Downtime ‘devastation’

A new study released by GlobalSCAPE, Inc. reveals alarming details about the devastating effect on business when core systems fail.

The survey of 283 IT professionals and business end users found that nearly 90 percent of organizations unexpectedly lose access to critical systems, including mail servers, back-end processors, and file servers, and almost a third deal with downtime issues at least once a month.

"Downtime, while understood to be tremendously costly and frustrating, has become commonplace and even expected in the enterprise," said James Bindseil, president and CEO of Globalscape. "Oftentimes, downtime can be avoided, and companies should expect more from their vendors."

Beyond the obvious loss of employee productivity, IT executives shared the costly and widespread ramifications of downtime on their businesses. Of those who responded:

· 76 percent said downtime frustrates their end users

· 43 percent lost crucial data or important communications

· 52 percent said their workforce has been unable to send or receive
critical, timely files

Just an Hour of Downtime Could Cost One Million Dollars or More

While lost files or delayed emails may not have an "assigned" value, per se, every minute that a core system is down costs companies money. Globalscape's survey found that 60 percent of enterprise employees who estimated the financial cost of downtime on their organization said that a single hour without critical systems costs their company between $250,000 and $500,000--and one in six reported that one hour of downtime can cost $1,000,000 or more.

Active-Passive Clustering Can't Guarantee High Availability

Despite what end users might think, IT isn't always at fault when core systems go down. More often, servers become overloaded, shutdown, and require manual intervention before the system is restored. To avoid the issue, many enterprise IT professionals use active-active or active-passive clustering, but active-passive environments can still leave companies at risk.

In fact, survey respondents who have active-passive clustering environments reported losing 34 percent more data and critical emails than those respondents who have active-active clustering environments.

"Companies need an 'always on' solution that can protect their businesses and customers," said Bindseil. "That's exactly why we will be offering active-active file transfer solutions; companies simply can't afford to settle for less."