White Paper: Calculating Data Center Costs Related to Downtime

Ponemon Institute and Emerson Network Power are pleased to present the results of the Cost of
Data Center Outages. The purpose of this benchmark study is to determine the full economic cost
of unplanned data center outages and is the second study in a two-part research series on the
topic of data center outages. The first study, National Study on Data Center Outages, was
released in September 2010 and was conducted to determine the frequency and root causes of
unplanned data center outages. We believe both studies are important because of evidence that
IT leaders are underestimating the economic impact unplanned outages have on their operations.
The Cost of Data Center Outages study is the first benchmark study that attempts to estimate the
full costs associated with an unplanned data center outage. This benchmark analysis focuses on
representative samples of organizations in the U.S. that experienced at least one complete or
partial unplanned data center outage during the past 12 months. The analysis was based on 41
independent data centers located in the United States. Following are the functional leaders within
each organization who participated in the study:
? Facility manager
? Chief information officer
? Data center management
? Chief information security officer
? IT compliance leader