3 common causes of downtime to look out for in 2020

[Matt_Shore]

As you move into 2020, it’s important to reflect. It’s the perfect time to evaluate what went well in your business year, as well as what you can improve on.

But, you shouldn’t just focus on your growth plans. Spend some time considering some worst-case scenarios. After all, you can plan to grow all you like, but you’ll only grow so much if downtime stops you in your tracks.

IT downtime costs UK businesses an average of £3.6 million per year. And this is not just in lost productivity. When your business suffers an outage, your reputation takes a hit as well.

That’s why, your business’s new year resolution aren’t complete without considering effective business continuity and disaster recovery measures.

Here are three common causes for downtime to look out for in 2020 and how to fix them.

3 causes of downtime and how to fix them

According to Gartner, the average cost of downtime is £4,262 per minute. Yet, too many businesses fail to adopt measures that can prevent or minimise the impact of any outage.

This is especially surprising when you consider that most of the common causes for downtime are utterly preventable.

So, if you want to keep your business’s momentum going in 2020, let’s take a look at what can go wrong and what you can do about it.

1. Internet Outages

Internet outages are one of the most common causes of business downtime. In the UK alone, almost 60 million hours of working time were lost due to them. Estimates suggest that this costs the UK economy £742 million in lost productivity and extra overtime.

A hybrid storage environment goes a long way to mitigating the effects of internet outages. By storing your core functions on premise, you can continue working offline and accessing the material you need, should an outage occur.

2. Usage Spikes

Usage spikes cause downtime if you’re not careful. In a nutshell, if you process more than your system can handle, you’ll break it.

To avoid this, your organisation will need a solution, like HPE GreenLake, that provides necessary flexibility and control to scale to your business demands. This means that you no longer need to worry about overloading your system.

3. Cybersecurity breaches

A catastrophic cyberattack will damage your business in ways you wouldn’t expect. Although you  may experience downtime, you could also suffer reputational damage as well, which is arguably harder to fix.

Even if you are victim to a hack or breach, with the right set up, your business can be back on its feet within a matter of minutes.

For example, HPE SimpliVity ensures you back up core systems and virtual desktops on a regular basis. This allows you to restore systems to before the attack, in turn significantly reducing data loss and minimising downtime.

Keep your business on track in 2020 with HPE

How long could your business continue with compromised IT and downtime on critical systems?

Too often, businesses treat back-up and disaster recovery as bolt-on extras rather than an essential foundation for their IT services. 2020 is the year to change your mindset.

With HPE SimpliVity, your business will reduce the risk of downtime and, if disaster does strike, get back on your feet faster. It allows you to back up your data every ten minutes, meaning you also lose as little data, time and money as possible if you suffer downtime.

Get in touch

If you would like to find out how HPE can bring you peace of mind through enhanced back-up and disaster recovery, please get in touch today.

 Check out my previous blogs: The future of hyperconverged technology, 5 questions every business leader should ask their IT department

@Matt_Shore
https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-shore/