12-27-21 | Blog Post
Downtime for any business means losses in revenue, valuable time, and resources. This can leave your business vulnerable and stagnant. Routine, expected downtime can be planned for, but unplanned, spontaneous downtime can debilitate any business. What is the cost of downtime? It depends from business to business. For some, millions of dollars. For others, millions of opportunities.
According to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), 40% of businesses fail to reopen their doors after a natural disaster and 29% fail to stay open just two years after that. The cost of downtime can be catastrophic and cripple your business now, for years, or forever.
While hurricanes and natural disasters can devastate communities, the rest of the world carries on and transactions continue. New clients are earned, customers spend money, and competitors keep operating even if your business is down. Competition doesn’t stop just because a hurricane strikes your business. New and old customers, business opportunities, and revenue can be stolen by your competitors if your business is down for too long during a natural disaster.
Your business should determine two key goals to gauge downtime and the potential business impact. First, you should determine for how long your business can afford to be down. An RTO, or Recovery Time Objective, sets the amount of time your business can afford to be down or not functioning. This addresses the downtime of business operations as a whole. Another goal to set is the RPO, or Recovery Point Objective. Your business’ RPO sets the period of time in which data could be lost in the wake of a disaster or IT issue, for example, 1 hour’s worth of customer data.
Your business can plan for downtime by implementing an effective cloud-based disaster recovery plan and backing up data to the cloud. The cloud presents businesses with a safe, secure, and compliant way to store data and continue essential business functions even amidst disaster. A hurricane may strike your business’ headquarters, but your essential data and network will be protected far, far away in the cloud. Think about it, the cost of downtime in the wake of disaster could be permanent closure. That makes the cost of the moving to the cloud incomparably lower.
