Network delays cost businesses £500 million

IT users could be losing more than three working days per year due to network delays, wasting more than 500 million in lost productivity.

So says research by IT solutions and services provider Dimension Data, which also found that UK network performance was below the global average. Around the world delays were between two and three days compared to over three days in the UK.

British IT users were said to be losing an average of 54 minutes on network log delays, 25 minutes per month on email and 19 minutes on file transfers.

"The average delay a British IT user experiences each year is particularly startling when one multiplies it across an entire enterprise," said Gary Middleton, business development manager at Dimension Data.

"In an organisation of 500 employees, we estimate that this level of lost time and productivity could be costing the enterprise 170,000 if not more - per year," he added.

VoIP and video showed lower time delays, but these advanced applications have a low tolerance for delays so any type of time lapse was a problem.

Middleton said that this wasted investment meant users would be unable to enjoy the benefits as it made the technology unusable.