Zero Downtime: The New Standard for Enterprise File Transfers

Author: Ed Ybarra, Product Manager, Fortra MFT

For more than 90% of medium to large enterprises, an hour of downtime can cost over $300,000 in lost productivity and business revenue, and this downtime leads to an average of 545 hours of lost staff productivity per year in large organizations. A robust file exchange solution can help.

Uptime is one of the most critical performance metrics for modern enterprises, serving as a direct indicator of reliability and business continuity. In today’s digital-first economy, customers, partners, and employees expect uninterrupted access to systems and services, making availability a cornerstone of trust and a true competitive differentiator—especially for regulated or high-volume industries.  

Even brief downtime can lead to operational bottlenecks, lost revenue, and reputational damage, with sectors like finance, healthcare, and e-commerce facing millions in potential losses. To meet these high stakes, organizations are investing in resilient infrastructure and proactive monitoring to keep uptime as close to 100% as possible—because in an always-on marketplace, availability is mission-critical.

Uptime Expectations: The Bar is High for Enterprise Organizations

According to a poll by ITIC, 90% of enterprises require at least 99.99% uptime for mission-critical systems. As this illustration shows, even small differences can mean big changes in terms of downtime.

• 99% uptime = about 3.65 days of downtime per year
• 99.9% uptime = about 8.76 hours per year
• 99.99% uptime = about 52.56 minutes per year
• 99.999% uptime = about 5.26 minutes per year

Why Downtime Is More Than an IT Problem: The Business Impact

Preventing downtime delivers a host of benefits by avoiding:

1. Lost productivity: Large organizations lose an average of 545 hours per year in productivity from downtime incidents. (Solutions Review, 2023). Even planned downtime impacts dependent systems and partners.
2. Financial costs: Whether downtime creates the inability to send or receive files or data is lost, organizations start to lose money the second a system is unavailable or down. Costly maintenance windows, overtime labor, and manual work arounds add to the hidden costs to lost productivity and SLA penalties. (According to the ITIC 2024 Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey, 98% of organizations report a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000, and 81% say it exceeds $300,000.)
3. Compliance risks: Missed security patches and audit gaps can result in substantial penalties from regulating agencies. Scheduling updates that introduce downtime can create operational gaps and risk being in compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001.
4. Security gaps: With unexpected downtime, employees may turn to unsecure solutions such as storage devices like USB drives to transfer critical files or familiar consumer sites such as Dropbox or SharePoint, both of which risk exposing sensitive data. Plus, updates can introduce risks from failed installs, data corruption, or outages if sessions are inactive.  
5. Customer experience: Industries such as healthcare, banking, and retail can have their workflows and services severely impacted, even with mere minutes of downtime.

Industry Impact of Downtime  

While organizations across the business spectrum feel the pain of lost uptime, certain industries see a greater impact, including:

• Financial services: Money talks, and when payments are delayed due to downtime, money (or the lack thereof) screams. Downtime impacts 24/7 expectation of payment settlements, batch trading windows, highly sensitive customer data transfers, and regulatory expectations of uptime
• Healthcare: Patient care disruptions. Whether it’s a delay in sending vital imaging or healthcare records are paused, the well-being of patients requires reliable uptime. Downtime impacts HL7 (Health Level Seven) standards and workflows as well as patient care systems that rely on real-time data exchanges.
• Manufacturing: Production line stoppages can reverberate across supply chain ecosystems. Downtime impacts ERP MES, and supplier communications that depend on continuous file exchange and global production lines that cannot stop.
• Government/Defense: This industry sector requires immediate security patching without operational disruption. Downtime impacts classified data movement and strict patching requirements.
• Retail and E-Commerce: Uptime is critical during peak seasons such as holidays and sales events. Downtime impacts real-time inventory/POS updates as well as millions of financial transactions.

Factors Leading to Downtime

“Enterprises operate today with myriad interconnected systems, devices and networks. While all of this connectivity is fantastic for creating more efficiency and easier access to the data that turns the wheels of organizations, it also greatly expands the attack surface for bad actors and increases the number of points that are vulnerable across an enterprise,” said Paul Milne, Fortra MFT Team Lead.  

“Even a few minutes of downtime can disrupt workflows, violate SLAs, and erode customer trust,” added Milne. This downtime can be the result of any number of factors, each capable of disrupting operations, damaging reputations, and costing thousands per minute. A high-availability environment can help mitigate factors such as human error, hardware failures, software bugs and unpatched systems, power outages, and more.

