Why managing your own IT risks costly downtime

Amir Hashmi discusses why you need full-time professionals if you want to avoid the money pits of IT downtime

If there is one thing that all businesses can agree upon it’s that time equals money. It’s the reason why organisations large and small all over the globe are on the constant lookout for ways to boost productivity and performance – all while maximising resources and lowering costs.

This is especially true when it comes to your IT infrastructure. Not only is it (probably) the backbone that keeps your business running smoothly and competitively, but it is also a considerable investment in itself. Whenever it isn’t operating, businesses are quite simply haemorrhaging money.

Something so important needs more than a metaphorical plaster, it needs constant support and supervision to avoid any issues arising entirely. This is why a modern company, with the myriad of technological trappings needed to compete in today’s world (and survive the pandemic), needs a specialised, dedicated IT support service.

The fact of the matter is that the core technology that today’s businesses rely upon is not infallible. Hardware failures and network downtime are unfortunately common occurrences that require all hands on deck to get your systems back up and running again. And while your internal IT staff are busy putting out fires, they’re not focussing on more strategic projects.

The cost of downtime

Downtime costs. Even brief outages can impact a company’s revenue stream and profits. When they happen, outages can impair customer journeys, damage reputations, and grind internal productivity to a standstill. In 2017, ITIC sent out an independent survey to measure downtime costs. It found that 98% of organisations say that a single hour of downtime costs over USD $100,000, with 81% putting the figure at over $300,000. For 33% of businesses, 60 minutes of downtime would cost their firms between $1 million and £5 million.

Figures from Statista.com reveal 24% of organisations worldwide reporting average hourly downtime costs amounting to between USD 301,000 and USD 400,000, with 14% reporting greater than USD 5 million in costs. Elsewhere, IHS Markit surveyed 400 companies and found downtime was costing them a collective USD 700 billion per year – 78% of which was from lost employee productivity during outages.

Managed tech services can help ensure business continuity

Though precise estimates vary, the sum of them all is that outages can potentially cost an organisation hundreds of thousands if not millions in lost productivity and revenues. Therefore, waiting around for the next costly outage to happen is simply not an option.

When you work with a managed technology services provider, one of the major benefits is that they will monitor your network and infrastructure 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. This means that when there’s a problem, your provider will know about it immediately and will fix it quickly before it results in significant and costly downtime.

However, and most importantly, as they perform regular, proactive maintenance, the likelihood of running into issues is minimised in the first place. What’s more, disaster recovery (DR) solutions – which utilise cloud computing to protect applications and data from a natural or human disaster – ensure you can get back up and running as soon as possible via complete recovery from the cloud

Amir Hashmi is CEO and Founder of IT and Cloud services provider Zsah.