Uptime Institute’s 10th Annual Global Data Center Survey Shows Increasing Complexities, Outages
Findings show 44% had recent major outage that tangibly impacted their organization
SEATTLE — Uptime Institute announced the key findings of its 10th annual Global Data Center Survey. The results show a growing sector adapting to rapid change on multiple levels. In almost every area under discussion — outages, resiliency, staffing, workload placement, or innovation — there is considerable variety in the strategies being employed.
Uptime Institute has reported on data center outages for several years, surveying operators on their experiences with outages and closely tracking publicly recorded incidents. Even with the inherent difficulty collecting and assessing this information, clear trends from the research have emerged. In surveys from 2018-2020 survey, outages occur with disturbing frequency, bigger outages are becoming more damaging and expensive, and what has been gained in improved processes and engineering has been partially offset by the challenges of maintaining ever more complex systems. In each of these surveys, about one-third of all respondents said they had had been affected by a significant, serious, or severe outage — which can cause substantial financial and reputation damage, impacting organizations in a tangible way in the past year. And over the previous three-year period, more than 75% said they had experienced such an outage. Avoiding unplanned downtime remains a top technical and business challenge for all owners and operators.