Fifty-one percent of respondents to a survey conducted by internet performance monitoring firm Catchpoint reported monthly losses of over $1 million due to internet outages or degradations, according to a new report. That figure is up from 43% last year.
The report, which included input from 475 IT managers, directors, and executive-level decision-makers from diverse industries, also found that one in eight responding companies lose more than $10 million each month. The company called the figure “a noticeable rise” compared to 2024.
The report also said that 57% of organizations immediately notice when AI supporting critical applications fails or slows. This, the company says, points to the need for AI observability. Forty-three percent rely on alerts, complaints or delayed discovery, which the company sees as a suboptimal approach.
Seventy-three percent of those surveyed for the report said that fast, high-performing websites are critical to business success, while almost half — 42% — felt that slow internet services might as well be offline.
The survey found that 74% of respondents identify third-party services as highly critical to their resilience strategy. Catchpoint said the report findings highlight the importance of comprehensive external internet monitoring.
The report said that 73% of respondents prefer specialized internet performance monitoring (IPM) tools for safeguarding digital experiences, rather than broad, less targeted tools.
“If the Internet was already teetering on a fragile edge when we launched our inaugural Internet Resilience Report in June 2024, it’s even more so now,” Catchpoint CEO and co-founder Mehdi Daoudi said in a press release. “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.”
Other insights from the survey:
- 63% of respondents prioritize customer-centric service level objectives (SLOs) — or experience-level objectives (XLOs) — to anchor resilience efforts effectively.
- 72% of respondents identify CIO/CTOs as ultimately responsible for resilience, yet only 44% directly assign this to IT operations or site reliability engineering (SRE). Catchpoint says that this indicates significant opportunity for improved organizational alignment.
- 73% of respondents utilize IPM specifically to monitor third-party dependencies, which are services not adequately tracked by traditional APM tools. Catchpoint feels this focuses on critical blind spots that can compromise resilience.
The survey findings are complementary to the growing popularity of customer experience features. Service guarantees and price locks are the most popular of these. Providers seem to agree with the analysis of the report, recognizing that improving internet monitoring is a vital step in improving CX.
