As if the importance of a solid networking infrastructure wasn’t already clear, Avaya has released the results of a study that shows 80 percent of mid-to-large companies in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom experienced lost revenue in 2013 because of unscheduled network downtime.

Of those who experienced a loss of revenue because of downtime, the average financial impact to a company was $140,003. That was greater or lesser based on sector. For instance, the financial sector lost on average $540,358 per incident, which isn’t a number easily ignored.

Additionally, 82 percent of the organizations surveyed indicated they had experienced network downtime because of IT personnel making errors when configuring changes to the core of the network. In fact, one-fifth of all downtime was caused by core errors.

And it looks when there is downtime, companies are looking someone to blame. One in five companies indicated they had fired an IT employee because of a network downtime incident. In some sectors, including natural resources, utilities and telecommunications, that number rose to one in three.

There was no mention in the report as to how network downtime impacted the companies’ relationships with channel partners. Of course, the industry doesn’t use the phrase “one throat to choke” lightly, and more than one VAR has experienced a crumbling customer relationship because of downtime issues, regardless of whether whose fault it was.

Avaya hopes to make things easier on companies with its “agile, risk-reducing” networking technologies.

“Our customers immediately display a look of disbelief when we tell them that they do not need to configure the network core to roll out new services. Then, when we demonstrate the technology live that look of disbelief changes to one of excitement when they see what they can do,” said Marc Randall, senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Networks, in a prepared statement.