Study Finds Significant Increase In Cost Of Unplanned Data Center Outages Since 2010
Second part of national survey by Emerson Network Power and the Ponemon Institute reveals average increase of 41%.
Data center downtime proves to remain a costly line item for organizations, and the cost has increased significantly in the last three years, according to the results of the “2013 Cost of Data Center Outages,” a new Ponemon Institute study, sponsored by Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity, and efficiency of critical infrastructure. The study of U.S.-based data centers quantifies the cost of an unplanned data center outage at slightly more than $7,900 per minute. This is a 41% increase from the $5,600 it was in 2010, when Emerson Network Power first partnered with the Ponemon Institute to calculate the costs associated with data center downtime.
This year’s report analyzes costs at 67 data centers within the last year across varying industry segments with a minimum size of 2,500 sq ft. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the direct, indirect and opportunity costs from data center outages, including damage to mission-critical data, impact of downtime on organizational productivity, damage to equipment, legal and regulatory repercussions, and lost confidence and trust among key stakeholders.