrester lists a number of benefits that may be achieved by companies if they are able to anticipate downtime. Several examples are shown below.
–63% reported an increase in revenue.
–53% indicated lower operating costs.
–51% gain a competitive advantage.
-Productivity has increased by 50%.
Read More: Strategies to Effectively Minimize and Prevent Downtime
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