A recent report from the Uptime Institute indicates a positive trend in the frequency and severity of data center outages, showing a decline in overall impact.
The report highlights that while there are still notable IT outages, causing financial losses, disruptions, and reputational damage, the rate of increase in outages is slower than the pace of IT capacity expansion, resulting in a percentage decrease in outages.
In 2023, 55 percent of data center operators reported experiencing an outage in the past three years, down from 60 percent in 2022 and 69 percent in 2021. Moreover, only one in 10 outages was categorized as serious or severe in 2023, marking an improvement compared to previous years.
The decrease in outage frequency is attributed to several factors. There is reduced tolerance for complacency across industries, driven by high reputational costs associated with outages. This has led organizations to prioritize resiliency and invest in infrastructure redundancy, moving towards software-based resilience models.
Interestingly, the shift to public cloud services has not necessarily reduced outages but has shifted the responsibility for disruptions to third-party providers, reducing on-premises incidents.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also influenced outage rates by causing demand fluctuations and supply chain disruptions, delaying infrastructure upgrades and reducing incidents.
Power disruptions remain the leading cause of outages, according to the survey, with over half of respondents citing power as the primary issue. Third-party operators, telecommunications, and cloud providers account for a significant portion of outages, reflecting the growing reliance on cloud hosting and colocation services.
Human error continues to be a major contributor to downtime incidents, with data center staff not following procedures or processes cited as the most common cause. This underscores the importance of better management, processes, and configuration to prevent future outages.
Overall, the report highlights positive trends in data center outage management, emphasizing the need for continued investment in resiliency and risk mitigation strategies to further reduce the impact of IT disruptions.
