Home featured Featured Small Business Featured Understanding the uptime dilemma – what business leaders need to know George Wilson November 16, 2018 In every business today, downtime matters. If networks or applications unexpectedly crash, downtime can have a direct impact on business operations, customer satisfaction, and ultimately the bottom line of an organisation. According to Gartner, downtime costs businesses on average $5,600 per minute, and can cost as much as $4,320,000 in an eight-hour day. But what exactly is uptime? And how does it differ from availability? And why should business leaders know or care? What’s to know? Uptime is described as a measure of system reliability, expressed as the percentage of time a machine, typically a computer, has been working and available. This means that a system is ready for operation. By definition, this does not mean that all the necessary applications and services are ready for use, and that the “network” service, for example, is available in the expected bandwidth. Whereas, availability is the probability that a system will work as required when required during the period of a mission. Looking at the production environment, the difference between uptime and availability can best be compared with OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) and TEEP (Total Effective Equipment Performance). These consider all events that bring down the production environment. Why does it matter? It’s important to understand the differences to know whether certain business KPIs have been met. For example, the uptime of the IT infrastructure – an important KPI in