You are not alone in that wonderment.
But usually it is a case of do what I say not what I do.
Could you make them money or save them money? Sure.
Do they care? No.
Why?
Because unless you are saving someone big money, 10's of millions at least. It doesn't register on their mind.

You can say it's free and they won't take it.
Well unless you are Microsoft.

Like many "technology evangelists" you have presented a very myopic discussion here. There is no "one size fits all" cost of downtime so you're basing your assumptions from a potentially narrow point of view. Most CIOs or IT Executives (and I am one) have numerous "evangelists" (read that "vendors") trying to convince us that they have a solution that can save us millions by optimizing our telephone contracts, saving downtime, providing better BPM, etc. But CIOs and the teams they lead can only do so much at once so everything must be prioritized. Many IT teams today are running efficient operations and CIOs are focusing much of their attention on the business...how can I bring technology and innovation into my business and really make a difference? Are they thinking about IT Operations and being efficient? Sure they are but frankly there are probably higher-value items for them to focus on at this time.

Remember that you're competing for a limited resource, a CIO's time and attention. They need to allocate that time wisely and if you're not at the top of their list, then perhaps they're focusing on something of even more value to their organization. You've postulated that perhaps they don't know the cost of downtime, well perhaps they are actually very aware of that cost and the solutions they have in-place meet their business need. I know that's the case in my organization.

Steve (sdwhite), you hit the nail on the head… Of course you know the cost of down time, you probably also know how much a helpdesk ticket costs you… Why? Because you’re a smart, results oriented CIO who knows how to deliver results and manage your IT organization as a Service Organization… (see my other post on IT Service focus http://advice.cio.com/brian_flora/the_service_management_approach_to_it).

Unfortunately most CIOs don’t. I sympathize with the author; maybe your tool really makes a difference. Rest assured, eventually guys like Steve will figure its value. When that happens and if your tool provides the value advertised, I’m certain your outlook on the state of affairs will change.

I’m sort of in a similar situation with the product I build – a real time analytics tool that helps solve complexity in the IT infrastructure by correlating the behavior of IT and business metrics to find out important information that leads to reduction in MTTI/MMTR. Did I mention that we are even able to be predictive about re-occurrences of problems because we build a “pattern of symptoms” (we call it a problem fingerprint) on the first occurrence of a problem, capture it and then look for re-occurrences in real time, giving you up to 40 minutes of forewarning to react? We do this real time and automatically. Wow – sounds pretty cool right… yet we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of the market and one wonders why companies are not reacting faster and incorporating this technology in their set of solutions and best practices... Why?... Because they either do not know it exists or they don’t believe it is possible. However more and more CIOs are figuring out that complexity is the culprit and that typical deterministic monitoring solutions cannot move the needle and provide answers. As they do, I trust they will be very loud in singing the praises of this technology.

So have faith, Anonymous!... If you have impacting technology – it will eventually be noticed.

Adrian Tudor
VP Engineering
Integrien Corporation