DevOps & SaaS Downtime: The High (and Hidden) Costs for Cloud-First Businesses

According to the 2024 CISO's Guide to DevOps Threats report by GitProtect, leading cloud DevOps services experienced 48 critical and major incidents, with total downtime and degraded performance amounting to over 4,755 hours in 2024. The article notes a 69% year‑over‑year increase, recording 156 critical and major incidents in 2025 and total downtime of more than 9,255 hours.

It highlights that upstream SaaS downtime can cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for cloud‑first organisations, with hourly downtime costs exceeding $300,000 for 90% of mid‑size and large firms and $1 million to over $5 million for Fortune 1000 companies. Additional sources cited include the Uptime Institute’s 2024 outage analysis, where over half of respondents reported outages costing more than $100,000 and 16% more than $1 million.

The piece emphasises that downtime erodes revenue, productivity, and trust, and stresses the need for a proactive resiliency strategy beyond relying solely on SaaS providers.