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Network Downtime Is More Expensive Than You Think, Atrion Exec Writes

Take Proactive Stance to Fix Network Weaknesses Before They Hurt You

CEOs would be shocked if they added up all the costs of computer-network downtime, Paul Cronin, vice president of Atrion Networking Corp. in Warwick, R.I., writes in Mass High Tech.

While two-thirds of enterprises quizzed by Forrester Research could not provide an estimate of the financial cost of downtime, Infonetics Research found that overall downtime costs for businesses in the United States averaged a whopping 3.6 percent of annual revenue.

"Many organizations monitor the effects of application-related failures from a technical or fault-diagnostic perspective but fail to relate any problems to an organization's bottom line," Cronin writes.

"Organizations today need to move to a strong offense as their best defense when it comes to architecting a resilient network. Instead of simply reacting, they need to uncover and fix the weakness in their network before it hurts their business," he adds.

Most organizations spend the IT money on operational and maintenance functions without enhancing their critical network infrastructure.

There's no magic bullet. "A plan to assure a super-reliable network must be comprehensive and look broadly at many factors and consider how technology is fused with the business. Every decision is critical, from hardware selection to product setup, from employee training to service-level agreements with providers. All budget initiatives need to include details on the impact of failure, the risk associated with the potential for failure and the percentage of staff affected by a failure," Cronin writes.

The full article can be read online at http://masshightech.bizjournals.com/masshightech/stories/2007/11/19/focus19.html

Atrion specializes in the fusion of business and technology. Headquartered in Warwick, R.I., Atrion has sales offices in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, and New Hampshire and is a 1nService Member company. Web: www.atrion.net.

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