Internet outages are costing companies millions every month
To ensure resilience across the internet stack, organizations need to protect and manage four key areas: reachability, availability, reliability, and performance, according to Catchpoint.
The negative economic impact of incidents
51% report monthly losses of over $1 million due to internet outages or degradations, up from 43% in 2024. And 1 in 8 now lose over $10 million each month, a noticeable rise since last year.
One way to justify the cost of resilience is to recognize that you’re already paying for it, every time an incident happens. That impact is real, whether it shows up as downtime, lost revenue, or a damaged reputation.
Slow apps are dead apps
73% of businesses say fast, high-performing websites are critical to business success; 42% claim slow services might as well be offline.
Website performance needs to be a priority in any resilience strategy. At a minimum, sites should be as fast as competitors’. Slow load times can turn users away, cost sales, and hurt your brand.
Staying ahead means monitoring performance from the user’s perspective, setting goals, and making sure speed and reliability reach all the way to the edge. When performance is a core focus, businesses are better protected and better positioned to grow.
What to prioritize over the next 18 months
AI is a big deal, and for good reason. But beyond the hype, setting experience level objectives (XLOs) should be the top priority over the next 18 months. After all, anyone can say “invest in AI,” but it’s the experience that really counts.
When combined with recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs), XLOs help businesses handle disruptions and keep service levels high. Today, performance matters just as much as availability, and XLOs are the best way to see resilience through the customer’s eyes. Don’t let the AI buzz distract you, focus on experience level objectives first.
AI and the future of internet resilience
We now live and work in an environment where AI is no longer optional. It’s a key part of running a successful business, helping to keep essential applications running smoothly. When those applications go down or slow to a crawl, it can disrupt operations, hurt a company’s reputation, and lead to real financial losses.
A solid Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) strategy is essential for keeping AI systems running smoothly. Many organizations rely on it to know when their AI is slow or not working. When AI powers critical applications, any slowdown or outage is noticed right away. That’s why monitoring is key, it helps teams spot and fix problems, keeping everything running and avoiding disruptions.
Most organizations depend heavily on third-party AI services, especially when it comes to keeping their most important applications running smoothly. They prefer this over building their own solutions because third-party providers bring expert knowledge, can easily scale, and often cost less.
Monitoring third-party dependencies
Third-party dependencies must be monitored for service level adherence. Even though third parties monitor their respective services, organizations need to monitor themselves to proactively ensure reliability and performance since providers may not be forthright with service level-related incidents.
74% of respondents identify third-party services as highly critical to their resilience strategy. That’s why it’s important to keep a close eye on them to make sure everything runs smoothly and avoid any issues they might cause.
73% of organizations use IPM to keep an eye on third-party services, which often aren’t covered well by traditional performance tools. These gaps can create serious blind spots that put resilience at risk.
Resilience ownership remains unclear
The desire for a resilient internet stack to deliver seamless digital experiences can catalyze IT to business conversations. It is crucial for aligning IT and business on common goals, ensuring seamless operations and minimizing disruptions. Without alignment, resilience efforts are likely to fail.
72% identify CIO/CTOs as ultimately responsible for resilience, yet only 44% directly assign this responsibility to IT operations or Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), indicating significant room for improved organizational alignment.
“The industry is waking up to a new reality: slow is the new down. Sluggish websites and applications don’t just frustrate users, they drain revenue and damage reputations. In an era where downtime costs millions monthly and slow performance can sink even the most established brands, resilience is no longer optional. It’s a must-have. And at the center of it all is the internet stack,” said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO of Catchpoint.