Disasters can come in many shapes and sizes. At your local movie theater, big budget disaster flicks can include earthquakes, tsunamis, and even aliens and rampaging dinosaurs. But in the world of business technology, while disaster may seem more mundane and not come with expensive special effects, the costs of technology-related disasters can be very big budget as well.

For any organization whose technology infrastructure isn’t up to par, disasters are pretty much inevitable. And this is especially true for businesses whose networks are relying on out-of-date and easily overwhelmed technology.

Sometimes downtime is caused by real disasters such as hurricanes. And sometimes user error or poor planning can lead to IT infrastructure either going down or performing very poorly. But as emerging technologies continue to demand more and more from business networks, some organizations are finding that downtime and disasters are being caused by old-school network infrastructures that can’t meet the requirements of modern technology trends.

But no matter how a downtime event occurs, the cost will be high for the business experiencing it. Aberdeen research has shown that an hour of downtime can cost businesses an average of $160,000 (up to over $700,000 for large enterprises), and there’s a 20 percent chance that a business will experience downtime that can cost over $2 million.

And in the case of downtime caused by struggling and out-of-date network systems, there’s no real reason for organizations to be facing these risks. By upgrading their networking infrastructure to take advantage of leading technologies and capabilities, businesses can not only avoid downtime, but actually leverage new technologies to improve innovation and boost business.

For a company with out-of-date networking, big data means floods of information that will bring the network to its knees. But an organization with modern networking systems can not only handle this flood — they can get the most out of their big data investment to improve analytics and business intelligence. Or take private cloud and virtualization. Poor networks limit the flexibility and efficiency of these key technologies while up-to-date network infrastructures let businesses get the most out of it.

The same is true for nearly any emerging trend in technology, whether it’s the Internet of Things, video and rich communications, or virtual networks and Software Defined Networking. An old-school network will not only limit your ability to leverage these technologies, but it will actually suffer under the new loads and demands of these technologies, leading to costly downtime.

While it can be fun to sit in a theater with a bucket of popcorn and watch the action hero rush to safety from a major disaster, in businesses, there’s nothing fun about a down or even slow network. Smart businesses understand that by upgrading their overall network infrastructure, they can avoid downtime and networking disasters and keep the big budgets where they belong, namely in improving the organization’s bottom line.