Causes of Downtime
• UPS System Failures: UPS system failure ranks as the number one cause of unplanned data center outages.
• Cyber Crime: Hacking, phishing, and spamming are all common cyber crimes. Check out our blog post on strengthening your security and think about business IT consulting.
• Human Error: Nobody’s perfect. There is always a chance that even the most experienced employee will make a mistake.
• Utility failure: Electrical failures, water supply errors, gas leaks, and water leaks can all affect your business. In February several Georgetown businesses had to shut down for several weeks because of a gas leak.
• Weather Events: Extreme weather events have been affecting businesses more often in the past ten years. While no one can predict the weather, one should always prepare.
• IT Equipment Failure: There are several ways that equipment can break down and affect the operation of your business.
Loss of revenue
If your business is not operational, you cannot make money. Businesses that operate on a forty-hour work week will have an uptime percentage of 24% (forty hours divided by the total number of hours in the week). Online stores would have a hundred percent uptime. Calculate the loss of revenue by multiplying the revenue per hour times the uptime percentage times the downtime hours. The first component of the downtime calculator is:
Revenue per hour x percentage of uptime x downtime in hours
For example, if I make $1,000 an hour from my Etsy store and my site goes down for two hours, the equation would be:
$1000 x 100% x 2 hours= $2000
Loss of productivity
Employee’s hourly pay x number of employees x utilization percentage
For the computer programmer example, if he or she made $100 an hour and there was two hours of downtime, your business would lose $200.
And this isn’t even factoring the psychological impact on the employees. It takes an average of twenty-three minutes to refocus after an interruption. There will be a loss of productivity even after the distraction of downtime.
Recovery Cost
- Data recovery services: If you lose any data as a result of the downtime, data recovery services can add up, especially with large .amounts of data.
- Repair services: Sometimes you have to use an external company to help recover data.
- Replacement Parts: You will also have to factor in parts to repair broken hardware.
- Overtime for staff: Your employees might have to work overtime to catch up on their work if the length of the downtime was significant.
Looking into business IT consulting will actually save your business money!