Network downtime continues to wreak havoc for companies

Network downtime causes many IT executives to wake in a cold sweat, and while technologies advance, the nightmare continues to become reality in many companies.

Survey results released by Avocent at VMworld 2008 this week revealed that network downtime continues to create problems for a majority of some 300 executives and IT managers polled. For instance, 86% of companies stated that any unplanned downtime causes a business issue and an average of 12% reported losing employee productivity due to those unplanned events. More worrisome, another 35% stated they had lost mission-critical data due to unplanned downtime.

As for the frequency of downtime, 43% of companies said that they experience, on average, up to five unplanned downtime events per month. Of those, 17% experienced two to four hours of collective unplanned downtime per month, mostly attributed to hardware or power failures.

"Business continuity, in the form of network uptime, i s a constant challenge for those polled," an Avocent press release reads. "There are potentially significant costs tied to downtime including disgruntled or lost customers, reduced worker productivity and reduced revenues tied to network failure."

• Network Management
• Avocent
• downtime