Let’s face it—nearly every business today relies heavily on technology for its’ operations. Whether it’s the simple use of end-user computers running software, to touchscreen kiosks in restaurants to place orders, to advanced use of cloud computing to automate business processes, every business would be negatively impacted if some or all of their IT operations were to go down.
The Cost of IT Downtime
Reported downtime in IT operations tends to be measured with such large numbers that SMBs today have no ability to relate to—let alone believe—costs that are reported in millions of dollars per hour. But data does exist that shows that IT downtime can cost SMBs between $137 and $427 per minute, translating to $8,000–$25,000 per hour, with over half (57%) of SMBs with 20 to 100 employees reporting that one hour of downtime costs exceed $100,000. When you consider even the lowest end of the reported spectrum of costs demonstrates a material loss for an SMB, the reality of downtime negatively impacting an SMB begins to set it.
What Causes IT Downtime?
We tend to focus on the news stories we hear about like external disruptions that include ransomware attacks, internet service provider outages, and loss of power. But unplanned downtime often originates within IT itself from issues related to hardware failures, software bugs, poorly executed updates, and accidental misconfigurations. Even routine maintenance, when not scheduled or executed properly, can inadvertently cause system outages and service interruptions.
So, what can SMB organizations—and the MSPs that take care of their IT operations—do themselves to minimize the likelihood of IT downtime due to IT-related disruptions to business operations?
In this article, we’ll look at six ways MSPs and IT organizations in the SMB can proactively attempt to either mitigate the risk of unplanned IT downtime, or be ready to respond to minimize the length of the disruption.
1. Proactive Monitoring and Alerting
Proactive monitoring involves continuously tracking system health metrics—such as CPU load, memory usage, disk capacity, and network latency—of critical workloads the business relies on to identify anomalies before they lead to downtime.
Implementing intelligent alerting ensures that IT teams are notified immediately when thresholds (which are set to a level that requires attention, but won’t yet impact user productivity) are breached, enabling rapid investigation and remediation. Advanced solutions leveraging predictive analytics can forecast capacity constraints and performance degradations, allowing teams to plan capacity growth and avoid future outages.
2. Routine Maintenance and Patch Management
A strategic patch management program ensures that critical security and software updates are applied consistently and promptly across all systems and applications. Best practices include maintaining an up-to-date inventory of assets, testing patches in controlled environments, scheduling deployments during maintenance windows, and using automation to reduce human error. By automating patch audits and deployment processes, organizations can minimize the risk of introducing new vulnerabilities and performance issues while keeping systems secure and stable.
3. Backup and Disaster Recovery Readiness
Since true disaster recovery scenarios usually aren’t as simple as restoring a single server, having reliable backup and disaster recovery plans is essential for restoring services quickly in the event of failures or cyber incidents. Hybrid cloud backup strategies, which replicate data between on premises and the cloud, offer enhanced redundancy and flexibility, meeting strict recovery point and time objectives. And regular testing of backup restores and failover procedures ensures that recovery processes work as intended and that data can be accessed (and operations restored) promptly when needed.
Solutions like MSP360 Managed Backup provide reliable backup and recovery capabilities that integrate with a wide range of storage providers, eliminating vendor lock-in and streamlining management for MSPs and internal IT teams.
4. Employee Training and Awareness
Human error remains one of the leading causes of IT downtime, making employee training and security awareness critical components of any resilience strategy. Training users in basic cyber hygiene—such as recognizing phishing attempts, reporting suspicious behavior, and following standardized incident response procedures—can reduce the likelihood and impact of human-induced cyberattack and their resulting disruption. IT staff can also benefit from training—receiving regular drills and tabletop exercises to practice their incident response savvy and skills, improving reaction times and confidence when real outages occur.
5. Having The Right Tools in Place
A unified remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform—like that of MSP360 RMM— consolidates monitoring, alerting, patch management, and remote access into a single console, reducing tool sprawl while providing value to IT teams to proactively take the needed steps to keep the environment as far away from IT-caused downtime as possible.
When evaluating RMM solutions, look for multi-OS support, unlimited endpoint licensing, transparent pricing models, and seamless integrations with existing PSA and helpdesk systems. A cohesive toolset accelerates incident resolution, minimizes context switching, and frees up IT teams to focus on proactive improvements rather than firefighting issues.
6. Environment Documentation and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
You can’t support what you don’t know about—at least not efficiently. Comprehensive up-to-date documentation of network configurations, system architectures, and recovery procedures enables IT teams to troubleshoot incidents efficiently and consistently.
Standard operating procedures (SOPs) formalize the implementation of all the previous five best practices, ensuring that all team members follow the same steps during routine tasks and disruption responses to reduce human error and recovery times. Maintaining and regularly reviewing both environment documentation and SOPs also supports business continuity by preserving institutional knowledge, even when team members change roles or leave the organization.
Keeping Downtime to a Minimum
While zero downtime is impossible, implementing a holistic strategy that combines proactive monitoring, disciplined processes, thorough documentation, reliable backups, skilled personnel, and integrated tools can drastically reduce both the frequency and duration of outages—helping to minimize losses in productivity and profitability, and keep business operations resilient in the face of disruptions.
Simple. Reliable.
