The Cost of Downtime in the IT Industry

Downtime frustrates every business owner. Whether your computer crashes, your copier breaks, or your labels will not print, we understand the frustration of out-of-order IT and barcode and label equipment. By definition, downtime refers to “time during which a machine, especially a computer, is out of action or unavailable for use” (source). Not only is it frustrating to wait around for a repair or replacement, but the cost of downtime can be considerable. Instead of accepting extensive downtime as an inevitable part of business, why not protect your equipment properly before a breakdown occurs?

The Cost of Downtime

A lack of equipment maintenance and protection leads to increased downtime. When you experience a loss of productivity, several expenses typically arise, amplifying the cost of downtime:

• Employee costs per hour (Employee Idle Time Cost)
• Average revenue per hour (revenue spent fixing broken equipment)
• Employees affected by downtime (employees unable to work)
• Revenue affected by downtime (revenue lost due to broken equipment)

Some quick calculations can illustrate the significance of unplanned downtime. Other consequences of downtime include damage to your business’s reputation and loss of data. Although you can’t eliminate downtime entirely, you can effectively reduce it to avoid losing time and money.

If you don’t properly maintain and protect your IT equipment, frequent downtime shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, your equipment breathes using fans, which force air over hot electronic components. Although this effectively cools the equipment, the air can carry in abrasive particles, dust, and fibers. These materials can induce fire, grind against moving parts, scratch screens and laser lenses, and crack or dissolve insulation. To prevent your business from coming to a grinding halt, consider protecting your IT equipment with a heavy-duty, reliable enclosure. An enclosure provides a clean room in which your equipment can safely reside. The clean, positive air pressure will keep out contaminants, ensuring that you can carry on with your work.

Replacing vs. Protecting IT Equipment

As we mentioned above, one of the costs of downtime is repairing or replacing the equipment. According to Network Alliance, “Nearly two-thirds of small businesses and organizations are expected to buy new IT equipment this year, replacing one in four office computers.” Remember that the initial cost of this new equipment is just a fraction of what you will spend on the equipment over its lifetime. You must also consider servicing, upgrades, peripherals, supplies, staffing, and more.

Instead of spending money to fix a problem after it occurs, why not protect your equipment before any issues arise? In the world of IT, protecting your equipment (PCs, monitors, printers, scanners) from the dangers presented by exterior environments (airborne contaminants, moisture, extreme temperatures) can effectively prevent downtime. In many instances, it will cost far less to purchase protection for the equipment and maintain it than to replace the equipment entirely.

The right enclosure can prevent electronic failure due to airborne particles, spills, impact and component heat damage. By protecting mission-critical hardware, it will minimize downtime and maximize uptime.

DustShield Can Help

DustShield offers an extensive line of computer enclosures that are industrial tough, factory-floor ready, and designed to protect LCD monitors, tower and desktop CPUs, and printers. Our enclosures are delivered completely assembled and suit a variety of applications. We offer customer-driven designs and customizations, and we can enhance any of our standard enclosures with little increase in cost. We would be happy to work with you to create a design that accommodates your wants and needs.

So if you would like to protect your valuable equipment from harm and ensure that you can carry on with business as usual, check out DustShield’s computer enclosures today. To learn more, please give one of our enclosure specialists a call toll-free at 800-587-9557 or contact us online.