Suffering downtime in mission-critical applications can cost businesses a substantial amount of money it has been claimed.

According to new research commissioned by Phurnace Software, web application downtime can cost firms up to $72,000.

The study, which was carried out by Hurwitz & Associates, polled 249 IT professionals on the subject and found that manual configuration errors are one of the main reasons downtime occurs.

"The constant need to modify customer-facing applications, combined with the complex configuration requirements of Web servers, requires a heavy workload," said Judith Hurwitz, president of Hurwitz & Associates.

She added: "IT management needs to have more predictable processes for managing web application changes to avoid unexpected downtime."

This could include the introduction of website monitoring services.

According to Symantec's Disaster Recovery Research Report, 94 per cent of businesses in the Asia Pacific region have had to implement their disaster recovery plan in the past year.

The report also showed that spend on website monitoring would remain constant at 53 per cent of firms next year.