In conjunction with the Ponemon Institute, Emerson Network Power (NYSE: EMR), a provider of critical infrastructure for information and communications technology systems, has released its 2016 Cost of Data Center Outages report, which estimates the full costs associated with unplanned outages at data centers.
For the report, Emerson and the Ponemon Institute polled 63 data center organizations in the U.S. that had experienced an outage in the past 12 months. The two organizations 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 following:
-- 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 the new report.
-- 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 represents a 38 percent increase in the cost of downtime since the first study in 2010.
-- Maximum downtime costs are rising faster than average, increasing 81 percent 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 center outages, accounting for one-quarter of all such events.
-- Cybercrime represents the fastest growing cause of data center outages, rising from 2 percent of outages in 2010 to 18 percent in 2013 to 22 percent for those sampled in the latest cost of downtime study.
“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,” says 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.”
The Ponemon Institute is recognized in the information technology industry for its independent research on privacy, data protection and information security policy. “Emerson laid out a bold challenge to create benchmarks that would better capture the myriad of challenges data center developers and managers face as they support their organizations’ digital transformations,” concludes Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman of the institute.
For more information, visit www.EmersonNetworkPower/Benchmarks.