How Secure Managed File Transfer Solutions Solve These Challenges

Secure, Managed File Transfer (MFT) provides proactive, automated, and secure solutions to eliminate downtime risks. And solutions like Globalscape EFT, which offers a Zero Downtime Upgrade adds the extra assurance needed via:

• Automation to Eliminate Human Error: Event rules and advanced workflows can automate file transfers and workflows, reducing manual intervention and mistakes.  
• High Availability and Zero Downtime Upgrades: Active-active clustering can ensure continuous service during maintenance and upgrades without interruption and without costly workarounds.  
• Enterprise-Grade Security: Encryption (AES-256, TLS), compliance controls (HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS), and advanced authentication protect against downtime posed by cyber threats.  
• Centralized Management and Visibility: Real-time monitoring, auditing, and reporting keep IT teams in control, reducing risk and improving compliance.  
• Remote Agents: Implementing a remote agent can secure transfers across distributed systems, ensuring resilience even in high-latency environments or when critical systems are offline. 

High-Availability (HA) Clustering and Impact on Downtime

With a HA environment you can take advantage of the capabilities of Globalscape EFT’s Zero Downtime Upgrade.  With this upgrade, clusters can be updated without taking systems offline, ensuring secure file transfers and workflows remain operational 24/7. Combined with centralized management, HA enterprises can establish a robust foundation for business continuity, scalability, and compliance. 

EFT HA Active/Active 

High-availability clustering uses an active-active HA architecture where multiple servers operate as a unified system, sharing configurations and data for seamless failover and load balancing. This architecture assists with needed infrastructure upgrades by eliminating single points of failure, maintaining uptime during maintenance or disruptions, and supporting critical SLAs.  

EFT HA Active/Active + DR 

Globalscape’s Zero Downtime Upgrade:

With the Zero Downtime Upgrade in the high-availability environment, administrators can upgrade their HA nodes with zero downtime, meaning you can upgrade a cluster without stopping all nodes simultaneously, and connections to the server are accepted even during the upgrade process. Admins can schedule upgrades during normal business hours, reducing overtime and pressure on staff and improving reliability.  

• Available in v8.1 and newer
• Enables live upgrades without disconnecting session or halting transfers
• Eliminates maintenance windows and SLA exposure

Six Benefits of Zero Downtime Upgrade for File Transfers

1. Continuous Availability: Ensures critical file transfers and workflows remain operational 24/7
2. Reduced Operational Risk: Avoids failed installs and data loss as active sessions are maintained throughout the process
3. Improved Compliance and Security: Ensures that systems stay current with the latest security patches and compliance updates  
4. Cost Efficiency: No overtime or workaround costs are incurred
5. Business Agility: Faster adoption of new features without disruption to support scalability and modernization initiatives 

Quantifiable Business Impact of Zero Downtime

Organizations across industries are proving that zero downtime is a measurable business differentiator. Consider a Top 10 U.S. bank processing over 30,000 daily transfers. Previously, upgrades meant 4 to 6 hours of downtime, costing roughly $175K per maintenance cycle and consuming 40+ hours of IT labor annually. With Globalscape’s Zero Downtime Upgrade, those outages dropped to zero, preserving operational throughput and freeing IT resources for strategic initiatives.

A global healthcare network saw similar gains. Before implementing EFT with HA and the Zero Downtime Upgrade, their upgrade windows delayed critical medical imaging and HL7 data movement, impacting patient care. Post-upgrade, these upgrades occur seamlessly, delivering zero delays and reinforcing clinician trust. In manufacturing and supply chain environments, where 24/7 production is non-negotiable, the upgrade eliminated overnight upgrade windows entirely—cutting IT overtime by 60 to 80% and ensuring uninterrupted global operations.

Customer success stories echo this impact: A large insurance provider met strict compliance deadlines without taking systems offline; a logistics enterprise upgraded during peak season without disrupting 4,000 plus trading partners; and a state government agency maintained continuous citizen services while removing costly overnight maintenance.

Each of these examples underscores a powerful truth: zero downtime isn’t optional. Instead, it is essential for resilience, compliance, and competitive advantage.

Evaluating Downtime Claims in File Transfer Solutions 

When enterprises are comparing MFT providers, vague promises like “minimal downtime” should be a red flag. These claims often mask service interruptions that can truly disrupt critical workflows and cost thousands per hour. Instead, look for providers that deliver “true” zero downtime to ensure upgrades and maintenance occur without grinding operations to a halt.  

Equally important is real-time session preservation, which keeps active transfers running seamlessly during updates, and simplified rollback capabilities that allow quick recovery if issues arise. These features, offered by Globalscape, set a higher standard for operational resilience—because in a world where uptime equals trust, anything less than zero downtime is a compromise. “In a world where uptime is non-negotiable, organizations that embrace zero downtime strategies and a high-availability architecture gain not just operational continuity, but a competitive edge,” added Milne.  

Related Reading: 7 Questions to Ask When Choosing a File Transfer Solution 

Zero Downtime as a Strategic Imperative 
As digital transformation accelerates, upgrading systems without disruption has become essential for operational resilience, compliance, and customer trust. Zero downtime strategies enable organizations to innovate confidently, maintain continuity, and protect revenue in an always-on world. Globalscape EFT, with its Zero Downtime Upgrade, sets the standard for uninterrupted operations, helping businesses stay secure, compliant, and competitive. If uptime is mission-critical, zero downtime should be your baseline.