Is your company ready for a power outage?

When the word “disaster” comes up in a conversation concerning your company, you probably think of tremendously damaging events caused by nature. Most people jump to thoughts of raging fires or blistering winds from a tornado. These are obviously incidents to be concerned with, but what about the less-flashy disasters that may befall your business?

You’ve probably got a fire extinguisher somewhere on your premises, and you also most likely have a procedure in place for a strong tornado, but do you have a disaster recovery plan for when the power goes out?

Power is about more than keeping the lights on

Keeping the electricity flowing is an absolute necessity for business continuity. So much technology goes into the daily operations of organizations these days that having the power go off unexpectedly can have serious effects.

According to Gartner, the average cost of downtime has been calculated to be roughly $5,600 per minute. That means that a power outage lasting only an hour could cost your business up to $300,000. That’s a huge expenditure for a single point of failure within your organization, and points to the highly important role electricity plays in the enterprise today.

Think of all the actions your business conducts that require power. Everything from using a VoIP phone system to talk with clients to simply sending out companywide emails all require your organization’s office to have power. Once this connection to the grid is severed, your ability to continue business is completely destroyed. Electricity is at the center of just about everything you do at work, and the loss of it can be devastating.

Power outages more common than you’d think

While the statistics about network downtime in and of itself should be enough to convince you of the importance of disaster recovery planning, the truly frightening aspect of losing power is how common it is. In fact, Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty has discovered that these kinds of incidents happen a lot more than the average person would suspect.

The company’s research found that from 2010 to 2014, power outages were the 10th most likely cause of disruption to business continuity. Although other, more natural forms of disaster beat out loss of electricity, this study still shows just how vital power is to the average business’s continued profitability.

Disaster recovery planning is a must

With the knowledge in hand that your company’s power is absolutely vital to business continuity, it’s time to take action. The only way to truly be ready for a trying event such as this is to have a plan that comes in the form of a disaster recovery solution. Not only will a solid disaster recovery plan allow you to mitigate the risk of a power outage, but it will also make sure your business doesn’t fall victim to other disruptive events.

However, it’s important to note that there is a certain level of expertise necessary in the creation of a plan. Your IT team is undoubtedly talented at what they do, but they probably don’t have the experience required to make a disaster recovery procedure.

Many people like to think that doing something in-house will end up being cheaper. This may be true of other functions, but not so for disaster recovery. In fact, a study conducted by Computer Economics found quite the opposite.

Of the organizations surveyed in the report, 92 percent stated that their expenditures in the creation of a disaster recovery plan were the same or even lower than when they attempted to do so with internal staff. There are obviously many reasons behind this, but chief among them is the fact that tasking your internal IT team to create a plan pulls their attention away from internal goals.

This not only wastes the time of these employees, it also wastes your company’s money. Allowing an outside firm that actually knows how to set up a disaster recovery procedure lets your workers get back to keeping your business up and running, thereby increasing efficiency.

If you’ve ever thought about creating a disaster recovery plan, there’s been no better time than now. Waiting until an unfortunate event actually hits your company could result in major downtime for your services, which is going to cost quite a lot of money. Take the time to make sure your company is safe and contact an ISG Technology disaster recovery specialist today.