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Writer's pictureMackenzie Perry

Data Center Outage

Investing in Data centers today #alucidBusinessContinuity


There is an interesting crossroad we have come to in business today when discussing Data Centers and future investment. Every company nowadays has a cost to the business if their technology is down and they are unable to perform their every day functions. Point of sale system, phones for calls, wireless, inventory managements, customer applications, websites, call center support - all areas of a business that have become increasingly more costly if they are not functioning properly, or, in the worst case, not functioning at all. But for many businesses that are working to prioritize growth over maintenance of their business, executives are foregoing the needed investment into data center technology - backup generators, UPS systems, new cooling technology, physical security, Fire suppression, DCIM solutions, etc - for furthering their investments in business application development, IT infrastructure, and their IT staff themselves.

So what does this mean for business in the U.S.? Companies today are toying with their appetites for Risk vs. Growth. With more harsh regulatory requirements on Banks, financial institutions, healthcare organizations, and the like, many larger organizations are opting to invest for growth to keep ahead of the growing costs, instead of properly refreshing critical data center environments in which they made significant investments 7-10 years ago. The result today is more and more frequent outages of large businesses. Amazon Web Services, Coresite, Equinix, VISA, Microsoft, Level 3, and a number of other Enterprise class businesses had major data center outages in the 2018 time period.

According to Emerson Network Power, the average cost of a single data center outage is $730,000. In 2016, Delta Airline’s data center outage had an estimated cost of $150 million after needing to ground over 2,000 airplanes for three days. Southwest had a similar outage in 2017 with an estimated cost of $177 million.


While we move through today’s more demanding economic climate to determine what is best to invest in, remember to properly weigh the risks and know the hard costs should an event or outage actually take place. Talk with your colleagues, partners, and market experts to make the most informed decision.


Resources:

Uptime Institute


Data Center Knowledge


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