The Trillion-Dollar Cost of Downtime and Data Loss

Published: Jan 20, 2015
Updated: May 12, 2021
2 minute read

The Trillion-Dollar Cost of Downtime and Data Loss

Key Component

Key Component

64% of surveyed global IT decision-makers say data protection is “totally critical” to the success of their organization.

Stored Knowledge

Stored Knowledge

32% of those surveyed said their organizations store primary data on-premise on physical servers, and 20% opt for on-premise virtualized servers. Only 8% are turning to the public cloud for primary data storage.

Disruptive State

Disruptive State

49% of surveyed IT leaders said their organizations have suffered unplanned downtime in the last 12 months, and 32% have experienced data loss.

Big Data (Loss)

Big Data (Loss)

The average annual data loss per company amounts to 2.33TB–the equivalent of about 24 million emails.

Top Causes of Data Disruptions

Top Causes of Data Disruptions

Hardware failure: 53%, Loss of power: 39%, Software failure: 38%, Data corruption: 29%, Accidental user error: 26%

Most Severe Consequences of Data Disruption

Most Severe Consequences of Data Disruption

Loss of employee productivity: 47%, Loss of revenue: 36%, Delay in product/service development: 34%, Loss of customer confidence/loyalty: 24%, Loss of new business opportunity: 20%

Shaky Ground, Part I

Shaky Ground, Part I

71% of IT decision-makers surveyed are not fully confident in their organizations’ ability to recover information following an incident, and 87% of organizations are considered behind the curve for data protection maturity.

Shaky Ground, Part II

Shaky Ground, Part II

One-quarter of survey respondents said their organizations don’t back up any data continuously, resulting in 32 hours of annual downtime (compared to 25 hours for average companies).

Dollar Distinction

Dollar Distinction

Companies considered ahead of the curve spend an average of $37 million on data protection, compared to $12 million spent by organizations considered average.

Most Difficult Applications/Platforms to Protect

Most Difficult Applications/Platforms to Protect

Big data: 39%, Mobile devices: 37%, Hybrid cloud apps: 30%

Dennis McCafferty

Dennis McCafferty

Content Writer

Dennis McCafferty, a writer for eWeek, Baseline and CIO Insight, has more than 20 years of experience as a writer. He has covered a variety of technology and business topics for a number of publications, including those of Ziff Davis. Dennis was also an editorial staffer for USA Weekend, the nation’s second-largest magazine, with more than 22 million readers.

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