Cloud Outage Severity Up Dramatically in 2023, Frequency also Greater: Parametrix
Severe cloud outage events more numerous and lasted much longer in 2023.
NEW YORK —April 30, 2024— Cloud service interruption events among the “big three” cloud providers happened more often and lasted much longer in 2023 than the year prior, according to Managing Cloud Outage Risk: Cloud Downtime in 2023, the latest annual cloud outage report from Parametrix, the leading provider of cloud monitoring, modeling, and insurance services.
The total number of events of all severities observed by the firm’s proprietary Parametrix Cloud Monitoring System (PCMS) increased by 43% to 638 during the year. The number of “Critical” interruptions – the most severe events – increased by 38%, and their total duration rose from 133.5 hours to 205.3 hours. Six of these critical event outages lasted more than ten hours, and three exceeded 20 hours. Interruptions of MS Azure services accounted for the bulk of downtime, while Amazon Web Services proved the most reliable of the big three.
The majority of events by number and duration happened in North America, but major Critical interruptions also occurred in European, Asian, and Rest of World regions.
Monitoring by Parametrix is incredibly granular, allowing determination of the specific types of services (like “compute” or “storage”) which may not function at a given moment. PCMS is therefore able to report on the total duration of lost functionality of different service types during an outage. Compute functions were offline for 134.6 hours during the 40 Critical interruptions, the longest of any service type., but a Aggregate unavailability of all service types increased 54% in 2023.
“This year’s data reveals stark truths: severe cloud outage events were more numerous in 2023, and they lasted much longer,” said Yonatan Hatzor, co-founder and CEO of Parametrix. “This highlights the clear need for cloud-dependent companies to take effective risk-transfer measures, and for insurers to manage the potential downtime disasters which may be accumulating undetected against their balance sheets. That’s what we’re here for.”
About Parametrix
Parametrix, the leading provider of cloud monitoring, modeling, and insurance services, is a Managing General Agent and Lloyd’s Coverholder based out of New York that underwrites parametric insurance against digital supply chain interruption. Parametrix uses proprietary technology to continuously monitor the performance of a variety of third-party IT services across the globe, and to collect granular data on service interruptions. It uses that data to assess risk, provide instant insurance quotations, and to streamline claims payments, which are delivered within days. Parametrix policies are backed by major A-rated global insurers.
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