Mission Critical: Overview, Examples, FAQ

What Is Mission Critical?

A mission critical task, service, or system is essential to the operation or business. It is indispensable to continuing operations.

Uninterrupted electrical service is an example of a mission critical service for businesses and consumers.

Key Takeaways

• A mission critical task or process is essential to an organization.
• The phrase is often used to describe information technology and utility infrastructure.
• If a business operation cannot be interrupted without stopping production, it is mission critical.
• A business-critical task is a priority for long-term survival or success.
• Uninterrupted electrical service is an example of a mission critical service.

Understanding Mission Critical

Mission critical refers to any essential service necessary for normal operations. If a business operation cannot be interrupted without stopping production, it is considered mission critical. Here are some examples of mission critical tasks/processes:

• Databases and process control software are mission critical to a company that runs on mainframes or workstations.
• Emergency call centers, computerized hospital patient records, data storage centers, stock exchanges, and other operations dependent on computer and communication systems have to be protected against breakdowns due to mission-critical functions.

In each case, the failure of a mission critical service can cause severe disruption of services, financial losses, and danger to people.

Mission critical may also describe an idea, innovation, or strategic change that is key to the future prosperity of a business.

While many examples refer to technical failures, mission critical tasks or processes are not always technical.

The phrase is also used to describe an idea, innovation, or strategic change in direction that a business identifies as key to its ongoing prosperity. In the 1990s, some newspapers and magazines identified the transition to internet delivery as mission critical. Many publications that did not transition to internet delivery failed to survive.

Mission Critical vs. Business Critical

Some businesses differentiate between mission critical and business critical. A business critical task or process may be key to long-term success and survival. The failure of a mission critical task or process immediately stops a business or process.

While mission critical tasks are necessary for operations, business critical applications do not always cause immediate disasters. The goal of business critical tasks is to ensure the long-term operations and survival of a business.

Organizations may classify their operations into three categories: mission critical, business critical, and low priority. Mission critical tasks and applications are the highest priority for immediate operations.

Business critical tasks continue during normal operations, but they are not necessary for immediate survival during outages and disasters. Businesses can continue normal operations for long periods of time without using low priority applications.

Example of a Mission Critical Failure

As long as an organization or business is in operation, there will be mission critical systems. However, what is considered mission critical for one company may not be for another.

In 2013, a five-minute outage at Google affected all of Google’s services, including the Google.com homepage, YouTube, Google Drive, and Gmail, costing the company approximately $545,000. Also in 2013, Amazon experienced a website outage that lasted approximately 40 minutes. This outage likely cost Amazon about $1,104 in net sales per second.

Mission Critical FAQs

What Is a Mission Critical System?

A mission critical task, service, or system is essential to the survival of a business or organization. When it fails or is interrupted, business operations are significantly impacted.

What Is a Mission Critical Application?

A mission critical application is a software program or suite of programs that must continuously operate for a business to be successful. For example, for an ambulance company, an automatic vehicle locator (AVL) application might be considered mission-critical.

However, what is considered a mission-critical application varies by industry. There could be another type of business that also utilizes an AVL, but it is not necessarily classified as a mission critical application because its failure would not result in significant negative consequences, particularly negative financial consequences.

What Is a Mission Critical Employee?

Mission critical employees are positions that must be filled for an organization to perform its core mission.

What Is the Difference Between Mission Critical and Mission Essential?

Within the U.S. military, mission critical refers to job functions identified as critical to the agency’s mission. Some U.S. military defense contractors have a clause in their contracts that designate their role as having "mission-essential" functions. This stipulation requires them to perform essential contractor services that support mission-essential functions.

Mission essential functions are defined as those organizational activities that must be performed under all circumstances to achieve DoD component missions or responsibilities. Contractors are only required to perform services that the contract specifically identifies as essential.

In relation to DoD Information Technology System Repositories, mission-critical information technology systems are necessary to continue warfighter operations. Mission-essential information technology systems are basic and necessary to accomplish an organization’s mission.