Subscribe
  • Home
  • /
  • Enterprise
  • /
  • Application downtime costs enterprises $16m in revenue

Application downtime costs enterprises $16m in revenue

Regina Pazvakavambwa
By Regina Pazvakavambwa, ITWeb portals journalist.
Johannesburg, 22 Feb 2016
Gregg Petersen
Gregg Petersen

Application downtime is costing businesses $16 million per year in lost revenue and productivity globally - a $6 million increase since 2014.

This is according to Veeam Software's recent global Availability Report, for which 1 140 senior decision-makers in the IT departments of businesses with at least 1 000 employees, from 24 countries, including 30 from SA, were interviewed.

It says that 84% of organisations have admitted to a gap between end-user demands and IT's ability to deliver the always-on enterprise.

In the age of the always-on business, having systems and data always available is a protection organisations can't afford to neglect, says Gregg Petersen, regional director for Middle East and Africa, as well as the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation at Veeam.

He adds in highly competitive global markets, one day of lost productivity could mean the difference between surviving and sinking.

What is alarming is that despite investments in the data centre, the average number of unplanned downtime events reported has increased in the last year (from 13 events in 2014 to 15 events in 2015), says Veeam.

South African companies are in line with global trends in terms of investment in the modern data centre to drive the always-on business and similar to their global counterparts are suffering an availability gap, says Petersen.

The report shows that 63% of local respondents agree that despite all the investment in their organisation's data centre, it still has an availability gap and cannot meet end-users' requirements for an always-on business.

The figure is slightly higher than the global figure of 60% of respondents, including those from SA, who agree that their organisation is suffering an availability gap, it adds.

The average cost of downtime for mission-critical applications for SA organisation is $89 308 per hour; for non-mission-critical applications, the cost is $55 791 per hour.

The average cost of non-backed-up data loss for the downtime of mission-critical applications is $92 274 per hour; for non-mission-critical applications, this cost is $68 099 per hour, says Veeam.

Sixty seven percent of respondents revealed their organisations' applications encounter unplanned downtime caused by IT failures, external forces or other factors up to ten times per year, it adds.

Petersen says South African companies are in line with global trends in terms of investment in the modern data centre to drive the always-on business and similar to their global counterparts are suffering an availability gap.

He notes 77% of local respondents confirmed that their organisations have increased their requirements with regard to guaranteeing access to data.

In addition, 73% also reported that they have increased their requirements in order to minimise application downtime, in the past two years, says Petersen.

In the age of the always-on business, having systems and data always available is a protection organisations can't afford to neglect, he adds.

Share