North American businesses suffer an average of 10 hours of IT downtime
annually, collectively costing them $26.5 billion in revenue, according to a
study released by CA Technologies Dec. 9.
In a series of interviews with CIOs, IT directors, and IT managers from 200
companies spanning the financial services, manufacturing, retail, and public
sectors, researchers calculated the financial losses incurred when businesses
cannot quickly recover from service outages. For the purposes of this
study, outages are attributable to hardware failures or security breaches. The
companies range in size from small businesses with 50 employees to large
organizations with more than 1,000 employees.
Respondents estimated their ability to generate revenue is reduced by 29
percent, according to the study. Financial services are impacted the most by
downtime, with the average company losing $224,000 or more in revenue each
year. Public-sector organizations are impacted the least, with the average
organization losing $99,000 in revenue, according to the report. However, the
public sector tends to experience the highest amount of downtime, at an average
of 16.6 hours per year, compared with the overall average of 10 hours, the
report said.
For more, read the eWeek article: IT Outages Cause Businesses $26.5 Billion in Lost Revenue Each Year, Survey.