“Time is money” is not just a saying - it's a truth in business. You pay for your employees’ time, time spent using resources, and, of course, everything lost to downtime.
Downtime is a particularly significant problem, as it leads to a loss in productivity and brings operations to a halt. As such, reducing downtime is an important objective for organizations, as unexpected or extensive downtimes can add up to significant costs or losses.
With that in mind, how can we minimize downtime, and what is its impact on IT operations? Let’s explore.
What is Meant By Downtime in a Business?
Downtime is, as the name suggests, a time during which a business’s operations are stalled or down, typically due to technical issues. Unexpected or extended downtimes can significantly set back productivity or disrupt teams’ schedules, so reducing downtime is a priority for technology providers and companies alike.
Outside of a business environment, “downtime” can refer to time to rest and relax with nothing planned. In a business, however, downtime is far less relaxing, as IT teams have to identify and resolve the issue quickly. Each lost moment sets the organization further back behind the competition, so knowing how to minimize downtime is essential.
Types of Downtime in Business Operations:
We can typically fit downtime into two categories: planned and unplanned. While each can still impact business operations, they require different planning and preparations.
Planned Downtime
Planned downtime is a necessary delay that you can prepare for. Oftentimes, planned downtime is required for system maintenance, software updates, and even hardware upgrades, as these will require systems to shut down and restart.
Planned downtime can be scheduled for a convenient time, such as after hours or, in instances where that’s not necessary, during times when the system or computer is rarely used. This ensures minimal disruptions so that business processes can resume quickly.
Unplanned Downtime
Unplanned downtime is a bigger problem, as it's caused when a system unexpectedly crashes, a disaster cuts off power, or any other unexpected event causes downtime.
Unplanned downtime can be a major issue since it disrupts daily work. Companies have no control over when it happens or its duration, so they can take systems down in the middle of the workday, potentially for hours, depending on the nature of the downtime. Suffice it to say that this can be a significant setback.
How Downtime Disrupts IT Operations and Productivity
Unplanned downtime can have a widespread impact on a company, and all of it is negative.
Loss of productivity: First, downtime can cut into productivity significantly. When employees can’t access their work or computers, everything gets delayed — multiply this by every employee affected by the downtime and the productivity loss becomes exponentially greater.
Financial losses: The loss of productivity leads to a loss of revenue, and not only from the potential revenue each hour of downtime loses. There are also the recovery costs to consider — data recovery isn’t cheap, nor are any costs associated with the lost data, and if the downtime is due to damaged hardware, then replacing that will also add to the expenses.
Reputation damage: Perhaps the longest-lasting impact of unplanned downtime is the damage it can do to a business’s reputation. When an organization’s services get shut down, customers are left waiting. This is true for everything from online services to in-person retail stores, and it always results in frustrated customers who can no longer trust the company. The longer the downtime goes on, the more customers lose faith in it.
Exploring the Top Causes of Downtime in a Business
So, what are the main causes of downtime, and how can we minimize downtime by watching out for these causes? Unplanned downtime can be caused by:
Hardware Failure
No piece of technology lasts forever, so hardware breaking down is a common cause of downtime. When this happens, the equipment must be replaced as quickly as possible, but it can still take a while to get everything migrated and connected properly.
Software Issues
Software is just as prone to error as hardware. An issue with the operating system or applications can lead to unexpected downtime that must be addressed quickly.
Human Error
Mistakes happen — that’s an unavoidable part of any business. In fact, according to Uptime Intelligence, human error is responsible for the majority of outages, typically due to a lack of training or resources.
Power Outages & Natural Disasters
While we can prepare for natural disasters as best as possible, we can’t control them. Sometimes, disasters like fires, floods, or earthquakes strike and damage the infrastructure. Other times, power outages occur as the result of an error or disaster on the power company’s end. Either way, the result is the same: downtime, typically for extensive periods.
Cyberattacks
Not all downtime incidents are accidents or misfortune. Sometimes, they’re the result of malware or hackers attacking a company’s systems. When this happens, it’s essential to contain the breach as quickly as possible, fix any damages, and close any security gaps that could have led to the attacks, all of which can extend the downtime past the initial incident.
Network Issues
Sometimes downtime is caused by network issues, such as faulty routers, spikes in network traffic, or technical issues on the network provider’s side. In these instances, it’s important to check your network configurations and contact your provider to see how quickly it can be addressed.
5 Tips to Minimize Downtime and Ensure Business Continuity
With all this in mind, what can businesses do to minimize downtime and ensure business continuity? While downtime can and will happen, here are some steps you can take to reduce the risk and minimize the damages:
Test and Monitor Your Systems
The first step you can take to reduce downtime is to proactively monitor for anything that could cause it. Regularly test your systems to ensure everything is running smoothly, and monitor them to keep an eye out for any issues or irregularities that could become a problem. This can help stop downtime before it occurs.
Backup Regularly
Recovering from unplanned downtime can be a lengthy process, especially if valuable data or files are lost. Regularly creating backups can help expedite the recovery and minimize the losses.
Train for the Worst
Having a plan in place can help ensure your team is ready should any unplanned downtime occur. As soon as a system goes down, they need to know what to do, what to use, and how to recover. This will help you reduce downtime and improve your recovery speed, in addition to minimizing the damages downtime can cause.
Work in the Cloud
Cloud-based solutions are excellent investments for many reasons, uptime being a major one. Cloud platforms tend to offer uptime guarantees that go as high as 99.99% and typically include backups and redundancies should the unexpected happen. Cloud-based solutions have the added benefit of being hosted by a provider, which means you don’t have to focus on maintenance and updates — those are handled on the provider’s end.
Have a Backup Plan
In this case, “backup plan” doesn’t refer to your backups, but rather a secondary system you can turn to should one go down. Having redundancies and multi-instances of your applications can help reduce downtime, as they enable you to quickly switch over to another system if one becomes unavailable.
Maximize Uptime with Splashtop Remote Monitoring Solutions: Try it Free & Minimize Downtime Today!
If you want to minimize downtime, you need solutions that help you work seamlessly, even when you’re on the go. Splashtop’s remote access and support solutions empower teams to collaborate and work on their work computers from anywhere, on any device, so it’s easy to work around common downtime issues.
With Splashtop’s Automated Endpoint Management tools, you can monitor and manage your systems to enhance security and proactively avoid any downtime issues.
Additionally, Splashtop has advanced security features designed to keep your devices and data safe and is compliant with many industry and government security regulations. Should you ever encounter an issue and need help, Splashtop’s support team is ready to assist at a moment’s notice, so you don’t have to wait to get back on track.
Try Splashtop for yourself with a free trial today.
