When your network goes down, everything stops.
Orders freeze, calls drop, and transactions fail. And the longer it lasts, the more it costs in revenue, productivity, and reputation.
For businesses that rely on cloud systems, customer-facing apps, or multiple locations, even a short outage can ripple across the entire operation. This downtime is estimated to cost businesses nearly $9,000 per minute.
Downtime isn’t rare. It’s a constant risk. And traditional networks built around single connections, static paths, and delayed recovery weren’t designed to handle it.
That’s where SD-WAN solutions make the difference, turning your network from a single point of failure into a system that adapts, recovers, and keeps your business moving. To understand the value, you have to look at what downtime really costs.
Measuring the true cost of downtime
Downtime doesn’t just impact IT. It disrupts everything. When systems go down, sales stall, employees can’t access systems, and customers can’t reach your team. And the longer it lasts, the more it compounds into missed revenue, delayed fulfillment, rising support queues, and frustrated users.
For multi-site businesses, the damage scales fast. A single outage at a branch can affect supply chains, internal systems, or customer-facing platforms across the entire organization. In customer-facing industries, the cost can be even higher, measured in lost trust, churn, and long-term impact to a brand’s reputation.
According to ITIC, over 90% of small-to-medium and large enterprises now face downtime expenses above $300,000 per hour, with nearly 50% reporting losses exceeding $1 million per hour.
Here’s what just a few minutes offline can mean for your business:
- Revenue lost during transactions, purchases, or payment processing
- Productivity stalled as employees lose access to the systems they rely on
- Customer frustration due to delayed service or missed communications
- Increased IT workload from scrambling to diagnose and resolve issues
Downtime may feel like a short-term inconvenience. But for many businesses, it’s a recurring operational risk (and one that’s increasingly avoidable).
Industry impact: How downtime disrupts critical operations
No matter the sector, downtime hits hard—and fast. But the type of disruption varies. In some industries, it’s lost revenue at the register. In others, it’s missed care, compliance risk, or delayed shipments.
What they all share is this: when the network goes down, the business does too.
Here’s how downtime plays out across key industries:
| Industry | What fails | Business impact |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | POS systems, inventory sync, loyalty platforms | Lost sales, poor customer experience, long recovery queues |
| Healthcare | EMRs, care coordination, scheduling systems | Delayed treatment, patient risk, regulatory exposure |
| Logistics | Tracking, route planning, dispatch tools | Tracking, route planning, dispatch tools Missed deliveries, supply chain delays, rising fuel costs |
| Manufacturing | IoT devices, production systems, vendor comms | Stalled lines, missed quotas, downstream fulfillment issues |
| Finance | Trading systems, client portals, payment rails | Transaction loss, trust erosion, regulatory non-compliance |
| Hospitality | Booking engines, check-in kiosks, room controls | Guest frustration, lost bookings, negative reviews |
| Education | LMS platforms, classroom AV, admin tools | Interrupted lessons, disengaged students, missed deadlines |
| Professional services | File access, client systems, communication apps | Lost billable hours, delayed projects, reputational risk |
| Call centers | VoIP, CRM, ticketing, live chat | Queue backlogs, abandoned calls, SLAs missed |
Downtime doesn’t discriminate. The systems may change, but the result is the same: lost time, lost money, and a growing gap between what your customers expect and what your network can deliver.
Why traditional networks fall short
Legacy networks were never built for always-on business. Most rely on static connections, outdated hardware, and manual processes that can’t keep up with today’s speed, scale, or expectations. When outages hit, these networks fail slowly (and recover even slower).
One connection, one point of failure
Most branch locations still rely on a single internet connection. If that link goes down due to weather, construction, or a provider issue.
There’s nothing to fall back on. No rerouting or backup path, just downtime.
MPLS and VPNs can’t keep up
Older architectures like MPLS and traditional VPNs lack real-time failover and intelligent routing. They were designed for stable, centralized environments, not for cloud traffic, hybrid work, or the unpredictable nature of broadband.
Diagnosing outages is slow, and resolving them is even slower.
No visibility, no control
With legacy setups, IT teams are often in the dark. There’s limited visibility into what’s happening at the edge, and no centralized way to prioritize traffic or apply updates.
Outages become support fire drills, with no easy way to isolate the problem or respond in real time.
