Downtime can have serious material and non-material costs for businesses. Around 70% of system failures are due to software or user errors. The impacts of downtime include both visible costs like lost production hours and increased costs, as well as invisible costs like decreased employee productivity, brand erosion, and long-term loss of customers. Proper availability and accessibility of data through high availability systems can help reduce these downtime costs, which are often underestimated.

1. Downtime
Causes and Costs

2. Downtime: What it is….
•
On computational environments, downtime is obvious to everybody (time
of system down), but the most important thing to keep in mind is:
•
Downtime can lead to serious material and non-material damages
•
Downtime not only represents money lost, but trust, image of your
brand, damages for your customers, etc

3. Main Reasons for System Failures
!
•
Around 70% of all system failures can be
attributed to software or user errors. This
number is based on researches and
published for example in the Oracle
Backup and Recovery Handbook
Others
5%
Software Error
36%
Phisical (HW Problems)
25%
Operation (User Error)
34%
Reference: libelle.com.cn

4. Impacts and Consequences of
System Downtime
Visible Impacts!
Invisible Impacts!
!
•
Lost Production Hours
•
Employee Dissatisfaction
•
Increased Costs
•
Lost Revenue
•
Security Issues
•
Bad Financial Performance
•
Lost Profits
•
Decreased Productivity
•
Liabilities and Risks
•
Press Attention
•
Dissatisfied Customers
•
Poor Communications
•
Time to Restore Normal Operation
•
Brand Erosion
•
Lower IT Department Reputation
•
Long-Term Loss of Customers

5. Cost of Downtime Calc Example
Reference: libelle.com.cn

6. Think in High Availability
•
The availability and accessibility of data is one of the most costly
investments of every organisation
•
The cost of downtime or data loss is usually vastly underestimated
•
Where there is a downtime incident, most of the affected departments are
surprised by the actual consequences