February 20, 2009, 5:05 PM — On Jan. 26, 2009, e-mail went down at the White House for eight hours, causing significant panic among the White House staff about what vital information may be delayed or missed. Their concerns were not unfounded; e-mail has become our lifeline to the outside world and is essential to getting business done - even at the Oval Office. When e-mail goes down, business comes to a screeching halt. And in today’s economy, that’s something no one can afford.
For most companies, success is inevitably linked to e-mail and to availability of e-mail. Client contacts and proposals are sent back and forth, up-to-date financial information is shared, and vital supply chain exchanges take place. Without e-mail, it is not an exaggeration to say that businesses can lose revenue or productivity, or even risk harm to their corporate reputations or client relationships. In fact, a recent Neverfail survey of 220 managers and directors at mid-size companies worldwide revealed that one-fifth of businesses lose revenue during e-mail downtime and one-fourth experience significant loss in employee productivity.
The same study showed that 34 percent of businesses would potentially damage their company or customer relationships if e-mail went down, while just under 10 percent would be unable to maintain regulatory compliance, such as Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA. These compelling statistics shed light on the unprecedented pressure on IT departments to ensure continuous uptime for e-mail and other mission-critical applications. With the situation being further complicated by the elimination of IT positions at companies across the world, and with the economy suffering its worst downturn since the Great Depression, companies should be looking at how they would deal with a serious e-mail outage.
From Main Street to Wall Street
E-mail is ubiquitous. It is on our computers, our phones and PDAs, and no one has just one account anymore. E-mail is critical to our personal and business lives and is probably the most essential technology used by businesses of all industries and sizes, from the mom and pop store on Main Street to the global enterprise. The impact and reach e-mail has is impressive. Just take a look at some of the responses to the study, when participants were asked to give an example of how their business would be impacted if e-mail - or another critical application - were not available:
"Child Welfare Specialists could miss critical information on a child."
"Lives would be put at risk. I work in dispatch for emergency services. When the system is down, we are unable to map where the caller is calling from, know which crews are in service and what units to dispatch to the emergency."
"Patient care will be affected. If print servers are down, our pharmacy can't print out prescriptions."
"The ability to communicate via e-mail is crucial to the progression of litigation work. When e-mail is down for more than one hour this can impact on that work and can even result in difficulties with court dates."
"We are a port and our customers rely on our ability to provide accurate, up-to-date information on all containers / products being imported / exported."
Despite these potential consequences, many companies today overlook the need to deploy an e-mail continuity solution that would help prevent such disruptions and potential disasters - some that could have serious financial ramifications.
Some companies, however, are taking needed steps to protect themselves in this regard. Let’s take, for example, the banking and investments industry. The current financial crisis has put a spotlight on the entire industry. Investors - as part of their due diligence process - are now requiring investment funds to have business continuity solutions in place to prevent downtime of vital applications that would halt trading if they become unavailable. In an industry where "minutes can equal millions," the issue of business continuity is being taken very seriously.
One way in which investment firms can protect themselves from unexpected downtime is through the use of a hosted, virtualized data center that provides disaster recovery and business continuity services, both on-site and remotely. This unique approach - using "cloud-like" services - can remove the necessity for firms to operate dedicated off-site back-up facilities.E-mail continuity software combined with a virtualized data center to support mission-critical applications like e-mail can deliver a cost-effective, fail-proof solution for companies. It eliminates the need for expensive in-house solutions and allows, in this instance, investment firms to focus on what is most important - delivering returning for investors.
Keeping Up with the Pace of Business
In today’s volatile economy, it is essential to keep up with the pace of business. Every day, I speak to customers and hear first-hand about their respective business challenges. One particular customer is in the construction industry and receives approximately one message every six seconds. Now consider that 74 percent of the survey respondents indicated that their organization’s tolerance for downtime was just one hour or less. For this particular customer, that means that 600 emails could be lost or delayed in an hour - 600 e-mails containing contracts, proposals and other essential information.
Now ask yourself if your business can risk downtime and what it would mean to your bottom line. Are you prepared to weather the storm? In boom times, the impact of downtime may have been tolerated; in today’s economic climate every client contact and every business request is precious. Your corporate reputation - and ultimate success - may depend upon it.
