Data Center Outages Cost Nearly $9,000 Per Minute

A study from Emerson Network Power estimates the total costs of unplanned outages at data centers in their report, 2016 Cost of Data Center Outages, and the expenditures are higher than ever.

With help from the Ponemon Institute, Emerson found:

• The average total cost per minute of an unplanned outage increased from $5,617 in 2010 to $7,908 in 2013 to $8,851.
• The average cost of a data center outage rose from $505,502 in 2010 to $690,204 in 2013 to $740,357 in the latest study. This determines 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 #1 cause of unplanned data center outages, accounting for one-quarter of all such events. Cybercrime represents the fastest growing cause of data center outages, rising from 2% of outages in 2010 to 18% in 2013 to 22% for those sampled in the latest cost of downtime study.

It has become increasingly important to maintain Data Centers as the difficulty to keep them running efficiently has increased due to added infrastructure. 

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