Rising Cost Of Downtime Pushes Businesses' Reliance On IT

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and a global leader in maximising availability, capacity and efficiency of critical infrastructure, has released its “2013 State of the Datacentre” infographic illustrating the increasing criticality of datacentres and severe consequences of datacentre outages.
The infographic shows how businesses rely on datacentres more than ever and are increasingly aware of the risks and costs of downtime. Those costs are going up—33 percent since the release of Emerson’s “2011 State of the Datacentre” infographic—and businesses are taking steps to avoid those costs. Complete outages are down 20 percent over the same period.

“The data reflects what we hear every day from our customers and partners, and that’s a growing reliance on the datacentre as an indispensable business asset,” said Scott Barbour, executive vice president, Emerson, and business leader of Emerson Network Power. “They are investing in their IT systems and infrastructures because the cost of downtime is becoming more and more prohibitive. The facts presented in the infographic confirm the relentless expansion of our society’s electronic dependence and the increasing importance of datacentres.”

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The infographic also shows increasing reliance on datacentres in areas that were traditionally offline pursuits and consumers’ high expectations of speed and performance.

Some of the facts explored in the infographic:

What’s driving electronic dependence?

The transition to “e” is accelerating. For example, books and photos are increasingly electronic. 172 million e-readers are expected to be sold in 2013 – nearly six times the number of e-readers sold in 2011. More than 40 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day.

Is downtime really such a big deal?

The short answer: Yes. The average cost of a complete datacentre outage is $901,560, and businesses average one complete outage every year. That’s a big deal, and not surprising in light of the fact that global e-commerce spending topped $1.25 trillion this year. That’s larger than the gross domestic product of Mexico.