Unplanned Outages Threaten Holiday Boon for Retailers

According to an Aberdeen Group report, the average cost of downtime has increased to approximately $165,000 per hour. At no time is this cost more critical than during the holiday season, when online retail sales are expected to reach $96 billion. Unfortunately, the results of Panopta's recent study show that a number of major retailers could suffer significant unplanned outages this holiday season, hurting their chances of meeting revenue projections. Of the more than 130 retail sites analyzed, upwards of 45 percent experienced significant downtime since the beginning of the year, a bad omen that leads me to predict that many will likely suffer additional outages during this holiday season.