Not only do online retailers suffer from lost sales and decreased revenue, but SaaS providers must worry about unmet Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Fintech firms are susceptible to any form of downtime as it compromises their customers’ ability to execute actual transactions.
Ultimately, all companies can easily be affected by decreased productivity levels if they don’t periodically check service status and fix problems. ITIC reported that 40% of companies experienced losses between one million and five million dollars from just one hour of downtime, not including legal fees or penalties.
Gartner also discovered that 98% of businesses estimated the average cost per hour to be $100k to $540k. Therefore, how can organizations calculate their overhead from cloud-related downtimes?
Lost revenue
You’re doing all required to hit your goals, then BAM – the cloud fails. Your sales outlet needs to be in order. Either way, it could happen in the middle of a Monday afternoon or at 3 AM on Sunday. It doesn’t matter when this disruption occurs, as its financial impact remains unchanged. So using specific tools to check Spoofee status or monitor any platform you want is crucial.
This was never more evident than with Boston-based home goods e-retailer Wayfair, who sold $14.1 billion online in 2020 alone. That means they earned an average total of $38.6 million daily and roughly 1 point 6 one million dollars every hour through their cloud-dependent sales channels – making it painfully clear how much money hangs in the balance whenever digital systems fail unexpectedly.
With just 4 hours of downtime, Wayfair faces potential financial losses of nearly $6.44 million. The number can fluctuate depending on the time of day and whether or not it is during a holiday shopping peak season. But this isn’t an issue that ends with revenue loss; its effects go much further than that.
Lost productivity
Many companies rely on the public cloud to quickly create and deploy new versions, features, or code. It’s how they communicate internally among colleagues and externally with customers. Unfortunately, when the cloud crashes – which it often does – any productivity grinds to a halt.
The repercussions of lost productivity are felt throughout a business. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that salaries account for 18-52% of a company’s operating budget.
A corporation with an operational budget of $500M and using 30% for employee wages would incur losses amounting to $575,000 in salary expenses if one workday is wasted due to downtime – that works out to be roughly $64,000 every hour during regular working hours.
Downtime is manageable
Recognizing and embracing downtime is an essential step for companies. To take it a step further, building resilient infrastructure and implementing redundancy strategies can reduce the risk of such instances occurring in the future. Striking the optimal balance between minimizing risks while not compromising your business operations is critical to ensuring long-term success.