Businesses collectively lose approximately 127 million person-hours annually or an average of 545 person-hours per company in employee productivity, due to IT downtime, according to a survey by CA Technologies.
The survey highlighted that the loss in person-hours is equivalent to 63,500 people being unable to work for an entire year; and North American businesses lose $26.5bn annually from avoidable downtime.
The survey of 2,000 organisations in North America and Europe found that IT outages are frequent and lengthy, substantially damaging companies’ reputations, staff morale and customer loyalty. However, 56% of organisations in North America and 30% in Europe don’t have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery policy.
The survey found each business suffers an average of 14 hours of downtime per year, during which employees are only able to work at 63% of their usual productivity.
After systems are back up and running, organisations lose an average of nine additional hours per year to the time it takes to recover data. During these times, employee productivity only climbs to 70%.
Half of organisations surveyed said IT outages damage their reputation, while 18% described the impact on their reputation as ‘very damaging.’
Of the respondents, 44% believe IT downtime damages staff morale, and 35% said it can adversely impact customer loyalty.
A high percentage that is 87% of businesses indicated that failure to recover data would be damaging to the business while 23% said this would be ‘disastrous.’
CA Technologies data management product management vice-president Steve Fairbanks said there are a variety of practical and affordable steps organisations can take to protect themselves against the adverse business impact of IT outages.
"Given that these outages are a fact of life and that some of the consequences of outages can be irreversible investments in improved business continuity are extremely worthwhile," Fairbanks said.
