1 in 2 companies risk losing data centre operations to natural disasters
Tue 16 Jun 2015
Half of all companies are operating data centre infrastructure which is not prepared for natural disasters, recent research commissioned by Zenium Technology Partners has revealed.
The findings outlined in the report ‘Managing Growth, Risk and the Cloud’ showed that over the past ten years 50% of companies questioned had experienced a disruption to their data centre operations due to earthquakes and other natural disasters.
The average number of incidents per respondent totalled 5, which equated to one disaster every other year. Turkey recorded the greatest number of incidents with 65%, while the UK and Germany also ranked highly with 45% and 39% respectively.
Of those respondents who had experienced a disruption to their data centre operations due to a natural disaster, 91% took a hit to their business’ finances each time. The maximum cost incurred by a company was £500,000.
“I’m astounded by these figures but this could well be because companies have not chosen well when it comes to the data centre operator they selected as an outsourcing partner,” said CEO and founder at Zenium Technology Partners, Franek Sodzawiczny.
“Discussions around scalability, connectivity and cost are of course important when selecting an outsourcing partner but this research demonstrates quite clearly that the location of the data centre should not be underestimated,” he explained. “The data centre supports mission critical services and downtime is not only disastrous, but astronomically expensive, in today’s 24×7 business environment.
No matter what SLA’s a company has in place, it all becomes immediately irrelevant if the data centre building is inaccessible, damaged or worse, destroyed.”
“I think it’s fair to say that it is highly likely that the demand for robust and resilient space to combat natural disasters will grow alongside an increasing preference to partner with a local data centre operator,” added Sodzawiczny.
