What is a Downtime?
Definition
Period when system is unavailable for use due to maintenance, failures, or incidents. Downtime impacts productivity, revenue, and user satisfaction. Service level agreements define acceptable planned downtime windows for maintenance and maximum unplanned downtime thresholds with financial penalties for violations. RFPs should require vendors to disclose historical uptime percentages, maintenance windows, disaster recovery capabilities, and incident response procedures to assess availability risk.
Why This Matters
System unavailability impacts productivity, revenue, and user satisfaction. Service level agreements should define acceptable planned downtime windows and maximum unplanned downtime with financial penalties for violations. RFPs must require vendors to disclose historical uptime percentages, maintenance windows, disaster recovery capabilities, and incident response procedures. Downtime risk assessment should factor into vendor comparison and contract negotiation.
Related Terms
Showing semantically related terms from our RFP knowledge graph. Priority connections are highlighted.
Essential Connections
Uptime Guarantee
Implementation & Deployment
Vendor commitment to system availability expressed as percentage uptime (e.
Service Level Agreement
Pricing & Total Cost
Contractual commitments defining expected service quality including uptime guarantees, response times, resolution timeframes, and penalties for non-compliance.
Disaster Recovery
Security & Compliance
Plans and procedures for restoring IT systems and data after catastrophic events including backup strategies, recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, and business continuity plans.
Business Continuity
Security & Compliance
Strategies ensuring critical business operations continue during and after disruptions through redundant systems, alternative processes, emergency protocols, and crisis management plans.
Technical Support
Implementation & Deployment
Vendor assistance for troubleshooting, bug fixes, and system issues provided through ticketing systems, phone, chat, or email.
Incident Response
Security & Compliance
Structured approach to detecting, analyzing, containing, and recovering from security breaches including incident detection, assessment, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident review.
Performance
Software Features & Capabilities
Software speed and responsiveness measured by page load time, query response time, transaction processing speed, and system capacity.
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