Lost revenue, project delays, customer frustration, damaged reputation… The immediate consequences of system downtime are profound. However, the human impact of technical disruption can have just as crippling an impact on business outcomes. As IT teams worldwide work around the clock in the wake of outages like the recent CrowdStrike event, we take a closer look at the hidden toll of downtime and how IT leaders can work to mitigate its most harmful effects.
A Catalog of Root Case Causes
In an environment as complex, interdependent, and opaque as the modern IT ecosystem, crashes can stem from an incredibly diverse range of issues. These include (brace yourself) outdated hardware failing to meet current demands, software glitches corrupting applications, cybersecurity weaknesses exposing systems to attack, bugs in server operating systems jeopardizing stability, unfair resource distribution, retry spikes, bad dependencies, network congestion, insufficient testing, code regressions, and much more. Add to all this the havoc wreaked by human error, and IT professionals have plenty to contend with as they work to keep IT operations running smoothly.
Operations on Hold
There are countless reasons systems fail, but we can always guarantee at least one outcome: disrupted operations. In the digital age, an organization's success depends on access to its tools. Remote communication and retrieving information are two fundamental prerequisites of modern work. That’s why, when an enterprise operates at scale, the impact of even momentary downtime can be drastic. In manufacturing, a halt in the production line may amount to millions of dollars in lost revenue. In health, system instability jeopardizes patient care. E-commerce websites suffer decreased sales when their sites are down, the finance sector faces inaccessible banking services, and telecom companies risk losing customer trust. Regardless of the industry, when downtime strikes, saving the day falls to one group of people.
Saving the Day: IT Rescue Operations
The IT department experiences a dramatic spike in pressure during system downtime. System administrators, network engineers, database administrators, technical support specialists, and others are acutely aware that every minute of downtime can cost organizations thousands of dollars in revenue. As they work to identify and resolve the cause of the crash, IT pros feel the gaze of the organization on their department. Sales are interrupted, initiatives are placed on hold, and customers call in to vent their frustration. Meanwhile, leaders watch white-knuckled as targets look more unattainable with every hour that slips by. Sound stressful? It is.
The Human Toll of Systems Failure
Given these pressures, it's not hard to envision the devastating effect that persistent downtime can have on morale. In high-stakes organizations, major system failures demand immediate and extended attention. It isn’t long before the work-life balance of IT professionals follows their systems in falling out of whack.
Think of Sarah, a network administrator who misses her son's eighth-grade graduation due to a server crash that needs immediate attention. Or Mark, a cybersecurity specialist, who can’t make his 10th wedding anniversary dinner because he’s managing a critical data breach. Then there’s Jennifer, a site reliability engineer who is forced to skip her daughter's first ballet recital due to a database crash that escalates into a major service outage. An under-resourced IT team is always on edge–they know a crash is coming, they just don’t know when. Sleep is lost, crisis management squeezes out learning opportunities, and the cycle of continuous work eats into hobbies, social lives, and rest.
Downtime and the War on Talent
The consequences of regular downtime are thrown into sharpest relief in the context of the current human capital landscape. As beleaguered IT professionals look around for who’s to blame, responsibility ultimately rests with leadership. Regardless of why they aren’t being supported (tight budgets or other priorities), the choice for IT pros soon becomes clear: it’s time to switch to an employer more in tune with their needs. Today, prospective employees scrutinize a company's culture and employee treatment just as closely as the salary. A reputation for pushing IT staff to the brink can make an enterprise significantly less attractive to top talent. Given the increasingly pivotal role of IT professionals in driving business strategies forward, this promises to severely hamstring a company's competitive edge.
Tool Up Against Downtime
It's absurd to ask someone to dig a hole without a shovel or to write a note without a pen. To task IT professionals with maintaining an environment as complex as the modern IT infrastructure without giving them the requisite tools is a recipe for failure, frustration, and, ultimately, employee attrition. Given its many ripple effects, “downtime” doesn’t need just to describe your systems going down–it can also send revenue plummeting, leave your IT department in despair, and put your company’s reputation in a tailspin. Thankfully, solutions are on hand: Artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) is revolutionizing how IT pros manage their ecosystems; full-stack observability offers a single window to view the entire IT estate, identifying and, in some cases, preventing issues before they occur. Tools like these, designed to unravel complexity, are crucial to maintaining a happy and productive IT team.
Invest and watch the business benefits accrue.
Stay tuned to Orange Matter™. In the coming months, Brad Cline will publish a series of blog articles dissecting real-world problems, genuine solutions, and achieving excellence in IT operations.
