“Financial impact of unplanned downtime” was one of the most heavily weighted criterion in the criticality rubric and one that tends to drive new technologies and best practices in critical infrastructure. The three industries that ranked highest on this criterion were:
3. Cloud and Colocation
2. E-commerce
1. Financial Services
Of the three, only Cloud and Colocation made the list of Most Critical Industries, and that was based on the number of businesses that now depend on these platforms and the broader impact of disruption to these operations. Financial Services ranked tenth overall.
“From a data center infrastructure perspective, we see few industries that invest as heavily as these three,” observed Gaunt. “All three have their revenue and profitability tied directly to the availability of their data centers, and data center downtime can have huge financial and reputational implications.”