Reducing the High Cost of Downtime with Cloud Hosting

09 Jun Reducing the High Cost of Downtime with Cloud Hosting

In regulated industries like healthcare or finance, or in data driven sectors like manufacturing or legal, your system availability and reliability aren’t just conveniences – they’re necessities.

The key to understanding what this means to your organization is defined by two critical metrics: uptime and downtime.

Understanding Downtime

In simplest terms, downtime is a period when your IT system, or part of it, is not functional.

Imagine you’re in the middle of accessing patient health records, legal documents, manufacturing control systems, or financial auditing tools, and suddenly, everything goes offline.

That’s network downtime, and it can have far-reaching effects on your ability to conduct business as usual.

Downtime vs. Uptime

If downtime is the period when your systems and applications are inaccessible due to issues, maintenance, or updates, uptime refers to the period when your systems and applications are fully operational, accessible, and functional.

You may also see “uptime” referred to as “network availability”.

When it comes to cloud hosting services, the quality – and the cost — is often measured by its uptime percentage.

The most competitive services aim for “Five Nines” (99.999%) uptime, translating to only 5.26 minutes of downtime per year.

However, this level of service can be costly and often exceeds many businesses’ requirements.

A more common and affordable level of service is “Three Nines” (99.9%) uptime, equating to approximately 8.76 hours of downtime per year.

Planned vs. Unplanned Downtime

Downtime can be planned or unplanned. Planned downtime is scheduled and announced in advance for system updates, hardware upgrades, or maintenance.

Typically, these routine tasks are scheduled during off-peak hours to minimize potential disruption.

Unplanned downtime, on the other hand, occurs without warning due to unforeseen events like hardware failures, network outages, or cyberattacks.

According to a study by Gartner, the average cost of IT downtime is around $5,600 per minute. With that pricetag, the importance of minimizing unplanned downtime comes into sharp focus.

The True Cost of Downtime

The cost of downtime isn’t just about lost revenue. It also includes lost productivity, recovery costs, regulatory fines, especially for those operating in regulated industries where downtime can lead to compliance issues, and damage to your business reputation.

Having a strong Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place becomes essential for your business continuity.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Cloud Hosting

An SLA is the contract between a service provider and the customer that defines the level of service to be expected. Think of the SLA as a form of insurance against potential downtime and its associated costs.

If you’ve ever reviewed an SLA, you probably know that they are often quite difficult to understand and rely heavily on confusing “tech speak”.

At CyberlinkASP, we pride ourselves on using a clear, jargon-free SLA.

We believe clear communication is the heart of every business relationship.

Our SLA clearly outlines our promise to our customers of 99.99% uptime – or your money back.

This guarantee offers assurance that your applications and services will be available when needed.

If we fail to meet this commitment, we’ve tied financial consequences to our performance to demonstrate our dedication to maintaining your systems and keeping them operational.

The Role of Cloud Hosting in Downtime Reduction

With such high stakes, how can you minimize the risk and impact of downtime?

This is where cloud hosting services can become an integral part of your IT solution.

By entrusting your network to a cloud hosting partner, you’re effectively outsourcing the headache of maintaining system availability.

Your cloud provider handles the task of keeping your systems operational, which means you’re free to focus on your core business operations.

Moreover, Cybersecurity Ventures reports that the total cost of cybercrime in 2023 is predicted to hit $8 trillion. Small and midsized businesses are not immune from the threats posed by cybercriminals. Quite the contrary – SMBs are considered a target rich environment for malicious actors.

Given the substantial costs associated with data breaches and downtime, investing in reliable cloud hosting services can yield significant returns through business continuity, data security, and regulatory compliance.

In Conclusion

Choosing the right cloud hosting provider is not just about finding the provider with the best uptime – although that should be a primary KPI. Making the right choice for your organization is about finding a partner who understands your business or industry’s unique needs, communicates clearly about planned and unplanned downtime, and is transparent about their commitments in their SLA.

In regulated industries, downtime isn’t just an inconvenience – it’s a high-stakes risk. However, with the advanced technology and expertise offered by cloud hosting services, you can significantly mitigate this risk.

By trusting your systems to a proven cloud services vendor, you’re taking a significant step towards ensuring reliability, maintaining compliance, safeguarding your reputation, and bolstering your defenses against cyber threats.

We Have Experts on Staff to Answer Your Questions About Avoiding Downtime

Interested in finding out how partnering with an award-winning cloud hosting provider can help you achieve your business goals while reducing your overall technology costs?

Our trained team of cloud computing experts can help by answering all your questions about industry guidelines and compliance standards and it all starts with our clear, easy to understand Service Level Agreement.

We’ll show how using our efficient cloud based storage and processing solutions in your business can improve your security, productivity, and profitability.

Let us demonstrate exactly what CyberlinkASP can do for you – using your own data and workflows.

Schedule a Demo Today