Information and communication technology (ICT) downtime is costing North American organizations $700 billion per year, according to a new study from IHS.
Some highlights:
- Network interruptions are the biggest culprit of downtime and have far-reaching consequences: applications, servers and devices may all be working fine, but they can’t communicate with each other when the network is down
- On average, survey respondents experience 5 downtime events per month, and 27 hours of downtime per month
- Organizations are making changes to reduce the impact of downtime, from investing in early-detection capabilities to improving redundancy, training and hiring new people, and implementing backup processes that don’t rely on ICT systems
“Our research found that the cost of ICT downtime is substantial, from $1 million a year for a typical mid-size company to over $60 million for a large enterprise,” said Matthias Machowinski, research director for enterprise networks and video at IHS.