What used to be a “New York minute” has been reduced to a millisecond in the business world, as the speed of business continues to hasten across the globe.  Now more than ever, end-users expect applications and their accompanying networks, to perform with zero latency and zero downtime.  Having a fast and reliable application, in other words, is no longer a business differentiator; it is a necessity to stay competitive.       

As a result of this demand for lightning-fast connectivity, many businesses now consider applications to be “Tier 1”- meaning they are critical to the financial or operational well-being of the company.  Examples of such applications range from customer-facing e-Commerce solutions, to those that facilitate backend corporate processes like accounting and database management.  When these applications are interrupted by a malfunctioning network, just about every part of a business can be affected.  And the resulting downtime can have dramatic implications on its network, in regards to both customer service and lost revenue.  

Just how much does downtime cost in today’s ultra-competitive market?  Depending on the size of the business, the total amount could range anywhere from $20,000 per hour for an SMB to $20,000 per minute for a large enterprise.  Take a look at Facebook, for instance, which loses an average of $22,453 every minute the website is down.  A recent incident that caused just 20 minutes of downtime at Facebook (News - Alert) is believed to have cost the company about half a million dollars in revenue.  And while larger businesses can absorb such damages, this could be devastating for smaller operations that lack the necessary resources—or customer loyalty—to rebound.  It is for this reason that many small companies go out of business shortly after experiencing just a few days of downtime.  

With this in mind, investing in Business Continuity is one of the most important financial decisions that a company can make in regards to its core network.  One of the only ways to prevent application or network downtime is to invest in an active-active system, meaning one with dual redundancy, to ensure an application stays running at all times.  But up until recently, before virtualization became feasible, continuity was very costly and difficult to achieve, as it required investing in additional backup servers because, after all, an active-active application requires an active-active data center.  

But thanks to the advent of replication software, which is able to achieve continuity by establishing a virtual storage layer that spans multiple data center locations, ensuring an active-active application has become much more cost-effective.  This is allowing smaller businesses that would otherwise lack the resources for ensuring application continuity to experience constant uptime.  And it is providing a more economical way for large businesses to do the same.

MOD Mission Critical is one company that offers Tier 1 application uptime through its replication services for businesses of all sizes.  MOD performs complete failover testing as well as project management.  

Click here to learn more information about how MOD Mission Critical can help your business avoid the perils of downtime.

Scott Charter (News - Alert) is the Co-Founder of Mod Mission Critical. At Mod Mission Critical, Scott works on new technology applications related to the data communications industry, as well as channel partner relations. Combining forces with Mike Hollander on several other projects over the past nine years, Charter and Hollander have been able to develop a complementary set of strengths that have allowed the duo to build successful start-ups. At Mod Mission Critical Scott has been able to tap into his network of service providers to help form a comprehensive set of technology options for the customers of Mod Mission Critical.