Network outages costing Aussie businesses

More than half of businesses in Australia (52%) and New Zealand (55%) believe their IT networks require upgrading to take advantage of emerging technologies including the IoT and wearables, a survey suggests.

A new Citrix survey indicates that network outages cost Australian businesses almost two weeks of lost productivity per employee per year (71 hours).

Lost productivity adversely affects an estimated 23% of the typical Australian company’s revenue base, equating to over $144,000 in lost revenue per year for a 50-person company.

Some 57% of Australian companies have experienced mobile connection problems and 55% have had issues with fixed network connectivity.

The primary causes for network problems include service provider outages (29%), coverage blackspots (28%) and hardware failures (27%).

The top three workloads adversely impacting IT environments are email, voice/video traffic and office productivity applications — all technologies that were initially developed to boost productivity and collaboration.

“Our study shows the expectations for emerging technologies are high, with many businesses aware of the positive impact they can have. However, the reality is investment in the majority of solutions will first require investment in somewhat ‘mundane’ areas, one of which is the networking environment,” Citrix Senior Director for Australia and New Zealand Andandh Maistry said.

“Digital transformation is a priority for many businesses in Australia and New Zealand, and to deliver it cloud infrastructures have become an integral part of the business IT network. With workloads and data increasingly being moved to cloud environments... it’s critical organisations in Australia and New Zealand act now to ensure their networks can handle the growing demands being placed on them.”

Image courtesy of SarahHoward under CC