Figures from Sungard Availability Services show that UK invocations have hit their highest levels since 2009. Overall incidents of downtime, in which staff are unable to work from their usual office or access business critical systems, also rose by over a third since 2013, leading to concerns that organisations are failing to sufficiently invest in the strategies and solutions required to maintain availability.

While workplace related disruptions – in which the office environment is rendered inaccessible – have remained fairly stable with only a minor increase in the last year, disruptions due to technology failures have more than doubled, increasing by 140%.
Results from the Sungard AS annual analysis of the UK’s major business disruptions demonstrate that hardware has been the main issue, causing a fifth of all problems. The year-on-year spike in technology-related complaints, also including power and communications may suggest that while many organisations are now entirely dependent on their IT systems, they are struggling to maintain them.

Sungard AS reports an over 400% growth in take-up of its Managed recovery services as well as a significant uptick in cloud solutions contracts. It says investment in cloud infrastructure is also becoming more popular, though as the technology is in the relatively early stages of implementation for many businesses there is still some way to go before IT strategies match required continuity needs.

Commenting on the latest results, Daren Howell, product marketing manager, Sungard Availability Services, said: “The daily tasks of managing and maintaining recovery strategies have, unfortunately, never been considered a particularly glamourous aspect of running a business. As we emerge from a long period of economic uncertainty, with businesses operating with a far leaner headcount, it’s no surprise to see that recovery may have slipped off a number of agendas – leaving businesses under serious threat of being unable to survive technology failures.”

“Couple this with the increasing sophistication of today’s IT environments, and the task of building technology recovery processes is simply too difficult for the average organisation to take on alone,” Howell added. “Small numbers of staff can’t be masters of every IT discipline across increasingly complex hybrid environments of public and private clouds, shadow IT, data centre hosting and on-premise systems. Clearly businesses need third-party help to ensure they can handle the demands of the all-time market.”

Sungard Availability Services’ top three UK customer invocation causes

2014
21% Hardware
19% Communications
14% Power

2013
26% Power
18% Hardware
18% Other

2012
34% Power
19% Hardware
13% Communications/Other

2011
37% Power
21% Communications
16% Hardware

2010
27% Power
25% Communications
23% Hardware

2009
27% Hardware
27% Power
17% Communications

2008
39% Hardware
19% Power
16% Data Corruption

2007
35% Hardware
22% Power
12% Flooding

2006
45% Hardware
31% Power
7% Communications

2005
43% Hardware
26% Terrorism
13% Power

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