-
Uptime.com's annual downtime report has been released, highlighting several key indicators of how site reliability engineering is being shaped in the near future.
-
Downtime is costing companies up to 11% of their total online revenue, spurring a dramatic shift in how businesses address incident response.
-
Businesses with less of a focus on site reliability are likely losing a significantly larger percentage.
Uptime.com's annual downtime report has been released, highlighting several key indicators of how site reliability engineering is being shaped in the near future. Experts continue to advocate for the regular practice of rapid incident response and active monitoring to prevent potential losses. The report also provides industry "destimate" analysis, a dollar value corresponding to every minute of downtime, which businesses can reference to gauge the tangible value of site reliability.
Read more: Site reliability engineering - Predictions for 2020
Findings in the report indicate that top performers in business regularly practice rapid incident response and active monitoring. However, despite the proactive approach to preventative maintenance, the best in each industry are still losing between 6% to 11% of their online revenue from downtime. Businesses with less of a focus on site reliability are likely losing a significantly larger percentage.
For businesses earning over $1 billion in revenue, estimates indicate losses of $16.64 million annually that can be attributed to downtime. Thirty-five percent of Alexa top sites, a globally recognized web traffic ranking system, were surveyed at having 97.3% or less uptime, meaning 10 days or more of downtime each year.
Fifty-seven percent of sites surveyed performed significantly worse than the top industry players, showcasing an urgent need for businesses to practice more stringent monitoring and timely response.
Distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) continue to be a common factor in the rising costs of downtime due to their simplistic nature, difficulty of detection, cost-effectiveness, and the need for specific measures to mitigate the threat.
Uptime.com's findings show that the risk is compounded for smaller companies as they continue to grow in scale. Because of the lack of prioritization when it comes to site reliability during a time of growth, smaller companies are often more profitable for hackers due to their inability to provide an adequate response or mitigate the threat.
Read more: An industry in crisis: why we need more women in engineering
The banking and financial industries, despite their willingness to adapt to increased cyber security standards, suffer the highest number of outages, the highest number of downtime hours by volume, and the second-lowest overall uptime percentage, according to the data. Uptime.com suggests these businesses would benefit from more transparency regarding outages, rooted in improving customer service.
Uptime.com invites businesses to view the report and take part in their own destimate analysis. The company has provided its scoring system and industry data for third parties to see their own score in comparison with top performers across different industries.
About Uptime.com:
Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Manhattan, Uptime.com is an industry-leading website uptime & performance solution with customers including Kraft, BNP Paribas, SAGE Publishing and Autodesk. Co-founded by seasoned B2B software entrepreneurs.