EMA Research: The true costs of modern IT outages

If you’re in IT, no doubt you’ve heard the age-old statistic that an average minute of downtime costs $5,600. It turns out that information is a bit outdated and does not reflect the real and nuanced costs of a modern IT outage. BigPanda suspected this and wanted to uncover the true numbers behind outage costs so ITOps can have a better understanding of costs, causes and “cures” of an IT outage.

BigPanda worked with Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) to conduct field research and surveyed 300 global managers, directors, VPs and executives. The results might surprise you. Download the report here to see all the statistics we discovered. Read on to get a snapshot of what we learned.

The new average
The more accurate average cost for unplanned outage downtime is more than double that old statistic: $12,900 per minute. The report breaks down the more nuanced differences among companies of different sizes when it comes to downtime—revealing that outage cost per minute in an organization of 1,000-2,500 employees is $1,850, and the outage cost per minute in a larger company of 20,000 employees is $25,402 on average.

Outage cost factors
Surprisingly, you’d be wrong to assume lost revenue is the top cost impact of an outage. Business disruption and impact on employee activity tie for that spot. Lost revenue tied for third with data breach and governance regulatory exposure.

The causes of outages
The report found important differences between causes of outages for organizations in two categories: ones that have enterprise-wide, mature artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) and ones that are implementing AIOps on a departmental basis. The organizations with mature AIOps struggled with external factors such as power outages or internet provider failure. The latter group primarily suffered change and configuration issues and human error—demonstrating the power of AI and automation in helping organizations control internal disruption factors.

A rosier outlook with AIOps
IT leaders’ thoughts on how the future looks is dependent on their relationship with AIOps. The survey found that 22% of respondents say that rising costs are avoidable and they plan to use automation to avoid them. The survey reported that 36% of IT leaders believe that increased outage costs are guaranteed.

The most striking statistic from this set of findings is that 13% of respondents reported that proactive systems have allowed them to actually decrease outage costs. With this proof of AIOps’ success, gloomier IT leaders can keep their chins up.

AIOps = as close to cure as possible
There is no way to apply a surefire “cure” for IT outages in any organization, but AIOps and automation come close. They help minimize costs and impacts of outages and are proven to reduce outages, improve business process efficiencies, decrease war room frequency and much more.

Download the report to see all the findings, including:

• How organizations view the relationship of outage cost to outage duration
• What constitutes a significant outage and the costs and frequencies associated with one
• How organizations are seeing outage-busting benefits from AIOps
• The high correlation between AIOps implementation and outstanding IT service quality