A global survey of 1,000 business and IT decision‑makers and senior developers shows that while organizations feel more resilient than they were a year ago, many still struggle with the cost of recovery and remediation when a real IT incident occurs.
Conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of PagerDuty, the survey found that 71 percent of respondents believe their organization is more resilient than it was 12 months ago. However, when a major incident does occur, recovery and remediation costs are cited as the greatest financial impact by 50 percent of respondents. This is second to brand reputation, which was noted by 52 percent.
The financial consequences of downtime are significant. Overall, the survey found that 68 percent of organizations lose more than $300,000 per hour during a major IT incident. About 34 percent report losses of at least $500,000 per hour during disruptions.
Given those figures, it is not surprising that organizations are placing greater emphasis on operational resilience.
Increased investment and the role of AI
More than three quarters (77 percent) of respondents plan to increase resiliency spending in the next 12 months, with 15 percent planning substantial increases of more than 25 percent. At the same time, 59 percent of organizations are already incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into operational resilience workflows, while another 34 percent are actively discussing how AI might be used.
Leadership alignment is also strong. A full 95 percent of respondents say senior leadership understands that faster incident recovery creates a competitive advantage. Within that group, 41 percent describe leadership as strongly aligned around minimizing downtime.
Why MSP experience matters
When it comes to data recovery, most managed service providers (MSPs) have far more hands‑on experience than the average internal IT team. Internal IT departments rarely encounter restoration scenarios at the scale or frequency that MSPs do. This is especially true for those managing backup and recovery for hundreds of customers.
The challenge is that many organizations don’t fully appreciate how difficult restoring an IT environment can be until they’ve experienced a major incident firsthand.
The pricing gap in managed resiliency
It’s no coincidence that organizations often rely on MSPs to manage recovery. Hard‑won experience has taught them that certain tasks are best left to specialists. After all, the longer an environment remains down, the greater the financial impact.
That reality raises an important question: how should managed resiliency services be priced? Traditionally, MSPs have delivered disaster recovery and backup services at relatively low cost. But if downtime truly averages $300,000 per hour, the value of managed resiliency may be far higher than current pricing reflects.
The difficulty, of course, is making that case—especially before an organization experiences a catastrophic event.
Talking with the right decision makers
Who makes the buying decision also matters. Internal IT teams often view disaster recovery and backup as operational tasks. Business leaders, by contrast, think in terms of revenue loss per hour.
For resiliency‑savvy MSPs, this creates an opportunity. Those willing to commit to specific recovery objectives should ensure they are having value‑focused conversations with the right decision‑makers—conversations that clearly connect resiliency outcomes to business impact, not just technical execution.
Photo: patpitchaya / Shutterstock
This post originally appeared on Smarter MSP.