When Downtime Means Anything but Relaxing

Ah downtime... That time of the day, week, or year when you can completely relax. Downtime means different things to different people; for some it might mean relaxing in front of the TV or reading a good book while soaking in the tub. Others may spend their downtime playing a round of golf or having a cold brew on a hot day with good friends.

But wait! Downtime can have an entirely different meaning when it comes to your IT networks and systems.

If you have ever had a sinking feeling in your stomach when you heard the computers were down or that an employee couldn’t find the customer data, you know that downtime means loss of productivity, inability to communicate with customers and/or hours spent trying to troubleshoot and fix the problem. It could also mean costly repairs and damage to your company’s reputation. Argh downtime!

If it hasn’t happened in your company yet, there is a good chance it will. In fact, according to Gartner 25% of all PC users suffer from data loss each year. Forrester reports that 24% of companies will experience a full data disaster in the coming year and Ponemon Institute says that an incredible 95% of companies experienced a data outage in the last year.

If you had anywhere near a 25% chance of something going wrong in any other part in of your life wouldn’t you try and protect yourself? That is why we have insurance, lock our doors at night and hold our kid’s hand when we cross the street.

So why, according to Continuum, do only 23% of companies back up their data on a daily basis? Most likely because they do not realize how costly downtime and recreating data can be for their organization.

Here is a simple cost of downtime calculator for you to quickly calculate soft and hard dollar expenses associated with an IT system failure.

If the potential downtime costs are high and your company does not have the resources to put together or maintain a back-up and disaster recovery program, consider using a managed IT service provider like Foresight. For a fixed and affordable monthly expense, you can immediately begin to mitigate your business risk and avoid high IT recovery costs. Oh… and you can start enjoying your downtime again.