Downtime: Business Continuity and Customer Satisfaction
Information Technology (IT) has significantly impacted our daily activities, both work and play. Business is no exception, and small to medium size businesses (SMBs) are profoundly dependent on IT systems to support and manage daily operations.
Today we live in a cut-throat, competitive society underpinned by cutting edge technologies. For your business to stay in the race, it needs to run smoothly – no hitches or glitches. Your IT infrastructure and network must be secure and accessible all the time. Reliable and constant support technology guarantees that business momentum, employee productivity and customer service will be optimised for your company.
Since your company is reliant on robust IT systems, there is a causal link between data accessibility and total cost of ownership (TCO). A single event involving minimal downtime will mean lost revenue and productivity. Following this will be a negative impact on your brand reputation and a loss of trust in your company’s network reliability.
In the past, the IT department was solely responsible for the prevention of downtime. Also, the IT team had to respond proactively to disaster to ensure rapid recovery. However, with our current overwhelming dependence on technology, downtime is now a problem facing a SMB as a whole. SMBs experiencing on-going downtime issues can suffer significant financial loss to the point where they can be on the brink of bankruptcy. SMB CEOs and top management must understand the impact and consequences of downtime, short or long.
In a typical SMB, executives are constantly working to increase a client base and revenue. Management may not have the time to appreciate the daily workings of their IT networks. As a result, they don’t have an accurate picture of downtime frequency. This lack of knowledge and insight means SMBs are at even greater risk of experiencing increased downtime and the financial burden thereafter.
SMBs: Management and the IT Team
SMB executives are cognisant of the importance of network operations to maintain productivity, profitability and provide quality service. However, this awareness does not extend to an understanding of downtime frequency and the factors that make their technology infrastructure vulnerable to it. To make matters worse, some companies lack in-house IT staff. So, when downtime happens, what caused it and how to fix it are both mysteries.
Having in-house IT support isn’t always a solution. Many support technicians and engineers don’t realise the financial implications of downtime. They need to appreciate that downtime equates to loss of revenue, productivity and customers.
All SMB employees need insight into the probability of downtime and the consequences thereof. If everybody is on the same downtime page, then uptime and availability of vital IT applications can be maximised. This understanding will also impact positively on the cost of a SMB IT and data infrastructure.
Real-time Cost of Downtime
The Aberdeen Group, a business intelligence research firm, has revealed that downtime currently costs companies 65% more compared to two years ago. In 2011 Symantec published a SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, showing that SMBs lose an average of £4,000 from a single downtime event caused by offline systems and networks. For larger SMBs, this figure can escalate to £20,000 loss for each day of downtime.
SMB management must acknowledge and examine direct and indirect costs of downtime. Three obvious direct costs are:
- Inactive employees are still paid during downtime
- Sales and revenue are permanently lost
- The emergency on-call IT technician, who has got the SMB out of their current state of play and up and running again, is likely to send an expensive invoice
Indirect costs are more difficult to quantify. Research shows that roughly 62% of all network downtime costs can be attributed to indirect factors such as customers who leave and acquiring a bad reputation. Consider these questions:
- How could you calculate the exact financial loss resulting from long-term downtime?
- How long does it take to make a bad reputation good again?
- How many customers who move on are likely to return?
So what does this all mean? Simply, that SMB management and IT support have little understanding of the real costs involved in an average network or system outage. Repairing and replacing physical hardware or identifying the root cause of the downtime are cheap compared to the residual costs associated with network failures.
Here’s the problem: too many CEOs of SMBs are only alert to downtime costs with respect to repair and replacement. Worse still, they also believe that their business processes are secure and not prone to downtime and data becoming inaccessible. Maybe these individuals need to rethink their strategy and avoid the costly tab that comes with downtime.
Infrastructure Vulnerabilities to Downtime
There are several factors that make a SMB IT infrastructure and data centre vulnerable to downtime. The percentage breakdown of the leading causes of downtime are:
- Power Failure – 48%
- Accidental Data Deletion – 31%
- Employee error – 29
- Virus/Malware – 25%
- Application failure – 20%
Zero In On Power Failures
You can see that power outages are the main cause of downtime of a SMB data centre. A UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) provides about half an hour of backup power in the event of a power failure. In this time, you need to safely save your work and securely shut everything down. But a UPS is not without its own problems. A battery will not retain its charge forever; its lifespan can be eroded by half due when exposed high temperatures or when it is left uncharged for an extended period. UPS related failures are particularly expensive, as are generator failures.
How do you zero in on vulnerability due to power failures? Easy. You need to have in place a reliable system to backup critical data and applications in the event of equipment failure. This will minimise the impact of any power outage and ensure that catastrophe does not strike your data centre and consequently your business operations.
