Businesses are getting on top of IT downtime costs

Peter Groucutt, managing director of Databarracks, discusses these findings further:

“Evidence has historically suggested organisations struggle to consider costs, but we’re now seeing companies thinking much more broadly about the financial impact of IT-related downtime.”

Groucutt stresses having a complete picture of what IT downtime costs your organisation enables you to make better-informed decisions on issues relating to IT resilience, supplier management and continuity planning: “There are several types of indirect costs that need to be considered when estimating the financial impact of an outage to your organisation..

The obvious costs are well known to a business. They include staff wages, lost revenue or any costs tied to fixing an outage. It is important, however, to look beyond these for a more holistic view of the impact an outage will have financially. ‘Hidden’ or intangible costs, such as damage to reputation, can often outweigh the more obvious, immediate costs – further research from our Data Health Check study revealed reputational damage is the second biggest worry for organisations during a disaster, behind only revenue loss.

“The problem with these intangible costs is they aren’t easy to estimate, and because they often take time to materialise, they can be excluded from calculations. It will always be difficult to secure budget for IT resilience if you can’t show the board a clear picture of the impact downtime will have. Presenting a complete downtime cost immediately puts the cost of investment into context and will help IT departments make the improvements they need. It’s encouraging to see organisations thinking more holistically and factoring these previously ignored costs into their budgeting.”