In August 2016, a power failure at Delta Air Lines’ brought thousands of flights worldwide to a complete standstill. That power failure, which took key IT systems offline at the airline’s Atlanta headquarters, caused key computer operations, such as automated check-in kiosks, to go offline.
The disruption at airports across the globe forced Delta to rebook scores of passengers, which in turn, cost the airline millions of dollars. Delta is not alone in experiencing IT failures in the airline industry—a similar outage occurred at another major airline carrier just one month earlier, causing that airline to cancel over 1,000 flights in two days after a hardware failure affected its backup and disaster recovery systems. That incident cost the airline up to $150 million in revenue.
While these IT failures occurred in the massive airline industry, they should force companies in all industries to take stock of their own data backup and recovery plans—or lack thereof. If a power interruption can result in such a great loss to a global operation with 13 hubs, it could also happen in your industry.
How Prepared Are You?
What would happen if your company suffered an IT outage and you were unable to access your data for several days? Do you have a reliable backup and recovery system in place? If not, you could be vulnerable to the loss of not only your own significant business processes, but also to data your customers, contacts and employees trust you to protect.
The good news is that cloud-based data backup and disaster recovery capabilities are becoming more accessible and affordable with additional flexibility to scale services to your company’s specific needs. You don’t have to run a large enterprise to have a disaster recovery plan in place. Finding the right provider to provide your cloud recovery services is essential. You want to make sure you have experts who can make recommendations that are right for your company now—and have a plan in place to accommodate business growth.
Proactive Data Protection
Does your company have a managed backup plan in place? Do you have a disaster recovery plan that will enable you to recover lost data—whether the cause be power interruptions, cybercrime, natural disasters, hardware failures or employee error? If not, this is the time to take action to implement a data disaster recovery plan. For example, with EDSI’s Veeam Extreme solution, your entire IT infrastructure and files can be backed up and easily recovered through Veeam Cloud Connect should a disaster occur.
You don’t have to be a major airline carrier to have a proactive plan in place. Consider that a late 2014 Veeam study estimated the cost of mission-critical application downtime at $130,000 per hour while a Gartner Research report estimates that amount as high as $300,000 and up for larger companies. It certainly goes without saying that your business – no matter what its size – can no longer afford to do nothing.
To learn more about how EDSI can leverage decades of industry experience to achieve your backup and recovery goals, contact us today.