Webinar: Budget ITOps with real-world outage cost data
It’s no secret that the digital transformation essentially broke IT operations. With the rise in technology came a rise in outages capable of bringing organizations to a screeching halt. Those outages are expensive, and for years, the same number was thrown around as the authority on how much an outage cost (around $5,600 per minute). This number took off and was used in presentations, sales decks and other resources for years. But how could this number have stayed the same year over year? That’s what BigPanda questioned and why they got in touch with EMA (Enterprise Management Associates) to conduct research on their behalf on this topic, and their findings were extremely valuable to the ITOps community.
The average cost of an unplanned IT outage is actually $12,913 per minute.
They surveyed over 300 global research participants in the ITOps vertical consisting of those on a managerial level, C-levels directors and a few non-IT executives on how outages affected their organizations and teams. Their findings offer a defensible, not definitive, average cost of unplanned outages.
The real cost of an outage
So what is the real cost of an outage? While the $12,913 per minute figure is an average, the cost of an outage looks different to each organization. It’s more expensive for a larger organization to have an outage in terms of revenue lost (think $25,402 per minute), but it could hit a smaller organization harder as they could have less cushion or a margin for error for outages. These numbers can add up fast for any organization. Looking at a business with 10,000 to 20,000 employees, their outage cost per hour is $1,460,820. If they have an outage monthly that lasts for the average duration of two hours, yearly that cost is over $35,000,000.
In terms of impact, money lost from an outage is not always the biggest consequence. In fact, out of the respondents in the survey, the majority of them cited two different reasons as having the most reverberations from an outage: business disruption and the impact on employee productivity. Lost revenue actually ranked fourth behind data breach / governance regulatory exposure. It’s also worth noting that reputation ranked equally with lost revenue, with reputation being linked to potential revenue in the future and the ultimate success of the business.
How AIOps makes a difference
With an AIOps tool plus automation on your side, you can reduce the number of outages your organization experiences. 13.3% of respondents in the survey claimed that the cost of outages in their organizations have been decreasing due to proactive systems they’ve put in place, like AIOps. 22% wondered if they could lower the cost of their increasing costs related to outages with an implementation of AIOps and automation. The top metric used to determine how effective AIOps is in these organizations is a reduced number of outages, with improved business process efficiencies and a decrease in war room frequency duration / people involved following close behind. These findings prove that AIOps and automation are effective offensive weapons against outages.
How BigPanda can help your organization
You can use the BigPanda platform to assess the efficiency of your IT operations teams, tools and incident workflows. Using the cost of an outage as an important input, you can quantify the value that you and your team are creating and then communicate that across your organization. When it’s time for budgetary planning, you can use the BigPanda platform as a data-driven foundation for making the asks you need for important future investments.
Learn how to get started with AIOps today
Outages don’t have to hinder your organization. Click here to request a demo and learn more about AIOps, some of the common issues organizations encounter and how to get started.
