Enterprises Average 11 Hours to Resolve Network Outages

By Greg Tavarez, TMCnet Editor  |  September 30, 2022

Accelerated (News - Alert) digital transformation has driven enterprises to leverage hybrid working, IoT and smart devices, generally a greater number of network connections and high-bandwidth applications. The challenge, for many, though is they weren’t prepared for a rapid transition and increased complexity of their networks. The result has been increased strain on networks,  compared to pre-pandemic days. The network strain caused by the interconnectivity of these devices, as well as the sophistication of cyber-attacks, increases the risk of costly and disruptive downtime.

Organizations today experience an average of 11.2 hours to find and resolve a network outage after it is reported, according to research commissioned by Opengear. That is an increase of almost two hours since Opengear (News - Alert) last conducted a similar research report in 2020. To put that into perspective, just think of the amount of work that is usually done during a two-hour window. Then, consider the lost opportunity from almost a day and a half of downtime.

That thought alone clarifies why 50% of CIOs say their businesses have recorded financial losses due to network downtime.

“While network outages are nothing new, we are seeing a worrying rise in the frequency, severity and costs of downtime across enterprises,” said Gary Marks, president of Opengear. “Organizations are also taking significantly longer to recover from these incidents.”

Financial loss is the most severe impact of network outages among enterprises, but there are other areas impacted by network outages, such as customer satisfaction, data loss and loss of reputation – and all of these can have an tangential impact on revenues as well. Customers lose access to enterprise services during an outage. In retail, there is a chance transaction cannot be processed – and customer service may not be accessible, or at the very least, wait times are significantly increased, resulting in a frustrated employees and customers. This potentially leaks into damaged reputation as word spreads about the outage and poor response. This is something businesses can ill afford.

However, CIOs and senior managers do not prioritize outage concerns. Instead, they place skills shortages, network agility and performance as top priorities. The ones more likely to prioritize the need to avoid downtime are the network engineers on the frontlines. More than one-third of engineers rank it as their organization’s biggest network challenge post-digital transformation – second only to security.

Questions of network resilience will likely develop into a growing C-suite concern as impacts increase. But, as Marks said, avoiding downtime needs to rise to the top of the priority list if enterprises want to avoid future financial and reputational harm. 


Edited by Erik Linask
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