Service Interruptions Our goal is to deliver services that are always available to customers and users. However, reality dictates 100% availability is not realistic, and therefore there are two categories of interruptions we must address. Note: Using the term interruption over downtime to account for cases where noticeable system degradation may occur. The term downtime tends to imply the system is entirely offline. Planned Maintenance: Most typically system update and configuration changes to the system either lead to degraded performance or a complete outage of the system.