On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 01:17:38 GMT Jeff Liebermann wrote: | On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:54:30 -0700, Jeff Liebermann | wrote: | |>>Businesses that are not flush with cash have to figure this in so they |>>can minimize the expenditure on as many things as possible. | | Intel saved you the effort of calculating the cost of downtime: |
I think these figures refer to having everything fail at once. Having one PC in one store go would produce figures like these. OTOH, the speculation is one non-functional PC substantially contributed to a major east coast power failure a few years ago (some speculation being that had it been operation, it may have alerted people to conditions in sufficient time to recover grid stability).
| That's just the revenue loss and does not include the cost of | recovery, replacement hardware, overtime, bad press, etc. Obviously, | this is for the loss of connectivity, server crash, or something | major, not just a wireless router failure. Still, the numbers do | suggest that failures are expensive.
They certainly are expensive if they happen on a large scale. That is why things like security really are very important; hackers can make a failure be widespread if that is their intent and conditions allow them to succeed.
| Are you sure you still want businesses to buy the cheapest considering | the cost of downtime?
I never have wanted them to. I just recognize and understand why and how they do so.
Keep in mind that many venture capitalists are in it for the short term. They buy in with the intention of selling out in a couple years. Once they have taken over, they press things financially very hard with total disregard for anything long term (like business reputation). This is also one reason the internet bubble burst; they were not prepare for a growth curve that would run for so long before returns would be realized. They had figured on reaching profitability within a short few years (2-4) and many businesses were still spending to grow market shares because the market itself was still growing so much ... in many cases with little or even no revenue at all, yet. As the market kept growing, investors ran out of capital to sustain it (because they hadn't planned it for such a long growth term), and the big squeeze started.
I don't like going cheap, particular with "my toys". But it is a life of business, and it is how they get the most overall out of money. What I have to do in certain cases is show why particular things have to be an exemption from that approach. In some cases that's easy. In others it just can't be done (because the impact really isn't as severe).