Business stops when email dies. Deadlines are missed, orders aren't processed, communication halts – at stake is the company's reputation, financial performance and, ultimately, business success. Despite the impact, organizations continue to accept business interruptions frequently, on average close to twice a month for unplanned outages. Add to this that most companies rely upon users to notify them when email is down and the situation gets even worse.

A recent Osterman Research survey and report, commissioned by Neverfail, reported that 56 percent of the companies surveyed said they most often detect system downtime only after users complain they cannot send or receive email. Survey participants also said they experienced an average of 1.6 unplanned downtime incidents per month.

With email being the lifeblood of business communication, it stands to reason that companies must become more proactive in preventing email downtime.

Downtime costs are significant, with 40 percent of survey participants saying they could lose up to $50,000 per major email outage. Expand these costs by a year, and potential revenue lost equals nearly $1 million. With four out of five organizations using email to send business-critical content and documents and the number of emails growing by 20 percent each year, businesses need to better protect their email infrastructures from instances of downtime and gain better insight into the issues causing outages.

"Organizations are placing their future success at risk," said Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research. "The need for a continuous availability solution is clear, yet most organizations do not yet have such a solution in place." As mobile messaging systems, such as BlackBerry, become more widespread, companies should expect these systems to expose even more flaws in their current email protection strategies. The survey found that BlackBerry downtime incidents are relatively frequent with the causes ranging from user error, telecom or network problems to issues with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server itself.

"The emergence of email as the dominant communications platform signaled a paradigm shift in the way business is conducted, yet companies have been slow to recognize that email should have 24x7 availability. No longer is email just one of the forms of communication for business, it is the primary form of communication for a successful business," said Andrew Barnes, Senior VP of Corporate Development at Neverfail. "For global organizations to remain successful, they must have a stable, continuously available email environment. Neverfail's award-winning solutions provide our customers with the tools to predict future email issues before they arise, protect business-critical information at all times and enable employees to continue performing at peak productivity levels."

Neverfail monitors the health of an organization's entire server environment. In the event of any type disruption, from scheduled maintenance to a system outage, Neverfail can initiate a system failover to a secondary environment. If a failover is initiated, users remain connected to the email service. There is no disruption; whether using a handheld device or a desktop computer, email remains available with no reconnection required. Once the issues have been resolved, users are redirected back to the primary email environment to continue working. The entire process is transparent to the end user, allowing the IT staff to manage the actual cause of the disturbance while business continues.