Skip to main content

Diving Into the True Costs of IT Outages

Adam Blau
BigPanda

There are two words that strike fear in every IT professional: "unplanned outage." These come with a steep price tag: A recent report, The Modern IT Outage: Costs, Causes and Cures, found that downtime due to unplanned outages costs businesses $12,900 per minute. Breaking that statistic down further, the report revealed significant differences among companies of different sizes relating to downtime. For example, the outage cost per minute in an organization of 1,000 to 2,500 employees is $1,850, while the outage cost per minute in a larger company of 20,000 employees is $25,402 on average.

These statistics blow away the outdated yet often-quoted statistic that an average minute of downtime costs $5,600 because, as it turns out, this information from 2014 hasn't been adjusted to reflect the real and nuanced costs of a modern IT outage. Here, we dive deeper into this recent research so ITOps organizations can gain a better understanding of downtime's impact, causes and remedies.

Cost Factors and Causes

While we tend to think lost revenue is the biggest cost casualty of an outage, "The Modern IT Outage: Costs, Causes and ‘Cures'" found that that simply isn't the case. In fact, "business disruption" and "impact on employee activity" tie for the top spot, while "lost revenue" was tied for third, along with "data breach" and "governance regulatory exposure." Also on the list are "reputation" and "hit to DevOps/SRE productivity." These came in fourth and fifth, respectively.


A full 41% of organizations suffer an outage at least monthly, a significant number. And these outages take an hour to repair on average.


As for the outage causes, the report found important differences among organizations in two categories: those that have enterprise-wide, mature artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) and those that are implementing AIOps on a departmental basis. The organizations in the first category had tamed unplanned outages for the most part and only struggled with external factors such as power outages or internet provider failure that are outside the organization's control. Those in the second category primarily suffered change and configuration issues and human error — factors that are very much in the organization's control — and therefore ready for being mitigated with the power of AI and automation.


AIOps and the Road to Better Outcomes

IT leaders' thoughts on how the future looks relative to outage costs aren't optimistic. In fact, for some, the mood is downright fatalistic, with 36% believing that increased outage costs are guaranteed.

Still, some are hopeful, and AIOps plays a part here: The survey found that 22% of respondents say that rising costs are avoidable and they plan to use AIOps and automation to stem them. Another 13% of respondents reported that proactive systems have allowed them to actually decrease outage costs. With this proof of AIOps' success, the more pessimistic IT leaders can keep their chins up.

There is no way to apply a surefire "cure" for IT outages in any organization, but AIOps and automation come close. Not only do they help minimize the costs and impact of outages, but they also are proven to reduce the number of outages, improve business process efficiencies, decrease war-room frequency, and much, much more. With AIOps and automation in their arsenal, IT professionals can rest a little easier knowing they have powerful weapons to use in their battle against the dreaded unplanned outage downtime.

Adam Blau is Senior Director of Product Marketing at BigPanda

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...

Diving Into the True Costs of IT Outages

Adam Blau
BigPanda

There are two words that strike fear in every IT professional: "unplanned outage." These come with a steep price tag: A recent report, The Modern IT Outage: Costs, Causes and Cures, found that downtime due to unplanned outages costs businesses $12,900 per minute. Breaking that statistic down further, the report revealed significant differences among companies of different sizes relating to downtime. For example, the outage cost per minute in an organization of 1,000 to 2,500 employees is $1,850, while the outage cost per minute in a larger company of 20,000 employees is $25,402 on average.

These statistics blow away the outdated yet often-quoted statistic that an average minute of downtime costs $5,600 because, as it turns out, this information from 2014 hasn't been adjusted to reflect the real and nuanced costs of a modern IT outage. Here, we dive deeper into this recent research so ITOps organizations can gain a better understanding of downtime's impact, causes and remedies.

Cost Factors and Causes

While we tend to think lost revenue is the biggest cost casualty of an outage, "The Modern IT Outage: Costs, Causes and ‘Cures'" found that that simply isn't the case. In fact, "business disruption" and "impact on employee activity" tie for the top spot, while "lost revenue" was tied for third, along with "data breach" and "governance regulatory exposure." Also on the list are "reputation" and "hit to DevOps/SRE productivity." These came in fourth and fifth, respectively.


A full 41% of organizations suffer an outage at least monthly, a significant number. And these outages take an hour to repair on average.


As for the outage causes, the report found important differences among organizations in two categories: those that have enterprise-wide, mature artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) and those that are implementing AIOps on a departmental basis. The organizations in the first category had tamed unplanned outages for the most part and only struggled with external factors such as power outages or internet provider failure that are outside the organization's control. Those in the second category primarily suffered change and configuration issues and human error — factors that are very much in the organization's control — and therefore ready for being mitigated with the power of AI and automation.


AIOps and the Road to Better Outcomes

IT leaders' thoughts on how the future looks relative to outage costs aren't optimistic. In fact, for some, the mood is downright fatalistic, with 36% believing that increased outage costs are guaranteed.

Still, some are hopeful, and AIOps plays a part here: The survey found that 22% of respondents say that rising costs are avoidable and they plan to use AIOps and automation to stem them. Another 13% of respondents reported that proactive systems have allowed them to actually decrease outage costs. With this proof of AIOps' success, the more pessimistic IT leaders can keep their chins up.

There is no way to apply a surefire "cure" for IT outages in any organization, but AIOps and automation come close. Not only do they help minimize the costs and impact of outages, but they also are proven to reduce the number of outages, improve business process efficiencies, decrease war-room frequency, and much, much more. With AIOps and automation in their arsenal, IT professionals can rest a little easier knowing they have powerful weapons to use in their battle against the dreaded unplanned outage downtime.

Adam Blau is Senior Director of Product Marketing at BigPanda

The Latest

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...

An overwhelming majority of IT leaders (95%) believe the upcoming wave of AI-powered digital transformation is set to be the most impactful and intensive seen thus far, according to The Science of Productivity: AI, Adoption, And Employee Experience, a new report from Nexthink ...

Overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline, according to the Outage Analysis 2025 from Uptime Institute. However, cyber security incidents are on the rise and often have severe, lasting impacts ...