HP ProLiant 3000 The Benefits of PCI Hot Plug Technology - Page 3

The Benefits of PCI Hot Plug Technology 3 Overview Customers today need improved availability solutions that minimize or eliminate downtime. Compaq addresses this need by providing PCI Hot Plug technology that allows a PCI adapter to be added, upgraded, or replaced while the host system is running and while other adapters in the system provide uninterrupted service. PCI Hot Plug technology adds to other high-availability solutions presently available from Compaq such as Recovery Server Options, Redundant Netelligent Network Interface Controllers (NICs), hot-pluggable power supplies, hot-pluggable fans, and hot-pluggable SCSI drives. Cost of Downtime Compaq's decision to develop PCI Hot Plug technology is focused on addressing a key customer issue: as computing environments grow more complex, the business costs of unplanned downtime are soaring. The increasing cost of unplanned downtime in business-critical environments, compounded by the time spent tracking the source of network or component failures, is creating a greater need for improved higher availability solutions like PCI Hot Plug. Due to the growing reliance upon computer networks, events resulting in system downtime, whether planned or not, can cripple an organization. Regardless of the cause, the common denominator to all system downtime is a high cost to a customer's business. A survey of 450 Fortune 1000 companies by Find/SVP1 found that the average outage across industries lasts four hours and costs $330,000. A typical company experiences nine outages per year, resulting in annual losses of almost $3 million (excluding the cost of lost employee productivity). Actual costs of downtime, however, can vary widely based on individual company size, business type, industry application environment, and type of outage. Table 1 illustrates the financial impact of system downtime on various industries.2 Table 1. Financial Impact of System Downtime Industry Business Operation Financial Financial Media Retail Retail Transportation Media Transportation Finance Brokerage Operations Credit Cards/Sales Authorization Pay-per-view Home Shopping (TV) Home Catalog Sales Airline Reservations Teleticket Sales Package Shipping ATM Fees Industry Cost Range (per hour) $5.6M to $7.3M $2.2M to $3.1M Avg. Cost per Hour of Downtime $6.45M $2.6M $67K to $233K $87K to $140K $60K to $120K $67K to $112K $56K to $82K $24K to $32K $12K to $17K $150K $113K $90K $89.5K $69K $28K $14.5K 1 Source: Dataquest, Perspective, Sept, 30, 1996 2 This table represents only examples of downtime costs. Actual costs may vary. Source: Dataquest, Perspective, Sept. 30, 1996 ECG093/0798