Vulnerable IT infrastructure means loss of revenue
Europeans businesses are losing approximately 17 billion Euros a year in revenue owing to IT disruptions; on average, European businesses suffer IT failures lasting an average of fourteen hours per company a year, amounting to nearly one million hours of down-time costs
A new report by IT management software and solutions company, CA Technologies, in which 1,808 European organizations in eleven European countries were surveyed, that Europeans businesses are losing approximately €17 billion a year in revenue owing to IT disruptions.
The CA Technologies report, titled “Avoidable Cost of Downtime 2010 Report,” showed the direct correlation between the time organizations took to address IT failures and the negative financial impact associated with such failures. Of the organizations surveyed, an IT failure lasting an average of fourteen hours was documented per organization, amounting for nearly one million hours of down-time costs. The United Kingdom suffered the highest average IT down time of twenty-seven hours per company per year, while Belgium experienced only eight hours of IT downtime per company per year.
A social media release by CA Technologies found that these hours of downtime, although seemingly negligible in some instances, inhibit companies from producing revenue. France reported a revenue loss of approximately €500,000 and Italy experienced the lowest IT downtime-related loss of €34,000.
Chris Ross, vice president for EMEA and Asia-Pacific, Recovery Management and Data Modeling Customer Solutions Unit at CA Technologies, said that while organizations recognize that an uninterrupted IT infrastructure is paramount in today’s digitally run economy, these organizations should tackle the issue preemptively; “through a re-evaluation of their disaster recovery strategy.”
The report also reveals the impact of additional delays while data is still being recovered, post-IT downtime. Holistically, it adds on another 600,000 hours to the running of business operations. These numbers are indicative of a volatile economy, in which an average of 25 percent of company revenue generation is being lost to the inadequacies of technology.
Ross mentions that many organizations, while focusing on storing data, tend to overlook the equally important speed of data recovery which is “…a good starting point for organizations planning or re-evaluating their disaster recovery needs.”
