Most businesses spend a lot of time calculating the cost and return on investment of a networking solution before committing to it. But an often-overlooked — and equally important — factor that should also be considered is the cost of network downtime.
As you work out how much it will cost you to get your network up and running, consider how much you’ll be out when it goes down.
When the Unexpected Occurs
Last spring, a Pennsylvania-based healthcare provider experienced a bout of unplanned network downtime. Its electronic health record system and patient portal were rendered completely inaccessible. Several of the company’s hospitals were affected, as well as its call center. The results were disastrous:
- Delayed medical procedures
- Doctors without access to critical patient information
- Patients unable to book appointments, get doctor’s notes or see their medical histories
There’s no question that the cost of network downtime in this example was significant. It wasn’t merely a matter of the cost to get things up and running again. What was the value of all the critical operations that ground to a halt because the network failed? In a mission-critical environment like this one, downtime can cause direct harm to patients and lead to a string of negative consequences.
What is the Cost of Network Downtime?
By now, it shouldn’t surprise you to know that the cost of network downtime can be astronomical. Data from Statista suggests that the average cost of critical server outages in 2019 ranged from $301,000 and $400,000 — per hour. A study by ITIC found that 34% of enterprises report costs in excess of $1 million for an hour of downtime.
Obviously, the specific financial impact of downtime on your organization will depend on a wide range of factors:
- Company size
- Market
- Time of year
- Average customer volume
But it’s important not to underestimate the cost of network downtime — which only climbs higher as our systems become more interconnected. A network outage can slow down or stop operations at every level, from point of sale to the C-suite (and everything in between). Your company can lose time, productivity, customers and profits.
And if you think your organization is too small to rack up big per-minute costs like the $90 million a 14-hour network outage cost Facebook last year, consider this. For many smaller organizations, the cost of network downtime can be enough to put them beyond recovery. A significant percentage of failed startups cite running out of money as the reason for closing their doors.
The Solution: Load Balancing with SD-WAN
The only way to mitigate the cost of network downtime is to minimize the risk of outages for your organization. But how do you do that, when so much of your network is out of your immediate control? IDG found in 2019 that more than half (54%) of IT decision-makers had already adopted SD-WAN solutions and a further 36% were actively researching the technology.
SD-WAN lets you automatically load balance packets across multiple circuits per site with bandwidth adaptation to achieve unmatched levels of network performance.
How does per-packet load balancing work?
- Monitors circuit quality in the tunnel connecting a site to the network
- Ensures packets are sent across the circuits performing best at any given time
- Removes underperforming circuits to ensure the best performance and uptime
- Dynamically re-adds circuits into the tunnel as performance thresholds return to normal
Turnium’s SD-WAN Solution
At Turnium, we’ve designed an SD-WAN solution that can be used with dual or multi-ISP WANs. This facilitates the combination of two or more internet circuits to create a system that offers combined availability and stacked bandwidth, with 99.99% uptime or greater.
When the Turnium algorithm detects a circuit failure or dropped data packets, it immediately directs packets to other available circuits. This solution can be used to combine any variety of circuits — whether you’re reliant on a single carrier or have services from multiple telecom providers.
Your next network outage could happen at any time, for any number of reasons. Are you prepared to handle the cost of network downtime? Or are you ready to invest in a reliable failover solution to protect your business, your customers and your bottom line?
Want to learn more about how Turnium’s SD-WAN solutions help mitigate the risk of outages? Talk to a member of our team today.