In today’s business world, time is money. This naturally means that wasted time is wasted money. And that is always the case if your business stops running for one reason or another. Many businesses suffer from downtime each year and we all know that costs them a lot of money. But how much exactly?

The yearly cost of downtime

The amount of money a company loses in case of a downtime incident will of course vary according to the company’s size and industry. With this in mind, here are some statistics that might shed some light onto this mystery:

• According to an IDC report from December 2014, downtime costs fortune 1000 companies between $1.24 bln. and $2.5 bln. every year;
• According to an IHS 2015 survey, downtime costs North American companies from $1 mil. to $60 mil. a year.

The hourly cost of downtime

To get an even clearer understanding of the effect downtime may have on a business, let’s try to break down the numbers a bit.

According to Eurostat statistics from December 2016, the average hourly labor cost in EA-19 is € 29.50. That means that a downtime of 8 hours will cost a company, on average, €236 per employee.

What does this mean for a company with several employees?

• For a 25-employee company this translates to a € 5900 loss
• For a 50-employee company this means a € 11800 loss
• For a 100-employee this involves a € 23600 loss

If you add up additional costs involved by running a business, the numbers just keep growing.

Here are a few more interesting statistics to think about:

• According to a Gartner study, the average downtime cost is $5.600/ minute; this translates into a worrying $ 336.000 cost per hour
• According to another study conducted by Aberdeen Group, the average cost of downtime per hour is a staggering $163.674.

These numbers are quite worrying, aren’t they?! So what can a company do to prevent finding itself in one of these money-losing situations?

How can you prevent losing money in case of downtime?

The short answer is: by using a fast and reliable Disaster Recovery solution.

There are already some choices of Disaster Recovery solutions available on the market. Most of the times, these take the form of additional tools (hardware and/ or software) that one must purchase in order to make sure an organisation’s data is kept safe in case of a disaster.

However, before deciding on a Disaster Recovery solution, it is advisable that you define your needs:

• Define your workload, as well as what applications are vital for your business;
• Identify the lowest RPO you can work with;
• Identify the lowest RTO possible for your business.

Once you choose a DR solution, you have to also set up a disaster recovery plan and test it out. Only by setting up disaster scenarios and testing them can you actually make sure that your team can take advantage of your DR solution and minimize downtime.

Disaster Recovery with Syneto

Because we know how important Disaster Recovery capabilities are for our end-users, our new HYPERSeries 3000 hyperconverged product range comes with built-in Disaster Recovery capabilities.

Each of our products consists of a primary unit – in various configurations – and a secondary DR unit. Data on the primary unit can be replicated on the DR unit as often as every minute, lowering the RPO for the solution at 60 seconds.

In case of a disaster, vital applications can be “played” directly from the DR unit, making sure that the damage done to your business is minimum. Thanks to the integrated DR capabilities of these products, the RTO is a low as 15 minutes.

Find out more about what the HYPERSeries 3000 has to offer here.

Would you like to find out more on how Disaster Recovery works on a Syneto product? We are here to answer your questions, just contact us using the buttons below!