Systems
Downtime
Plain English
When a glossarySystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term is not working.
Definition
Downtime is a period when a glossarySystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term is unavailable or not functioning as intended, measured against expected availability. Its real cost usually extends past the outage itself into support load and lost glossaryTrustUser confidence that a product, service, or organisation will do what it promises.Open glossary term.
In practice
Tracked to understand glossarySystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term glossaryReliabilityReliability is the ability of a system to consistently perform as expected without failure.Open glossary term and glossaryServiceA service is a component or function that performs a specific task within a system.Open glossary term disruptions.
In context
The cost is rarely the outage itself. It is the support load, the abandoned transactions, and the users who tried once and did not come back.
The reality
Downtime often results in lost revenue, glossaryTrustUser confidence that a product, service, or organisation will do what it promises.Open glossary term, and user frustration.
Compared with
Downtime vs Degradation
Downtime is unavailable. Degradation is available but worse: slower, or with glossaryFeatureA feature is a specific piece of functionality within a product that delivers value to users. It represents something users can do or experience as part of the overall product.Open glossary term disabled. Designing for graceful degradation turns outages into inconveniences.
FAQ
Common questions
A few practical answers to the questions that usually come up around this term.
What is downtime?
It is when a glossarySystemA system is a collection of interconnected components that work together to achieve a specific function or outcome.Open glossary term is unavailable.
Why is downtime important?
It affects users and glossaryBusiness PerformanceBusiness performance measures how effectively a company achieves its goals, typically through financial, operational, and customer metrics.Open glossary term.
What causes downtime?
Failures, updates, or glossaryInfrastructureInfrastructure refers to the underlying systems and resources that support applications and services.Open glossary term issues.
How do you reduce downtime?
Through redundancy and monitoring.
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