EDISON, N.J. — Fewer than one in 20 CIOs can claim they have avoided a network outage, according to new research by Opengear, a Digi Intl. company.

This finding is among new research by Opengear, surveying CIOs and network engineers in the U.S. The scale and frequency of network outages is revealed by 96% of CIOs stating they experience downtime at least once a quarter.

Further survey statistics reveal that network downtime has a significant financial impact for businesses. Figures show that for each minute of disruption, 24% of organizations lose between $2,501 and $5,000. As an average, this figure equates to $4,344 for every minute of downtime incurred.

Due to continued network outages and rising economic pressures, 79% of CIOs now say it’s harder to meet customer expectations in today’s environment, a concern also reflected by 68% of network engineers.

Therefore, 92% of CIOs have increased their budget over the last 12 months to improve their network resilience, with almost half (44%) dedicating over 50% of their IT budget to infrastructure spend in order to secure their operations.

“Our research findings lay bare the challenges that organizations in the U.S. are facing with network outages in 2023,” said Gary Marks, president at Opengear. “It’s perhaps unsurprising that CIOs are allocating more investment to network resiliency to ensure that downtime doesn’t occur. The key is where this investment is being targeted. From critical first day deployments and everyday maintenance to worst day scenarios, such as network outages, organizations need always-on access to their critical resources to ensure business continuity. Smart out of band technologies can enable remediation of network issues from any location, helping to reinforce business resilience in a difficult economic climate.”