by Shane Henson — December 30, 2013—Every minute a data center is down results in lost productivity and costs a business thousands of dollars per minute, according to findings from the 2013 Cost of Data Center Outages, a new Ponemon Institute study sponsored by Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson focusing on maximizing availability, capacity and efficiency of critical infrastructure.
The study of U.S.-based data centers quantifies the cost of an unplanned data center outage at slightly more than $7,900 per minute. This is a 41% increase from the $5,600 it was in 2010, when Emerson Network Power first partnered with the Ponemon Institute to calculate the costs associated with data center downtime, notes Emerson Network Power.
This year’s report analyzes costs at 67 data centers within the last year across varying industry segments with a minimum size of 2,500 square feet. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the direct, indirect and opportunity costs from data center outages, including damage to mission-critical data, impact of downtime on organizational productivity, damage to equipment, legal and regulatory repercussions, and lost confidence and trust among key stakeholders.
Highlights of the 2013 Costs of Data Center Outages report include:
- The average reported incident length was 86 minutes, resulting in average cost per incident of approximately $690,200. In 2010, it was 97 minutes at approximately $505,500.
- For a total data center outage, which had an average recovery time of 119 minutes, average costs were approximately $901,500. In 2010, it was 134 minutes at about $680,700.
- For a partial data center outage, which averaged 56 minutes in length, average costs were approximately $350,400. In 2010, it was 59 minutes at approximately $258,000.
Unplanned data center outages can significantly affect a company’s bottom line, the infographic shows.
(Click on image to enlarge)
The study also found that those organizations with revenue models that depend on the data center’s ability to deliver information technology and networking services to customers—such as telecommunications service providers and e-commerce companies—and those that deal with a large amount of secure data—such as defense contractors and financial institutions—continue to incur the most significant costs associated with downtime; with the highest cost of a single event more than $1.7 million.
These same industries did see a slight decrease (2 to 5%) compared to 2010 costs, while those organizations that traditionally have been less dependent on their data centers saw a significant increase. The largest increase was in the hospitality sector, which saw a 129% increase; followed by the public sector (116%), transportation (108%) and media organizations (104%).
“As data centers continue to evolve to support businesses and organizations that are becoming more social, mobile and cloud-based, there is an increasing need for a growing number of companies and organizations to make it a priority to minimize the risk of downtime and commit the necessary investment in infrastructure technology and resources,” said Peter Panfil, vice president, global power, Emerson Network Power. “This report gives these organizations the data they need to support more informed business decisions regarding the cost associated with eliminating vulnerabilities compared to the costs associated with not taking action.”
