MIS 2501 FLASH RESEARCH PAPER #1

For each minute of downtime our company suffers, we lose $14,800. Last year, we experienced 10 outages, which resulted in about $25 million in downtime cost. This cost will reoccur if not treated properly. As the CTA of the company, by carefully analyzing our company’s capabilities, my team and I were able to come up with a solution to minimize the downtime costs in the future.

Currently, our company is running our ERP system with the Tier 1 Data Center. The Tier 1 Data Center gives our system 99.67% availability throughout the year, meaning the system will fail approximately 1,734 minutes per year. Because Tier 1 only has a single path for power and no redundant components, its reliability is not on par with other Tiers. I recommend our company to upgrade this system to Tier 3, which consists of multiple active power path as well as redundant components to increase its reliability to 99.98%.

It will cost $35 million for our company to upgrade our data system and will take one year to build. Though costly, within 3 years, we will be reducing costs by $13 million. By upgrading the company’s system, downtime per year will decrease to just 105 minutes decreasing total downtime cost by $24 million per year. In the past, it was adequate for our company to have Tier 1 data center. However, now that our business is growing, it is necessary for the company to upgrade its data center. Our company is growing at a fast pace and it will soon have presence all over the country and, potentially, the world. The Tier 3Data center allows our company to be ready for the worst situation and will be the most cost-effective upgrade.

Works Cited

Avelar, By Victor. Guidelines for Specifying Data Center Criticality / Tier Levels (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 25 Jan. 2015. <http://www.apcdistributors.com/white-papers/Architecture/WP-122%20Guidelines%20for%20Specifying%20Data%20Center%20Criticality%20-%20Tier%20Levels.pdf>.

“Data Center Tiers.” What Is Data Center Tiers? Webopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.

“Explain: Tier 1 / Tier 2 / Tier 3 / Tier 4 Data Center.” Linux Unix Tutorial for Beginners and Advanced Users NixCraft RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2015.