Power outages are a much more serious problem than just a few minutes or hours of lost productivity and work. There are also long term consequences for tech businesses that may not be as obvious.
National and Local Outages
As a general rule, power outages in the United States cost billions of dollars. This is mostly because of loss to equipment and property, along with the need to physically relocate in some severe instances. Michigan also has some unique challenges that make power outages more frequent than in other states, including significant wind storms and falling trees that hit power lines. The fact that the state is mostly surrounded by water means that it experiences more thunderstorms and rain than many other parts of the country.
Concerns Specific To Information Technology
An IT company also has specific concerns related to data, security, and computer hardware that can exacerbate these losses. One of these factors is related to labor costs. If your staff is supposed to be working but cannot, their efforts are wasted and they are being paid without performing any revenue generating activities. This lost productivity and inability to bring in new business will also hurt overall balances for the month or quarter. Infrastructure such as the office building itself and power delivery systems may become damaged during an outage. This may require expensive repairs or replacements by electricians or other tech professionals.
Some of the long term effects of frequent power outages include inventory and data loss, which can significantly affect a company’s bottom line over time. Data centers and computer hard drives are especially vulnerable to corruption during sudden outages. Large losses of sensitive data can put a company months or years behind if the information is totally destroyed by an outage. Sudden drops in communications can also affect business relations if a client thinks the company is being unresponsive. This is especially true when tech companies make deals globally. International clients would not be aware of local conditions such as weather that caused an outage.
Get Local Help From Heiden Technology
For managed information technology services that can prevent many of these losses in Michigan, contact Heiden Technology. Heiden offers continuity, security, and infrastructure solutions to help manage power outages, along with a number of other managed IT services.