Study: Within minutes IT outages harm brands

When it comes to a websites or point of sale offerings being down, getting back up soon rather than later is crucial for brands. That is the takeaway from a new report commissioned by xMatters; according to the research businesses are almost immediately impacted by IT outages.

by Kristina Knight

According to the Business Impact of IT Incident Communications: A Global Survey of IT Professionals report, nearly half of IT pros say their business is harmed if an outage lasts 15 minutes; 17% report their business is 'disrupted' instantly. Researchers also found that for the majority (60%) of those surveyed it takes at least 15 minutes to find the person who can rectify the outage.

"While IT searches for the right individual, the business is suffering," said David Gehringer, principal analyst with Dimensional Research and author of the study. "The research reveals that better alerting and communications management reduces IT downtime and the impact to the business."

Some interesting takeaways from the report include:

• 91% say poor incident communication increases downtime
• 80% say loss of digital data is more impactful than loss of buildings, goods, autos
• 90% say IT expertise 'should be leveraged' for other automated systems

"The survey findings show businesses are negatively impacted in mere minutes of IT outages," said Randi Barshack, CMO of xMatters. "xMatters provides a modern intelligent communications and alerting technology that today's market needs to be successful and quickly resolve critical IT and business disruptions."

Image via Shutterstock

Tags: Dimension Research, down website, IT trends, website problems, xMatters