Picture this…
You and your company are preparing to close a major deal, months have been spent in preparation and the next fiscal quarter is dependent on upon a positive outcome. Countless hours have been dedicated to exhausting research, crunching numbers and ensuring every "i" is dotted and "t" crossed. It is crucial nothing go wrong; this meeting and the possibilities it holds has the potential to catapult your company to seven figure profits. To call it a pivotal moment would be an understatement, the lost sleep, missed vacations and endless hours chained to the office will finally become worth it.
Graphic specialists have labored to illustrate visionary concepts; videos dynamically explain each carefully thought out point, PowerPoint's have been refined and everything prepped. A weary but expectant staff drags themselves home, confident tomorrow will be the day their proverbial ship comes in.
But it doesn't!
At 3am the phone rings, waking you from a troubled sleep, it's the night manager from IT explaining that the core server has crashed and crucial data was corrupted.
"Isn't it backed up", you manage to gasp, knowing the 3am call wouldn't have come unless the issue was serious.
"Normally yes", the specialist explains", but backups happen at 2am, the latest datasets were corrupted just prior to the auto backups".
And with those words your visions of grandeur vanish like a dream upon waking.
While the above scenario is fictional, something similar may have happened to you, something similar IS HAPPENING somewhere as you read this. Data is lost every day and unless a company is fully prepared, the downtown could be catastrophic.
FACT: 73% of businesses have experienced service interruption in the past 5 years, collectively resulting in $70 million in lost revenue.
But wait, aren't most companies operating in the cloud?
Yes, and while that demonstrates "forward thinking", being in-the-cloud does not by itself provide foolproof protection. Independent studies show that cloud users, while suffering outages of shorter duration, operate at less than the projected 99.9% uptime.
FACT: While many hosting company advertise 99.9% uptime, the actual figure is closer to 93%.
Downtime is a recurring issue interwoven into todays technology. Any business dependent on IT for profitability , must factor downtime into the equation.
What causes downtime?
That's a lengthy list which stretches from winter storms to scheduled maintenance, add in a mixture of human error and software glitches, and your shiny new website (or internal intranet) may be humming one moment, then gone the next. That's not a "glass half empty" mentality, it's a statistical fact and something every savvy business owner should be prepared for.
FACT: Even with advanced infrastructures and state-of-the-art technology, businesses still face downtime and data loss. Ranging from minutes to days, downtime should be expected and every business should have a data/downtime recovery plan in place. It is estimated that configuration errors and other unexpected issues cost some companies' up to $72,000 in lost revenues, this according to independent research.
Let's revisit our fictional data disaster, only this time the scenario is different. A carefully thought out backup is in place, ensuring there downtime does will never mean catastrophic data loss.
The phone rings at 3am and you manage a fatigued, "Hello". "Sorry to disturb you sir", says a confident IT tech. "I know tomorrow is an important day and I wanted to let you know that we just experienced a server failure. Not to worry though, all your files were backed up offsite and all files have been restored. You're good-to-go for tomorrow's meeting.
Smiling, you wonder why he'd even called. Those guys were top notch and the money they'd convinced you to spend on physical (as well as cloud based) backups saved the day. Note to self… rescind the order to call 'no matter the hour' with software issues.
What are the affects of downtime on a Fortune 500 Company?
STATISTIC: Dun & Bradstreet report that 59% of Fortune 500 companies experience a minimum of 1.6 hours of downtime each week. Assuming 10,000 employees averaging $56 per hour including benefits, this average downtime adds up to $896,000 weekly or $46 million per year. The figure would vary according to industry with Wall Street playing 'King of the Hill" with an estimated $6.5 million dollars per hour.
Should your Internet fail (statistically assured to happen at some point) what happens to your phone lines, alarm system and POS transactions? If your bottom line depends on the smooth operation of technology, take the time to get a FREE quote by filling out the above form.
While keeping a keen eye on the bottom line is crucial, reputation (and possibly damages) can be attributed to data loss and downtime. How exactly? Imagine FedeX not able to deliver critical supplies, or a medical services company not having access to crucial records. Normally a glitch, but should that occur during a critical medical procedure, lives could be at stake. While these are extreme examples, they are pulled from real life scenarios where lawsuits and collateral damages could potentially run into the millions of dollars.
In today's world, and based on our ever increasing interdependence on technology, it is the forward thinking CEO who has a comprehensive data recovery plan in place. It's not a question of "if" you'll experience downtime and/or data loss, rather when. Statistics say it will happen, when it does, will your data be protected?