Every CIO is aware of the costs of downtime to the business. You know it’s a nightmare best avoided. The most recent stats from Gartner put the average cost of IT downtime at $5,600 per minute — but for some businesses, it’s as high $540,000 per minute. For stock trading platforms, the fallout from downtime can be in the billions of dollars. That doesn’t even include the costs of diverting IT staff from their regular work to deal with a downtime emergency. The cost to brand reputation and legal penalties can deal a mortal blow.

It’s important to understand that if you’re using multiple clouds, the potential for downtime increases. Why? Because there are more environments in the mix with often different technologies, and because moving things around between them can be error-prone. Even the most skilled IT administrator is still occasionally subject to a uniquely human failing: We make mistakes.