This article is more than 1 year old

Most firms cannot count cost of IT downtime

Dunno. $1m per hour?

A majority of firms have little or no idea how much IT downtime could cost their business, according to a survey out today. Of those able to provide an estimate, almost half reckoned it to be $100,000 per hour - or more.

Two-thirds (67 per cent) of 400 enterprises quizzed by Forrester Research either did not know or could not provide an estimate of the financial cost to their business of such a scenario. Many organisations often monitored the effects of application performance from a technical or fault diagnostic perspective while failing to relate any problems to an organisation's bottom line.

Forty-two per cent of organisations who came up with figures set the amount at at least $100,000 an hour. A quarter (25 per cent) reckon application downtime would set them back between $100,000 and $500,000 per hour and 13 per cent estimated costs at between $500,000 and $1 million per hour. One in 25 (4 per cent) predicted losses of greater than $1 million per hour if key apps went tits-up

By contrast, a third of those able to come up with a figure put the cost of application failure in a much lower bracket of between $10,000 and $100,000 per hour.

Mike Lucas, regional technology manager of Compuware UK & Ireland, said the survey showed the majority of organisations are failing to grasp the business impact associated with poor or non-performing applications.

“If IT departments can demonstrate to business managers the impact application performance problems have on employee productivity and ultimately the bottom line, they should find that they get much more support from the board to combat these problems. Businesses need to proactively manage applications to ensure downtime is kept to a minimum,” he said. ®

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