If we dig down the history, many incidents occurred that led to system failures and business losses in terms of money and brand value. Among them, some could have been avoided with continuous server monitoring and proper performance testing. So, let’s discuss what history says to us and what we can learn from it.
As a Performance Tester, you are aware of ‘Why do clients need Performance Testing for their website, application or software system?”. It could also be possible that you could answer your clients wisely and convince them to spend the money on performance testing to benefit your organization.
However, do you know the actual incidences and the business losses due to performance issues or downtime that happened in the past?
A survey by ITIC (Information Technology Intelligence Consulting) showed that the verticals with the highest downtime price tag – $5 Million for a 60-minute outage included retail, banking/finance, food, energy, government, healthcare, manufacturing, media and communications, transportation and utilities.
System Failures & Losses
| Company | Year | Downtime* | Loss* |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 19 Minutes | $426,607 | |
| Apple App Store | 2015 | 12 Hours | $25,000,000 |
| Delta Air Lines | 2016 | 3 Days | $150,000,000 |
| Amazon Web Services (Affected Hosted companies) | 2017 | 4 Hours | $150,000,000 |
| British Airways | 2017 | 2 Days | $102,000,000 |
| Amazon | 2018 | 1 Hour | $99,000,000 (in Sales) |
| 2019 | 14 Hours | $89,600,000 | |
| Google Cloud Platform (GCP) | 2020 | 47 Minutes | NA |
| 2021 | 6 Hours | $100,000,000 | |
| Amazon | 2021 | 59 Minutes | $34,000,000 (in Sales) |
*Disclaimer: The information may differ from the shown data, as they are collected from different sources available over the internet. The intention is to present those data to make the performance tester aware to save the clients’ losses by conducting appropriate and correct performance testing.
Solution: Failover Test / Disaster Recovery Test
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