(Updated: 08-02-2024)
As companies proceed to embrace digital transformation, availability has turn into an organization’s most beneficial commodity. Availability refers back to the state of when a company’s IT infrastructure, which is vital to working a profitable enterprise, is functioning correctly. However, when a company experiences an inflow in demand or one other catastrophic IT concern, availability subsides and downtime happens at an alarming charge. One of the largest challenges organizations face is that availability is troublesome to take care of and is indiscriminate, even for the world’s largest enterprises.
Companies like British Airways, Facebook and Twitter have all battled by way of costly outages lately that not solely influence their companies, but additionally expose society’s rising dependence on know-how to carry out key features of our each day wants. As know-how continues to advance, IT outages will proceed to ensue and can have an effect on extra than simply a company’s backside line.
Downtime remains to be a significant concern
Outages happen when a company’s companies or methods are unavailable, whereas brownouts are when a company’s companies stay accessible however usually are not working at an optimum degree. According to a LogicMonitor survey of IT decision-makers within the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, 96 p.c of respondents stated they skilled at the least one outage prior to now three years.
An common of fifty p.c of respondents within the US, Canada and UK stated they skilled 5 or extra outages prior to now three years. Approximately 50 p.c of US, Canada and UK respondents stated that they had skilled 4 or fewer outages in the identical timeframe.
Preventing IT downtime is essential for sustaining productiveness and making certain clean operations inside a company.
Here are the ten methods to assist reduce and stop IT downtime:
- Regular System Maintenance: Implement a proactive upkeep schedule for servers, networks, and {hardware} to determine and handle potential points earlier than they escalate.
- Redundancy and Backup: Set up redundant methods, {hardware}, and knowledge backups to offer failover choices in case of {hardware} or software program failures.
- Monitoring and Alerts: Utilize monitoring instruments to repeatedly observe system efficiency and obtain real-time alerts when potential points come up.
- Patch Management: Stay up-to-date with software program patches and safety updates to mitigate vulnerabilities and cut back the danger of system failures.
- Load Balancing: Distribute community visitors throughout a number of servers to make sure even workloads and keep away from overloading any single system.
- Disaster Recovery Plan: Create a complete catastrophe restoration plan that outlines the steps to be taken within the occasion of a significant system failure or knowledge loss.
- Testing and Simulation: Regularly check catastrophe restoration procedures and simulate potential failure eventualities to validate the effectiveness of the restoration plan.
- Employee Training: Educate workers about IT greatest practices, resembling avoiding suspicious hyperlinks and attachments, to scale back the danger of cyber-attacks that may result in downtime.
- Vendor Support and Maintenance Contracts: Ensure that vital methods have lively assist and upkeep contracts with distributors to obtain well timed help in case of points.
- Continuous Improvement and Documentation: Regularly evaluation and replace IT insurance policies and procedures primarily based on classes discovered from previous incidents, and doc them to facilitate constant practices.
Remember, no system is fully resistant to downtime, however by following these preventive measures and having a strong catastrophe restoration plan, you possibly can considerably cut back the influence of potential IT downtime in your group.
An outage can influence extra than simply a company’s funds. The survey discovered organizations that skilled frequent outages and brownouts incurred increased prices – as much as 16-times greater than corporations who had fewer cases of downtime. Beyond the monetary influence, these organizations needed to double the scale of their groups to troubleshoot issues, and it nonetheless took them twice as lengthy on common to resolve them.
The industries most affected
Results from the survey additionally revealed that the frequency of outages and brownouts is conducive to the trade by which the corporate operates. Financial and know-how organizations skilled outages and brownouts most continuously throughout a 3 12 months interval, adopted by retail and manufacturing. According to the survey:
- 41 p.c of respondents from monetary organizations acknowledged that they skilled 10 or extra outages over the previous three years.
- 37 p.c of respondents from know-how organizations stated they skilled 10 or extra outages over the previous three years.
- 34 p.c of respondents from retail organizations acknowledged that they skilled 10 or extra outages over the previous three years.
- 28 p.c of respondents from manufacturing organizations acknowledged that they skilled 10 or extra outages over the previous three years.
These numbers spotlight the sweeping nature of outages throughout the varied trade sectors and show that no firm ought to take into account itself immune.
The significance of availability
Availability issues not solely to a company’s prospects, but additionally to the IT decision-makers tasked with sustaining it. In reality, 80 p.c of world respondents indicated that efficiency and availability are essential points, rating above safety and cost-effectiveness. After all, IT availability is crucial within the clean working of IT infrastructure and due to this fact essential to sustaining enterprise operations. Availability ensures that airline passengers, for instance, aren’t stranded resulting from system outages, meals stays at protected temperatures and prospects can entry their on-line banking purposes.
Despite the significance of availability, IT decision-makers indicated that 51 p.c of outages and 53 p.c of brownouts are avoidable. This implies that organizations may forestall this pricey downtime, however shouldn’t have the means essential – whether or not that includes instruments, groups or different sources – to keep away from it.
Concerns over the repercussions
With high-profile outages and brownouts hitting the headlines regularly, considerations over the repercussions of experiencing downtime are inevitable. In the US and Canada, 50 p.c of respondents stated they are going to seemingly expertise a significant brownout or outage so extreme that it’ll generate media consideration. Of the identical respondents, 52 p.c worry somebody will lose his or her job.
The sector that feared the repercussions of downtime probably the most was retail, adopted by manufacturing. 68 p.c of respondents working in retail felt that they might expertise a significant brownout or outage so extreme that it will make nationwide media protection and that somebody may lose his or her job. 67 p.c of IT decision-makers in manufacturing felt it will make nationwide protection, whereas 69 p.c have been involved somebody would lose his or her job.
Comprehensive monitoring is essential
To fight downtime, it’s vital that corporations have a complete monitoring platform that permits them to view their IT infrastructure by way of a single glass panel. This means potential causes of downtime are extra simply recognized and resolved earlier than they’ll negatively influence the enterprise. This sort of visibility is invaluable, permitting organizations to focus much less on problem-solving and extra on optimization and innovation.
Evaluating monitoring options will be an arduous however essential job, and the significance of extensibility can’t be overstated. Companies should be certain that the chosen platform integrates properly with all of its IT methods and may determine and handle gaps in an organization’s infrastructure which may trigger outages. It can be crucial that the chosen monitoring resolution just isn’t solely versatile, but additionally offers IT groups early visibility into developments that would signify hassle forward. Taking it a step additional, clever monitoring options that use AIOps performance like machine studying and synthetic intelligence can detect the warning indicators that precede points and warn organizations accordingly.
Ultimately, whether or not adopting new applied sciences or transferring infrastructure to the cloud, enterprises should guarantee that availability is prime of thoughts, and that their monitoring resolution is ready to sustain. By deciding on a scalable platform that gives visibility into their methods and forecasts potential points, companies can rise to the subsequent degree with out sacrificing availability. This sort of visibility is not going to solely forestall downtime and system outages, but additionally hold organizations from hitting undesirable headlines.
By Daniela Streng