Is Your Network Helping You Reach Your Business Objectives

Is Your Network Helping You Reach Your Business Objectives

In order to reach your business objectives, you need to understand the ins and outs of your network.  Because, networks go down, that’s just a fact of life, right? Would you be so accepting if you knew how much network downtime costs you?

CA Technologies conducted a survey in 2011, they estimated a yearly cost of IT downtime of $26.6 billion (yes, that’s a “B” as in billion). Regardless of how you slice those numbers among companies of different sizes, that’s lost revenue.

If you think the costs of network downtime only apply to the Fortune 2000, you’re wrong. Regardless of the size of your company, when you’re network stops working, your business takes a hit.

Related:  Reduce Total Cost of IT While Increasing Employee Productivity (The Cloud)

And it’s not just cash flow when calculating the cost of downtime. What happens when your network has an outage? Here are 8 usual impacts:

• Damage to reputation among your customers
• Employee morale and confidence in the IT department drops
• Cash flow
• Revenue losses
• Productivity losses – and did you have to pay overtime to make up lost time?
• Potential compliance and reporting penalties
• You could lose discounts
• Annoyed or angry customers

The Cost of Downtime
The CA survey also reported that IT failures caused $55,000 in lost revenue for small enterprises; $91,000 for midsized companies; and more than $1,000,000 for large enterprises. And that’s with an average of 14 hours of IT downtime for a year. If you experience more downtime than that, increase these average numbers accordingly.

Related:  44% of Small Businesses Are Victims of Cyber Attacks

Similarly, Information Technology Intelligence Consulting research estimated that an hour of downtime for a company with over 1,000 employees costs a company over $100,000. And if you’re in a heavily data-dependent industry like banking or rely on online retail sales; that figure is higher.

Research specific to small and medium-sized businesses conducted by IDCreports that network downtime costs $20,000 per hour for 80% of SMBs.

What are the labor costs for network downtime?  See article by Kasia Subieta on LinkedIn .  This article shows one way to calculate it - Labor cost = P x E x R x H.

• P = number of people affected
• E = average percentage they are affected
• R = average employee cost per hour
• H = number of hours of outage

Number 1 Reason for Downtime?
Human error is the leading cause of network downtime. Dimension Data’s 2014 Network Barometer report estimates the percentage of downtime caused by human error at 32%. Avaya research shows that 82% of companies experienced network downtime because of human error.

Wow.

One way to minimize your risk of downtime is to partner with a managed network services provider. Rather than attempting to develop and/or rely on the expertise of one or two people in your own IT department, outsource your network to someone who REALLY knows what they’re doing because that’s all they/we do.  They/We can customize your network around your business goals and objectives.  Then you can focus on growing your business and use your network as a tool to help get you there. 

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Original Post: https://blog.allegianttechnology.com/blog/the-cold-hard-facts-of-network-downtime