Emerson survey looks at power outage costs to US businesses The survey found that 60 percent of survey respondents expect that their business will experience a power outage this year, and the cost of such incidents can be very high: 38 percent of large businesses estimate that one full business day of downtime would result in at least $500,000 in lost revenue, and 15 percent forecast one-day losses of $2 million or more. However, despite the risk, 45 percent of large businesses say they spend less than $200,000 annually to provide backup power to protect against this costly downtime. More encouragingly, the survey reveals that, since the 2005 hurricane season, more than 60 percent of large US businesses have audited their backup power needs and three-quarters have budgeted funds to prepare for and maintain operations during natural disasters. Other findings include: * Many businesses are more prepared for power losses than handling threats of disruptions from other sources. * Power outages resulting in downtime are common. Forty-seven percent of survey respondents said their large businesses experienced a power outage that resulted in downtime in 2005. * Customer support (89 percent) is the most important business operation to protect from the effects of a power outage, followed by CRM systems and ERP systems (85 percent), and remote systems (83 percent). The survey of 300 US businesses with annual revenues of $50 million or more was conducted in April.
•Date: 23rd May 2006• Region: US • Type: Article •Topic: Power management |
