Report: Unexpected Downtime Costs Organizations $21.8M per Year

Disaster Recovery and backup firm Veeam recently completed a report, which found that more than four out of five businesses around the world are dealing with what is known as the availability gap between user demand and what IT teams can give in the enterprise; and downtime is costing the enterprise millions every year.

This is the sixth annual Veeam Availability Report, according to the vendor, and over 1,000 senior IT leaders from 24 countries took part. The report found that unexpected downtime costs organizations about $21.8 million per year; that number is up 36 percent over the previous year, according to CloudTech.

The report also found that about 69 percent of those who participated saw a connection between continuous access to services and digital transformation, with downtime related to hacks, outages, natural disasters, or infrastructure failures causing issues. If a server is down, the outage is expected to last about 85 minutes on average, according to the report.

Veaam’s report also found that the issues businesses face can have an impact on their bottom line and 40 percent of participants said their brand’s reputation was affected as well. Another key takeaway says that organizations can only handle about 72 minutes of data loss per year when it comes to high priority apps, but according to CloudTech, the actual figure is closer to two hours.

“The results of this survey show that most companies, even large, international enterprises, continue to struggle with fundamental backup/recovery capabilities, which along with affecting productivity and profitability are also hindering strategic initiatives like digital transformation,” Jason Buffington, principal analyst for data protection at Veeam, told CloudTech.

He went on to say, “In considering the startling availability and protection gaps that are prevalent today, IT is failing to meet the needs of their business units, which should gravely concern IT leaders and those who answer to the board.”

Click here to read the full report.