The Uxbridge, Middlesex-based UK arm of Tandem Computers Inc has released its latest cost-of-ownership report of 152 organisations in Europe which found that only two of those firms counted the cost of downtime of their computer systems. This obviously stirred up Tandem a bit, with a big chunk of its business being in supplying continuously available computers. It says that 23% of the firms did not count running costs as important and of those that did, maintenance and staffing were the main costs they considered. The survey uncovered the fact that 67% of organisations formally measured availability of computers systems, yet the associated running costs were not considered to be relevant by all but the two firms. The average unintended downtime for the companies in the survey, which had a total of 194 computer systems installed, had been 774 minutes during the previous 12 month period.
