Case Studies
The Impact of Downtime:
Data Centre Industry
31 July 2024
Keeping the Digital World Running
In today's digital economy, data centres are the core infrastructure enabling cloud computing, financial transactions, and digital services. Power reliability is essential for maintaining business continuity and ensuring operational efficiency. Any disruption in power supply can lead to substantial financial losses, data breaches, and customer dissatisfaction.
Case Study:
A major data centre in North America experienced a significant power failure due to a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) malfunction. The outage lasted for four hours and affected multiple high-profile clients, including e-commerce platforms, financial services, and cloud computing providers. The incident resulted in an estimated $5 million in direct revenue losses for clients and caused severe reputational damage for the data centre operator.
The power outage disrupted key business operations, leading to service-level agreement (SLA) breaches and resulting in penalties and legal liabilities totalling $1.2 million. Clients experienced downtime that halted transactions and eroded customer trust, with one major e-commerce client reporting a 10% drop in customer transactions post-outage.
In response, the data centre operator invested $2 million to upgrade its power infrastructure and implement predictive analytics for better monitoring and maintenance. This incident highlighted the importance of regular system checks, emergency preparedness, and the necessity of robust power backup systems to minimise future downtime risks.
Impact:
- $5 million in direct revenue losses for clients.
- Severe reputational damage.
- SLA breaches resulted in $1.2 million in penalties and legal liabilities.
- A 10% drop in customer transactions for a major e-commerce client.
Response:
- $2 million investment in upgrading power infrastructure.
- Implementation of predictive analytics for better monitoring and maintenance.
Lesson:
Regular system checks, emergency preparedness, and robust power backup systems are important.
