Businesses of all sizes can be impacted by a power outage, but for small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) in particular, a black out can be devastating. Is your business continuity planning ready for the power to go out?

After all, a power outage equals downtime, which translates directly to lost revenue. An SMB is less likely to be able to absorb the impact of financial losses the same way that an established, stable enterprise does. So, taking steps to mitigate the impact of power outages should be considered an essential part of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) planning. Power outages, a leading cause of business downtime today, are on the rise. According to Inside Energy, a public media energy reporting initiative, the 5-year annual average of power outages doubled every five years between 2000 and 2014. In other words, power outages are four times more common today than they were 15 years ago.

• Do you know about preventative measures that can reduce the impact of power outages on your business?
• Are you aware of  preventative measures to maintain a robust data protection strategy and how this strategy can reduce the financial impact of an outage?
• Did you know annually power outages cost American businesses as much as $150 billion per year, according to the US Department of Energy?

According to the research firm Climate Central, weather caused 80 percent of all US power outages between 2003-2012, 59 percent of which was labeled as “severe weather”. Non-weather events, such as accidents and equipment failure ,made up the remaining 20 percent. The specific events ran the gamut from extreme cold to severe storms to heat waves, indicating that weather impacted businesses nationwide. Outages cost American businesses as much as $150 billion per year, according to the US Department of Energy (DOE), with weather-related disruptions costing the most per event. The majority of these large-scale outages resulted from damage to large transmission lines or substations, as opposed to the residential distribution network. While weather is the most common trigger for US power outages, a major underlying issue is the country’s 100-year-old power grid. The grid, which has been described as “the largest machine on Earth” consists of more than 9,200 electric generating units with more than 1,000,000 megawatts of generating capacity connected to more than 300,000 miles of transmission lines, according to the DOE.

Business Continuity Planning: 4 Reasons CEOs Care About It & Why You Should Too!

However, the grid was designed and built long before the wide array of technologies that rely on it today were around. The demand for electricity has skyrocketed in recent years thanks to population growth, air conditioning, and massive increases in personal and business technology use. Yet, the power industry invests very little in research and development—less than two percent of annual revenue, according to the DOE. As such, the grid is ill-equipped to keep up with today’s needs. According to Climate Central research, climate change will increase the risk of weather-related damage to the grid, impacting millions of people, and costing tens of billions of dollars each year.

The good news is that there are a number of preventative measures that businesses can take to minimize the impact of power outages. The level of protection required will be dictated by the specific needs of a business. So, it is important to evaluate a business’ tolerance for downtime associated with power outages, and invest in preventative tools accordingly. In other words, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy for every business.

Protecting Business Continuity

Power outages can last anywhere from a few minutes to multiple days depending on the cause. Short-term outages will likely have a minimal impact, especially if there there is no damage to the facilities or equipment. Long-term power outages, such as those resulting from a severe weather incident, tend to require planning to ensure that business operations can resume within a reasonable timeframe.

• Consider using cloud-based email and other applications, so users can easily work from home while your business is without power. Enterprise grade, cloud-based file
  sync and share (FSS) services, like Datto Drive, can give users access to the files they need from anywhere, on any device. Not all outages are widespread regional events. Depending on the nature of your business, giving employees the ability to work remotely can be an effective method for returning business operations quickly.
• Businesses are impacted by power outages in different ways. Obviously, without power, electronic equipment is inoperable. But, more importantly, power outages can cause devastating damage to a business’s IT systems, which can significantly increase downtime after power is restored. This is because electronic devices, including desktops computers, servers, printers, etc., require a steady electrical current. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS) is a device that ensures computer systems can stay on temporarily in the moments following a power outage, so they can be shut down gracefully to avoid losing data in RAM. They also provide surge protection, to ensure that electrical current irregularities do not damage computer components.
• Avoiding data loss from a power outage is straightforward—you need a secure, second copy of your critical business data in a separate location that you can easily access in case your primary systems are damaged due to power loss or other data disasters. For businesses, backing up data is a fundamental part of responsible entrepreneurship. But, backup can mean a lot of different things. The approach that you choose to protect your data will have a dramatic impact on the speed and success of your recovery. When it comes to backup, it’s important to understand two concepts: recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO). RTO is the amount of time that it takes to get a system restored following a failure or disaster event. RPO is the point in time to which data can be restored following the event. Modern backup solutions, like Datto, take incremental backups of business data continuously throughout the day—some as often as every five minutes—to deliver very low RPO. They also allow users to run production workloads from the backup server or in the cloud while restoring primary operations for low RTO.

Trending: Business Continuity: Is Your Business Disaster Proof?

Power outages don’t discriminate. They hit businesses of all shapes and sizes, in any region or industry. Black outs result in billions of dollars in losses per year. SMBs in particular are vulnerable to downtime and financial loss from a power outage and should take the appropriate steps to mitigate the impact of this type of event. Good News! CompuData can help! As a Datto Business Partner, CompuData can help you take the steps you need to take to prevent downtime from power outages.

Ready to protect your business from power outages?
Contact CompuData Today!