If you remember back in August, Delta Airlines had a major data center outage. In the end this cost them about $150 million, according to a Delta representative (Isidore, 2016). The large deficiency was mainly attributed to the loss of passenger revenue, although full financial repercussions are yet to be known.
The outage, thought to be caused by a fire, resulted in more than 2,000 flight cancellations and 250,000 passengers stuck in airports. Delta issued refunds to customers and released a video of their CEO apologizing for the major inconvenience.
According to an Emerson Network Power study, incidents like this cost almost $9,000 per minute. The total cost averages to be $740,357 per outage and are mainly caused by uninterruptible power supply (UPS) system failures (Ponemon, 2016). The airline industry is particularly subject to consequences from data centers; both JetBlue and Southwest were hit with outages that caused delays and cancellations in 2016.
To protect data centers from fires and the implications that result, ORR Protection Systems has an educational webinar series starting on October 13th to directly address this issue. Click the banner below to learn more about Data Center Fire Protection and sign up to attend a webinar.
References
Isidore, Chris (2016) Delta: 5-hour computer outage cost us $150 million. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/07/technology/delta-computer-outage-cost/
Ponemon Institute (2016) Cost of Data Center Outages. Retrieved from http://www.emersonnetworkpower.com/en-US/Resources/Market/Data-Center/Latest-Thinking/Ponemon/Documents/2016-Cost-of-Data-Center-Outages-FINAL-2.pdf
