Delta’s Recent Outage Demonstrates the Importance of Effective IT Support

Delta Air Lines’ recent essential IT systems outage clearly demonstrates the value of having IT support that can quickly respond when business critical systems go down.

At some point, all businesses big or small will face an interruption in their essential IT systems service. The cause of such outages can vary, from external malware attacks to basic human error on the part of an employee. Whatever the cause, how your business is able to respond to such an IT systems outage can dramatically affect the cost regarding employee productivity and revenue. Recently, Delta Air Lines faced a severe disruption in their operations due to an outage of their essential IT systems, clearly illustrating the importance of having quick response IT support for business critical systems.

As Delta’s experience shows, even huge corporations can fall victim to sudden systems outages with costly consequences. On January 29, Delta suffered a crippling systems outage in the early evening, causing the FAA to prevent all Delta flights in the United States from taking off for more than two and a half hours. In the end, Delta had to cancel almost 300 flights and delay much more in the second major IT outage that the airline giant has faced in the past six months. The airline had to agree to waive any fees for affected customers looking to rebook flights, but the exact cost of this outage is impossible to calculate as intangible costs such as loss of customer loyalty cannot be quantified.

Delta is certainly not alone in facing enormous costs from IT systems outages. As a 2015 IHS Markit report showed, North American businesses lose almost $700 billion annually due to IT outages; much of this loss is due to reduced employee productivity, which plummets by 78 percent on average. Moreover, the direct costs of an IT outage are only the beginning; many interruptions lead to further business disruptions and ever-mounting costs as companies scramble to recover.

Proactively strategizing for an inevitable IT systems outage is key to limiting the costs when business critical systems go down. Failing to prepare a response before one is necessary stands to increase the length of the outage; the Ponemon Institute found that every minute of an unplanned outage cost businesses $8,851 on average in 2016. If your firm doesn’t have the resources to maintain a 24/7 IT support staff, after-hours and weekends can present huge risks for the slow response. Many smaller businesses can avoid these gaps in IT support coverage by turning to an external IT support firm.

The effectiveness of your IT support can make all the difference when you face the outage of a business critical system. At Vancouver’s Compunet InfoTech, our support technicians are trained to quickly and more efficiently respond to the failure of any essential IT system. Contact us today at (604) 986-8170 or info@compunet.ca to find out more about how our IT support can bolster your company’s ability to maintain essential functions.