Study says unplanned data centre outages cost $9,000 per minute

The two organisations co-released the original Cost of Data Center Outages study, the first independently conducted research on the cost and causes of data center downtime, in 2010. It was updated in 2013 and again this year. Key findings from the new report include:

• The average total cost per minute of an unplanned outage increased from $5,617 in 2010 to $7,908 in 2013 to $8,851 in this report.
• The average cost of a data centre outage rose from $505,502 in 2010 to $690,204 in 2013 to $740,357 in the latest study. This represents a 38% increase in the cost of downtime since the first study in 2010.
• Maximum downtime costs are rising faster than average, increasing 81% since 2010 to a current high of $2,409,991.
• UPS system failure, including UPS and batteries, is the No. 1 cause of unplanned data centre outages, accounting for one-quarter of all such events. Cybercrime represents the fastest growing cause of data centre outages, rising from 2% of outages in 2010 to 18% in 2013 to 22% for those sampled in the latest cost of downtime study.

“The complexity of today’s data centers continues to create challenges for organisations as they architect and manage their IT infrastructure to reduce costly interruptions,” said Steve Hassell, President of data center solutions, Emerson Network Power. “Our goal with the Ponemon Institute research is to provide industry benchmarks and insight that help organisations make smart business decisions to mitigate costly failures.” 

The Ponemon Institute is recognised in the information technology industry for its independent research on privacy, data protection and information security policy.

This is the first in a series of five research reports from the two organisations that will create industry benchmarks and provide insight into the key challenges and decision points organisations face as they construct an IT infrastructure to support internal users, partners, suppliers and customers in the digital age.

“Emerson laid out a bold challenge to create benchmarks that would better capture the myriad of challenges data centre developers and managers face as they support their organisations’ digital transformations,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute.