What does power disruption mean for critical IT applications?

The potential impact that a power fluctuation or power outage can have on your  IT equipment is massive. Disruption can negatively impact in many ways – ranging from damage to equipment to loss of productivity, and even posing a risk to company employees’ well-being.

For businesses that rely on critical IT equipment, the potential repercussions of power surges and outages can be devastating. An unstable power grid can adversely impact companies in terms of productivity, damage to IT equipment, loss of data, and even employee well-being.  And of course, all of this can equate to potentially huge financial losses. Take data centre downtime for example – the average cost of a data centre outage is estimated at around €740,000, which works out to around €8,850 per minute in lost revenue and unproductive employees.

Here are a few scenarios where unstable or loss of power could negatively impact businesses:

• Internal business processes: like inventory tracking, quote tools, and invoicing coming to a halt
• Reduced employee productivity: due to limited access to online systems
• Communication issues: resulting from email servers going offline and Voice over IP phones shutting down
• Manufacturing line shutdown: the cost of machine resetting and disposal of waste material
• Contractual supply penalties: industrial/component suppliers for example
• Professional IT recovery costs: the expense associated with backing up core IT systems
• Lost sales revenue: customers are unable to contact customer service, and customer support unable to access customer account details
• Customer dissatisfaction and impact on corporate reputation: banking/call centres for example

However, businesses can avoid these daunting scenarios by installing UPS back up – to help them ensure power quality and availability in the event of power fluctuations or outages, and thus eliminate the risk of operational downtime.

So what exactly is a UPS?

An Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS is an electrical device that provides backup power stored in batteries to a critical load when the primary power source fails, providing near-instantaneous protection from harmful power interruptions. An offline UPS is the most common type of Uninterruptible Power Supply, designed for non-critical applications. It draws current from the AC outlet and switches to the battery within a few milliseconds after detecting a power failure. An on-line UPS on the other hand is designed for critical IT applications and continuously provides clean power directly from the battery, rather than from the AC outlet. Some UPS Systems, often known as line-interactive UPS offer built-in surge protection that filters out electrical surges and spikes.

UPS helps to protect IT appliances and other electrical equipment, not just in homes and small businesses, but also in larger-scale environments such as laboratories, telecommunications sites, data centres, and factories – where an unexpected power disruption to the critical IT infrastructure could result in business downtime as well as cause damage to critical IT infrastructure.

As we can see, your customers’ critical IT equipment depends on clean and stable power. Without it, homes and businesses simply can’t function. And as the colder winter months put more pressure on already stretched European energy supplies, there is a real possibility that power grids across our region will struggle to deliver stable power around the clock.

As a leading UPS specialist that works closely with established IT vendors like APC by Schneider Electric, Riello, Vertiv and Eaton, Source UPS  helps IT professionals to differentiate and grow their business through access to a broad portfolio of UPS solutions that are designed to protect critical IT appliances and data in businesses and data centres. So, even if you experience power fluctuations and blackouts over these coming months, rest assured we can help to keep your IT equipment up and running through this challenging period. What’s more, most of our UPS products are Green Premium™ certified and deliver compliance, transparency and higher environmental performance.

Click here for more information or to find out more or to request a quotation, get in touch with Source UPS today!

Call: 01252 692559 or email: info@sourceups.co.uk