Annual outage analysis 2025

Preventing outages continues to be a strategic priority for data center owners and operators. While infrastructure equipment — as well as the design and resiliency of data centers — has improved, the complexity of modern architectures and evolving external threats present new risks that operators must actively manage. This report analyzes recent data on the causes, frequency and consequences of IT and data center outages.

KEY FINDINGS

• For the fourth consecutive year, Uptime Intelligence research suggests that overall outage frequency and the general level of reported severity continue to decline. However, cyber incidents are rising and often have severe, lasting impacts.
• In 2024, a higher proportion of publicly reported outages — via news, social media and self-reported — tracked by Uptime Intelligence had severe impacts compared with previous years.
• More than half (54%) of the respondents to Uptime’s 2024 annual survey say their most recent significant, serious or severe outage cost more than $100,000, with one in five saying that their most recent outage cost more than $1 million.
• Power issues remain the most common cause of serious and severe data center outages. However, outages caused by IT and network-related issues are increasing.
• The failure of staff to follow procedures has become an even greater cause of outages than in the previous year, suggesting a major opportunity to reduce incidents through training and process review.
• Data relating to outages should be treated skeptically. All methodologies used to track the frequency, severity and costs of outages are subject to uncertainty, partly because of a lack of transparency and reliable reporting mechanisms.