Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

Is data center uptime an idealistic dream or is it something attainable?

According to a recent survey on data center downtime by the Aberdeen (News - Alert) Group, the nirvana of perfect data center uptime is still a farfetched dream for most as only three percent of the 125 organizations surveyed reported their data center uptime as 100 percent. Moreover, only four percent rated their data center as having uptime of 99.999 percent.

Those that experienced the best history with uptime recorded fewer than one business interruption over the last 12 months and noted that they only needed to spend less than one hour to recover 90 percent of operational functionality after a business disruption. Those on the other side of the spectrum, however, reported more than two business interruptions over the last 12 months and that they required just under five hours to recover 90 percent of operational functionality after a business disruption.

So what did the researchers conclude? All organizations need a plan.

One of the main sticking points of the paper, was that companies ought to calculate the cost of downtime in their organization so that they can choose the best form of power protection.

“Until the organization understands the size and scope of any potential impact it cannot define an appropriate Disaster Recovery (DR) plan,” the research states. “Investing tens of thousands of dollars in a DR program may make sense if the cost of a business interruption is measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars –but not if the cost is measured in merely hundreds of dollars.”

One company that is spreading the word about the importance of being prepared for downtime and power surges is Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), a leading power protection technology company.

This past May, TMCnet had the chance to sit down with Minuteman to discuss what makes the company stand apart and why it is so important to embrace power protection technologies. In particular, Minuteman talked about the fact that while an average outage lasts eight to 10 minutes, the average extended power outage is eight hours. Consequently, power protection is of the utmost importance.

“For businesses, eight hours can sometimes be an eternity when they are out of power and business operations come to a screeching halt,” Minuteman’s Director or Marketing Bill Allen told TMC’s  CEO Rich Tehrani (News - Alert) during a video interview.

While businesses can come to a “screeching halt,” a surprisingly high number of small and medium sized businesses (SMB) are not turning to power protection.

To hear about the full interview, click here.