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May 9, 2023
In 2023, Digibee held our second Company State Integration Survey, reaching 1,000 CTOs, CIOs, system architects, and web developers across North America.
In each blog post in this series, we examine one of the report’s key findings, as identified by your peers. Today we dive deeper into the impact of system downtime when implementing an integration platform.
The Challenge: System Downtime
What’s worse than dealing with the digital transformation challenges of legacy systems, shifting priorities, interdepartmental communication issues, and inadequate resources? System downtime.
at Digibee's 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report Our respondents reported a sharp increase in system downtime that was significant, impactful, and more than expected when compared to the 2022 survey data. Many IT issues contribute to the length and severity of a system’s downtime, from reliance on outdated integration technology that may be run in-house, on-premises, or using legacy systems, to a lack of monitoring or a slow and inefficient deployment process.
When systems fail… costs increase
Successful digital transformation depends on building a system that is as reliable as it is fast. Every time a system experiences downtime, the business takes a significant financial hit. As such, an unreliable integration can cost a company more money than it saves through other efficiencies.
The cost of downtime has increased significantly for 90% of SMBs and large enterprises, with 44% reporting that a single hour of downtime could cost them more than $1 million.
- Information Technology Intelligence Consulting, Cost per hour of downtime, 2022
Financial cost can take many forms, both during the integration process and after the new integration is deployed, including:
Bloated integration schedules
At the beginning of integration, a common business goal is to accelerate digital transformation as much as possible. When asked how long they believed their integration would take, our 2023 State of Enterprise Integration Report found that those just starting their onboarding journey estimated it would take 1 to 3 months. In contrast, those who completed a standard onboarding reported it took 3 to 9 months; a 300% increase! That’s a serious downgrade in optimism for those who apparently learned the hard way.
While IT downtime is not the primary cause of schedule disparity, downtime that occurs during the implementation phase can easily become a major contributor to schedule erosion, especially with an inexperienced (or understaffed) in-house team. This happens by complicating the vital feedback loop of test integrations, as developers are forced to search for the source of each failure and fix it.
And remember, where integration timelines extend, costs also extend to the rest of the business. At the very least, the company must keep its old, inefficient system around for longer. Worst case scenario: IT downtime also impacts core business systems.
How long does it take your team to implement a standard integration?
Inability to conduct business transactions
Once your integration is live, you may feel like your integration journey is over. Unfortunately, performance issues arise when deployed in the real world, when integrations (and all the services they connect to) need to scale to accommodate peak times. Of course, if the original integration development testing also resulted in a patchwork of fixes, those patches will remain as weak points in the system.
It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine how system downtime due to live integrations costs businesses money: by preventing customers from accessing services or products. For example, if a POS system integration with a payment provider goes down, your customer now needs to have cash on hand or they can’t purchase your products or services. If your outage is with your ecommerce platform, your customer may be left without purchasing options.
The only thing that continues is your overhead, with idle vendors, inventory sitting idle, and your operating expenses continuing to pile up.
Customer Satisfaction and Reputation
Your ability to satisfy your customers poses a distinctly different but equally costly problem: a blow to your professional reputation means an incalculable loss in future sales.
Whether you’re a service provider whose IT downtime has taken down your client’s website (also…hello, SLA penalties!), and a beneficial experience. And just like happy customers, unhappy customers tell their friends.
Successful Digital Transformation with iPaaS
3 Benefits of Using Digibee's iPaaS for Your Digital Transformation
Whether rebuilding previous integrations or starting from scratch, iPaaS plays a big role in your digital transformation journey. A successful strategy is well thought out, minimizing system downtime and providing contingency plans for unexpected disruptions during integration, deployment and beyond. Digibee’s iPaaS is an invaluable part of the plan, providing expertise and resilience in:
1. Accelerating System Integrations
Digibee mitigates the risk of system downtime during integration implementation accelerating digital transformation, keeping the transition period short and well-defined. Leveraging Digibee’s reusable capsules makes it easy to leverage off-the-shelf solutions or modify them as needed.
The technology is faster and much less error-prone compared to building all the integrations from scratch, and the IT learning curve is minimal with Digibee's Customer onboarding in three support steps.
2. Reducing downtime during integration deployment
Downtime often occurs during implementation, disrupting business and exposing customers to a negative experience.
Digibee’s iPaaS minimizes – and often eliminates – downtime by running the new system alongside the legacy system for a seamless transition. Our platform manages development, testing, and production environments through DevOps and includes a fully automated deployment and publishing pipeline. This concurrency eliminates risk and worry when it’s time to make a switch.
3. IT Maintenance and Preventative Measures
Once the integration is up and running, Digibee’s iPaaS keeps everything running smoothly. Each pipeline in the deployment is completely isolated within a Kubernetes infrastructure, optimized for each specific use case. Failure of one pipeline does not affect the execution of another, and a new instance can be started in less than a second, drastically reducing system downtime and other IT issues.
Valuable preventative measures such as configurable security systems, 24/7 monitoring and simplified error handling allow the company to react immediately at the first sign of trouble, before disruptions can occur.
With so many challenges to overcome, it’s no surprise that more than 70% of leaders surveyed are actively planning to adopt, supplement or replace their integration technology in 2023.
Find out how Digibee can help
Get the full story on what’s changed and how your peers are mobilizing enterprise integration in 2023. Download the free Digibee 2023 State of Enterprise Integration report today for all research results and analysis.
