From a technology perspective, manufacturing traditionally has lagged behind other industries such as healthcare and financial services. Manufacturers’ data centers, on average, are older; many are antiquated. This can prove expensive; the average manufacturing revenue loss due to IT downtime is $196,000 per company per year, estimates Computer Associates Technologies.
But natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, which disrupted countless IT operations along the East Coast; security breaches; and the growing importance of cloud-computing capabilities are prompting manufacturers to examine their own core data centers and consider upgrading. Or they’re retaining a host service provider to handle the work.
Manufacturers that examine their IT operations well before a disaster are more prepared should one strike, especially if their mission-critical IT systems drive orders, customer service and platforms. They’re also drawn to revamping their IT operations by the potential cost savings of migrating to the cloud, which is a more highly resilient platform.
Larger manufacturers are turning more toward disk-based, disaster recovery services over tape backup. Tape backup triggered big problems for companies affected by Hurricane Sandy because they couldn’t physically get to the tapes. (Tape backup is still popular among manufacturers in general, however.)
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