How SD-WAN improves business continuity and network resilience
SD-WAN is built for uptime. It gives your network the ability to adapt in real time, rerouting traffic, avoiding outages, and prioritizing critical applications without IT having to lift a finger.
It continuously monitors all available connections, like fiber, broadband, LTE, or 5G, and chooses the best path for each workload. If the primary link fails, SD-WAN automatically shifts traffic to a backup connection with no disruption.
Here’s what that means in practice:
- Automatic failover keeps systems running even if a connection drops
- App prioritization ensures voice, video, and transactional traffic always gets through
- Load balancing distributes traffic to prevent congestion
- No manual intervention required. Your network responds before users even notice a problem
Instead of reacting to outages, SD-WAN helps your business avoid them entirely.
Related Content: SD-WAN for businesses: A complete guide to unlocking network efficiency and growth
Momentum’s multi-vendor SD-WAN Solutions
Momentum doesn’t push a single SD-WAN platform—we curate the best.
Our multi-vendor portfolio includes four carefully vetted solutions, each selected for its ability to deliver reliable performance and enterprise-grade resiliency.
We help you choose the right fit based on your infrastructure, security needs, and performance goals.
| Solution | Best for |
|---|---|
| Juniper Mist AI | Businesses that need fast deployment, intelligent automation, and a cost-efficient path to scale. |
| Cisco Meraki | Cisco Meraki Teams already using Cisco tools looking to simplify and extend their cloud-managed environment. |
| Cato Networks | Security-driven organizations ready for SD-WAN and SASE in a single, unified platform. |
| Arista Networks | Large enterprises with high bandwidth demands and advanced routing needs across global operations. |
Each option in our lineup is fully supported by Momentum’s deployment, optimization, and lifecycle management, so you get more than great tech. You get a network that’s tailored to how your business runs.
Related Content: Does your business need managed SD-WAN services?
Why choose Momentum for always-on connectivity
You need a network that just works—everywhere, all the time, without dragging your team into the weeds. That’s exactly what Momentum delivers.
- No more firefighting: We fully manage your SD-WAN environment, from design to deployment to daily optimization, so your IT team can focus on strategy, not support tickets.
- Uptime by design: With real-time failover, intelligent traffic steering, and proactive monitoring, we help you maintain performance, even when circuits fail.
- Ready to scale: Whether you’re managing five locations or five hundred, we support hybrid, remote, and off-net sites with ease. There’s no extra infrastructure required.
When uptime is critical and complexity is the enemy, Momentum gives you the control, reliability, and flexibility to stay connected and keep moving forward.
Related Content: How to get started with an SD-WAN solution
Stop letting downtime call the shots. Keep your business running with SD-WAN
Downtime doesn’t just break systems—it breaks momentum. And in a business built on speed, service, and always-on operations, even a short outage can have lasting consequences.
SD-WAN changes that. With the right platform and the right partner, you gain a network that adapts in real time, keeps critical systems online, and scales with your business without adding complexity.
Momentum brings the technology, expertise, and infrastructure to make that a reality.
Ready to build a network that works when you need it most? Let’s talk about an SD-WAN solution that keeps you always online.
Healthcare & medical
Secure and compliant patient communication, intelligent call routing to clinics or departments, streamlined scheduling workflows, and seamless handoffs between care teams.
Financial services
Real-time client support with call recording and audit trails, fraud and risk escalation workflows, compliant communications across voice and chat, and CRM-integrated account servicing.
Professional services
Centralized communication hubs for client accounts, streamlined updates and approvals via Teams, improved coordination across remote teams, and time-saving integration with project management tools.
Retail & e-commerce
High-volume order and return handling, dynamic routing during peak seasons, personalized support via integrated purchase history, and faster agent onboarding across distributed locations.
Technology & SaaS
24/7 global support desks with intelligent escalation, real-time incident response, unified communication between product and support teams, and integration with platforms like Salesforce or Zendesk.
Government & public sector
Citizen service centers with intelligent queueing, multilingual support built into workflows, secure remote staffing, and real-time reporting to track service performance and transparency metrics.
Education (K-12 & post-secondary)
Automated routing for admissions and registrar inquiries, real-time student services across departments, virtual advising sessions, and consistent experiences across phone, chat, and email.
Manufacturing & logistics
Order and delivery status updates, plant-to-warehouse coordination, vendor communication tracking, and intelligent call flows to reduce missed handoffs and downtime.
