The Cost of Downtime

Downtime can be very expensive. Technology research firm Gartner gives a conservative estimate for the hourly cost of network downtime to be about $42,000. Firms generally experience about 175 hours of downtime a year due to network failure, possibly costing them up to 7 million in losses. Of course the cost varies from company to company depending on the size of the busines, but even for a small companies, an average loss of $314 an hour (~$55,112 per annum) is not uncommon. If it’s a medium sized company, losses can rise up to an average of $90,787. This estimate does not include all the losses that come from mismanaged networks, prior to total failure of the system.

Moderate interruptions to an IT system is unavoidable for a variety of reasons. Upgrades, hardware obsolescence, software incompatibility, or just plain ol’ bad luck. However, companies shouldn’t have to endure longer than necessary interruptions to their systems. This usually happens when they don’t have robust, integrated, data protection policies, where the data lost can’t be recovered quickly enough in a crisis.

In order to calculate your cost of downtime

A simple way to calculate your cost of downtime would be to consider the total:

Number of hours of downtime when systems are offline

Number of hours between systems restoration and recovery of all data

Number of employees affected by system downtime and their labour rate

The reductions in hourly profit

Knowing the cost of your company’s downtime is important, and part of your profit maximization strategy. Compare that to our service prices and Ask Us for what we can do for you to increase your firm’s productivity.