It is estimated that system downtime costs U.S. businesses $4.0 billion per year. The average downtime event results in a $140,000 loss in the retail industry and a $450,000 loss in the securities industry. Clustering promises to minimize downtime by providing an architecture that keeps systems running in the event of a system failure. Clustering also gives organizations the ability to set up separate servers as a single computing facility, thus providing flexibility for future installation growth.