Sept. 15, 2003 -- Almost one-third of America's corporate data centers were affected by the last month's Northeast power outage, but all but a handful were able to continue operating on backup systems, according to a new survey from AFCOM, the industry group for data center managers.
But the financial impact was steep for those that were knocked offline. Six percent of the data centers that lost grid power reported economic damage of at least $1 million, with two percent citing losses of $10 million or more.
Those who lost power completely represented a "relatively small percentage" of the overall sample of 500 executives, according to AFCOM.
"While the power outage affected a huge swath of the nation and caused significant costs for many enterprise data centers, this survey also shows that data centers exhibited remarkable resilience in the different ways that they dealt with this challenge," said Jill Eckhaus, President of AFCOM.
"The survey shows that preparing for the unthinkable has become a critical data center task because their very existence depends on how successfully they can implement backup plans and disaster recovery solutions," Eckhaus added. "Clearly data centers are the engine behind much of today's economy because of their importance in running critical business applications on which we've all come to rely.
More than 500 data center managers and executives responded to the online survey conducted in early September by AFCOM's Data Center Institute, a leading think-tank on data center related issues. The association's members include data center managers, CIOs and other IS professionals from Fortune 1,000 companies.
Over half of those impacted by the blackout report that the associated costs to their organizations were under $10,000. Of those that were affected, most switched to onsite backup generators as sources of power and a relatively small percentage lost power completely.
Sixty-five percent of survey respondents report that the blackout will have no effect on their disaster recovery budget. Of those noting a budgetary increase, 65 percent indicate that it will be less than 5 percent.