The real cost of IT downtime

What is IT downtime?

How to minimise the cost of IT downtime

Detecting a risk with TSG SystemCare

Have you considered the shocking amount of money IT downtime could cost your business? If the answer is no, then we suggest that you continue reading.

According to sources, IT downtime is costing businesses a staggering £3.6 million per year. That’s a huge £410 an hour, which is a cost most businesses want to avoid.

First, we want to clear up a few things before we can offer some valuable tips as to how you can avoid IT downtime and lessen business costs.

What is IT downtime?

It can be anytime where either part or all of a computer system is unusable (be it Outlook for email, servers or specific applications). During this time the below areas are important to factor in when creating an IT downtime prevention and crisis action plan:

• How important the affected systems are
• Number of users who are affected
• SLAs that need to be sustained
• Applications affected
• Staff actions

How to minimise the cost of IT downtime

The difference between being prepared and not having a plan can cost your business thousands of pounds, as well as your reputation, future business. It also risks customer dissatisfaction.

We strongly advise the following:

1. Prioritise your most important responses: this could be anything from client support requests or managing leads to store tills/computers being able to take sales
2. Carry out regular security tests and run through your business continuity plan
3. Assess your network infrastructure and carry out server room walkthroughs

Detecting a risk with TSG SystemCare

Outsourcing your IT support can provide several benefits to your company including the minimisation of IT downtime.

TSG SystemCare comes in 2 forms: standard SystemCare and our brand-new SystemCare247, which is ideal for around-the-clock businesses or those in overseas territories as it provides an immediate response to critical issues 24/7.

Knowing that the right people are there to help when you need them most can be somewhat reassuring, but knowing that you have the right IT support in place which can not only detect a potential risk but can fix it, is what SystemCare is all about.

TSG SystemCare provides you with proactive servers, PC and network monitoring 24 hours a day. By tracking business performance, we can provide key intelligence and maximise uptime.

Our monitoring solutions detect and resolve common issues that cause downtime (low disk space, services being stopped). You can also use backup, continuity and disaster recovery products like Datto Siris to reduce downtime even in a disaster situation.

Read more about TSG SystemCare and Datto benefits.

TSG’s Operations Manager Mike Tudor states: “Our focus in the operations team is to ensure that our automated systems alert TSG to any potential impact to customer IT service availability. In June alone, we detected and automatically resolved over 100 disk space issues that could have led to server downtime and thousands of stopped services that would have impacted email, file and print availability”.

What next?

• Read our Chief Technology Officer Paul Burns’ blog on why 247 IT support is the new norm
• Find out more about SystemCare 247, the IT support solution that always has your back
• Read all about Datto and TSG’s recent Partner of the Year award win
• Get in touch to find out how TSG can help your minimise IT downtime