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One in Four Companies Never Test Their Disaster Recovery Plan

Nearly 30 percent of organizations lost business revenue due to an outage in the last 12 months

While 95 percent of organizations have a disaster recovery plan in place, 23 percent never test their plan, according to a new survey from Spiceworks.

A lack of testing and coverage gaps within disaster recovery plans may be leading to service outages in many organizations

Among those that don’t test their plan, 61 percent cited inadequate time, 53 percent cited inadequate resources, and 34 percent said disaster recovery is not a priority in their organization. The findings indicate a lack of testing and coverage gaps within disaster recovery plans may be leading to service outages in many organizations.

“Even the best laid disaster plans can go awry, especially if no one bothers to test them,” said Peter Tsai, Senior Technology Analyst at Spiceworks. “Ideally, a company’s disaster recovery plan should evolve and improve over time as weaknesses are exposed during testing and an organization’s needs change. However, the results show testing is often infrequent or not taking place at all, leaving many organizations vulnerable when disaster strikes.”

Larger Organizations Are More Likely to Experience Service Outages

In the last 12 months, 77 percent of organizations reported experiencing at least one outage (i.e. any interruption to normal levels of IT-related service). More specifically, 59 percent of organizations experienced one to three outages, 11 percent experienced four to six outages, and 7 percent experienced seven or more outages in the last 12 months.

Larger companies, which tend to rely on a greater number of services, experienced more outages than their smaller counterparts. 87 percent of large businesses large businesses with 1,000 or more employees experienced one or more outages in the last 12 months, compared to 79 percent of mid-size businesses with 100 to 999 employees, and 71 percent of small businesses with less than 100 employees.

Across all company sizes, 27 percent of organizations that experienced an outage reported losing business revenue as a result. Although 59 percent of organizations estimated losing less than $10,000 in revenue in the last 12 months, 31 percent estimated a loss of $10,000 to $100,000, and 10 percent reported losing $100,000 or more.

Power Outages and Internet Connectivity Issues Most Frequently Lead to Service Outages

The top causes leading to service outages in the last 12 months were power outages (56 percent), internet connectivity issues (48 percent), and hardware failure (32 percent), likely because less than half of organizations have backup power sources, redundant internet service providers, or high availability / failover systems in place.

Additionally, 27 percent of organizations experienced an outage due to service issues with a third-party vendor, while 21 percent experienced an outage due to human error and 13 percent due to natural disasters. Breaking down the types of natural disasters that led to outages, 29 percent were hurricanes, 16 percent were fires, 15 percent were floods, and 12 percent were due to either a tornado, animal-related incident, or blizzard.

Methodology: The survey was conducted in August 2018 and included 762 respondents from organizations across North America and Europe. Respondents are among the millions of IT professionals in Spiceworks and represent a variety of company sizes, including small-to-medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Respondents come from a variety of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, education, government, and finance.

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One in Four Companies Never Test Their Disaster Recovery Plan

Nearly 30 percent of organizations lost business revenue due to an outage in the last 12 months

While 95 percent of organizations have a disaster recovery plan in place, 23 percent never test their plan, according to a new survey from Spiceworks.

A lack of testing and coverage gaps within disaster recovery plans may be leading to service outages in many organizations

Among those that don’t test their plan, 61 percent cited inadequate time, 53 percent cited inadequate resources, and 34 percent said disaster recovery is not a priority in their organization. The findings indicate a lack of testing and coverage gaps within disaster recovery plans may be leading to service outages in many organizations.

“Even the best laid disaster plans can go awry, especially if no one bothers to test them,” said Peter Tsai, Senior Technology Analyst at Spiceworks. “Ideally, a company’s disaster recovery plan should evolve and improve over time as weaknesses are exposed during testing and an organization’s needs change. However, the results show testing is often infrequent or not taking place at all, leaving many organizations vulnerable when disaster strikes.”

Larger Organizations Are More Likely to Experience Service Outages

In the last 12 months, 77 percent of organizations reported experiencing at least one outage (i.e. any interruption to normal levels of IT-related service). More specifically, 59 percent of organizations experienced one to three outages, 11 percent experienced four to six outages, and 7 percent experienced seven or more outages in the last 12 months.

Larger companies, which tend to rely on a greater number of services, experienced more outages than their smaller counterparts. 87 percent of large businesses large businesses with 1,000 or more employees experienced one or more outages in the last 12 months, compared to 79 percent of mid-size businesses with 100 to 999 employees, and 71 percent of small businesses with less than 100 employees.

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Power Outages and Internet Connectivity Issues Most Frequently Lead to Service Outages

The top causes leading to service outages in the last 12 months were power outages (56 percent), internet connectivity issues (48 percent), and hardware failure (32 percent), likely because less than half of organizations have backup power sources, redundant internet service providers, or high availability / failover systems in place.

Additionally, 27 percent of organizations experienced an outage due to service issues with a third-party vendor, while 21 percent experienced an outage due to human error and 13 percent due to natural disasters. Breaking down the types of natural disasters that led to outages, 29 percent were hurricanes, 16 percent were fires, 15 percent were floods, and 12 percent were due to either a tornado, animal-related incident, or blizzard.

Methodology: The survey was conducted in August 2018 and included 762 respondents from organizations across North America and Europe. Respondents are among the millions of IT professionals in Spiceworks and represent a variety of company sizes, including small-to-medium-sized businesses and enterprises. Respondents come from a variety of industries, including manufacturing, healthcare, nonprofits, education, government, and finance.

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Businesses that face downtime or outages risk financial and reputational damage, as well as reducing partner, shareholder, and customer trust. One of the major challenges that enterprises face is implementing a robust business continuity plan. What's the solution? The answer may lie in disaster recovery tactics such as truly immutable storage and regular disaster recovery testing ...

IT spending is expected to jump nearly 10% in 2025, and organizations are now facing pressure to manage costs without slowing down critical functions like observability. To meet the challenge, leaders are turning to smarter, more cost effective business strategies. Enter stage right: OpenTelemetry, the missing piece of the puzzle that is no longer just an option but rather a strategic advantage ...

Amidst the threat of cyberhacks and data breaches, companies install several security measures to keep their business safely afloat. These measures aim to protect businesses, employees, and crucial data. Yet, employees perceive them as burdensome. Frustrated with complex logins, slow access, and constant security checks, workers decide to completely bypass all security set-ups ...

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In 2025, enterprise workflows are undergoing a seismic shift. Propelled by breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI), large language models (LLMs), and natural language processing (NLP), a new paradigm is emerging — agentic AI. This technology is not just automating tasks; it's reimagining how organizations make decisions, engage customers, and operate at scale ...

In the early days of the cloud revolution, business leaders perceived cloud services as a means of sidelining IT organizations. IT was too slow, too expensive, or incapable of supporting new technologies. With a team of developers, line of business managers could deploy new applications and services in the cloud. IT has been fighting to retake control ever since. Today, IT is back in the driver's seat, according to new research by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) ...

In today's fast-paced and increasingly complex network environments, Network Operations Centers (NOCs) are the backbone of ensuring continuous uptime, smooth service delivery, and rapid issue resolution. However, the challenges faced by NOC teams are only growing. In a recent study, 78% state network complexity has grown significantly over the last few years while 84% regularly learn about network issues from users. It is imperative we adopt a new approach to managing today's network experiences ...

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