Zero In On Accidental Deletion and Employee Error
To err is human. That’s fine in moderation. Unfortunately, the frequency of human error causing downtime is high. Accidental data deletion can occur when backup errors are made, a power cord is unplugged, IT engineers do not adhere to routine maintenance and alert monitoring, or when an error in judgment is made during an emergency.
A recent study conducted by the IT research and advisory company, Gartner Group, revealed that an estimated 80% of downtime is due to human and process error.
How do you zero in on employee error? This one is a little trickier. You can hire the most competent and experienced engineers, but if they make one critical mistake this will lead to a downed network or your data centre. Proper training and communication are critical, especially when you consider the exponential growth of new technologies and the learning curve that comes with them. So, even if somebody is having a bad day, knowing that your SMB has an umbrella backup strategy gives you peace of mind. Your business continuity will remain unaffected when somebody erroneously pushes the ‘delete’ button’.
Zero In On Virus, Malware and Hackers
Disruptions caused by viruses and malware are becoming increasingly prevalent and hackers are more sneaky and slick. On top of this, we now are also threatened by ransomware. Too often SMBs are complacent and think that they are not vulnerable to attacks from malicious software, applications and hackers. These SMBs need to think twice. A survey conducted by the National Cyber Alliance and Symantec disclosed that 77% of SMBs confidently believe that cybercrime poses no risk. An unprecedented 83% admitted to having no formal counter measures against cybercrime. SMBs need to appreciate that the threat extends beyond their data security. Cybercrime puts sensitive customer data at risk and by extension the SMB’s bank balance.
How do you zero in on cybercrime? There is no guaranteed solution but changing passwords regularly is a start. Also, passwords need to be strong. There are many sites on the web such as The Password Meter where you can check the strength of a password and how long it would take to crack. Also, in the hi-tech world of cloud computing and virtualisation, not backing up data is inexcusable. Using these technologies, you can cost-effectively back up the entire contents of a server including data, applications, patches and the operating system. And all into one software bundle or virtual server.
Zero In On Application Failure
Applications and their components are often the transgressors causing reoccurring downtime. While virtualization has clear advantages, it also means that application overlap occurs in your IT infrastructure to save storage capacity. So what does this mean? In simple terms, a single small application component failure will impact many applications.
How do you zero in on application failure? This is straight forward. All components of your IT infrastructure must be profiled. There also needs to be a knowledge an understanding of what each application does. This means knowing the hardware resources used by each application and the software it integrates with. In this way you can effectively recognise and monitor potential failure points.
Avoid the Downtime Blues
Companies, large and small, are increasingly vulnerable to downtime. In spite of this risk, many SMBs choose to ignore the threat. This behaviour is underpinned by a notion of ‘it will never happen to us’. The ‘disasters’ lurking in the background and causing downtime should not be confused with natural ones such as floods or fires. The true ‘disaster’ culprits are factors that make themselves apparent every day. Networks and data centres experience downtime from power failures, human error, cybercrime and application failure. These downtime threats are real and when a SMB frequently suffers from one or more of them, fatal business consequences ensue.
So what do you do to avoid those downtime blues? CEOs and top management of SMBs must assess their data risk, have quantifiable down cost figures at hand, and enhance their data recovery efforts and processes. Conventional and somewhat outmoded disaster recovery methods such as on-call IT support and using backup disks are expensive. These methods are time consuming and a drain on resources. Furthermore, stored data on backup disks is often off-site. This means that downtime is extended since data will have to be brought on-site for IT infrastructure and data recovery to be implemented.
Many SMBs now utilise cloud computing and virtualisation technologies as an inexpensive way of preparing for downtime and to avoid the loss of vital business data. Recently, Symantec conducted a Disaster Preparedness Survey in which 26% of SMB executives stated that their reason for deciding to move to a virtual server infrastructure was to be prepared for any disaster. 32% of executives admitted that a rapid recovery time was their reason for using the cloud, while 30% chose the cloud because it minimises downtime.
What is the best way forward for SMBs wanting to use virtualisation and cloud computing? They should seek help from Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who have knowledge and experience of trending technologies. MSPs can guide SMBs with their disaster recovery strategies and also implement new, reliable technology systems. The MSP will offer a 24/7 Network Operations Centre (NOC) that provides remote monitoring and management solutions. The MSP also has an ongoing help desk to ensure that disaster recovery action is taken immediately, and also to help SMBs with backup and data and systems monitoring and trouble shooting. So, to cut a long story short, accessing a NOC and MSP 24/7 Help Desk promises sound data protection, minimal downtime and uninterrupted business continuity.
