Capacity Management Primer
An Introductory Guide to Capacity and Performance Management Within Your Organisation
DANNY QUILTON About the Author Table of Contents
Danny is a highly regarded Danny has presented at Introduction 3 thought-leader and practitioner numerous industry events within the field of performance worldwide, including Butler What is Capacity Management? 3 and capacity management, with Group, CMG, itSMF and Cloud Do I Need Capacity Management? 4 21 years’ experience. Expo. He has published articles with City AM, as well as Venture The Impact of Insufficient Capacity or Unacceptable Performance 5 He co-founded Capacitas 15 and .net magazines. Capacity and Performance Management 6 Danny Quilton years ago to help enterprise Director organisations solve performance Scenario Planning 7 and capacity challenges, and during this time has worked with Summary 8 easyJet, Sainsburys, Arcadia, RS Components and Nomura Investment Bank. Page 3 Page 4
Introduction Do I Need Capacity Management?
This white paper provides a short introduction to the role of capacity Capacity management will be beneficial if your organisation meets one and performance management. or more of the following criteria:
Frequent innovation; new Rapid business growth product launches, changes Desire to reduce or to existing services, etc. What is Capacity Management? optimise information and A significant percentage of communication technology The goal of capacity management is to ensure the timely provision revenue is dependent on ICT (ICT) costs of cost-justifiable capacity, that meets the current and future agreed services Requirement to reduce the needs of the business. A strategy to reduce the risk of degraded availability company’s impact on the of business-critical services environment Uncontrolled growth in cloud costs
The diagram below shows a number of criteria to determine whether capacity management is required.
FIGURE 1 Business Significant Extraordinary High Level of Critical Business Business Service Demanded Service Growth Peaks by the Business
Capacity Management is Required
Highly Uncontrolled Long Lead Times Competitive growth in cloud Associated with Market costs Capacity Upgrades
Requirement High Likelihood to Manage ICT of a Merger or Costs Acquistion Page 5 Page 6
The Impact of Insufficient Capacity Capacity and Performance Management
and Performance Management Capacity and performance The risk of capacity exhaustion management is used to mitigate is greater where the service If your organisation meets some or all of these criteria, then the these risks. is supported by many ICT following risks will need to be addressed: components; capacity Capacity and performance exhaustion of even one of the management employs processes, many components may cause Reputational Damage Poor Customer Satisfaction tools and skilled staff to reduce catastrophic service failure. risk by assessing the future Damage to your organisation Poor user experience can impact The level of effort required to business demand, and planning resulting from a degraded the customer’s perception of the deliver capacity and performance the cost-justifiable capacity service. business. management will depend required to support it. This on the service in question, approach is especially useful Reduced Service Availability Lost Revenue the complexity of the ICT where cloud costs represent a This may occur if there is This occurs when customers infrastructure that supports the significant portion of the ICT insufficient capacity in the ICT cannot use your service and service and the data available. budget. infrastructure thereby causing switch to rival services. This is a service failure or degraded an important consideration with service. e-commerce services where the cost to a customer of switching Demotivated Staff to a competitor is low. Staff productivity and morale may be affected by a poorly Reduced Profit
performing internal service. With uncontrolled cloud costs, FIGURE 2 PEOPLE budgets can be blown and the Skills Training bottom line impacted. PROCESSES Frameworks (e.g. ITIL), Customised Processes
TECHNOLOGY Bespoke Tools, Commercial Tools, Free Tools
Capacity Management Function Page 7
Scenario Planning Summary
Capacity and performance management employs techniques to enable Capacity and performance management is a powerful risk the business to conduct scenario planning, for example: management technique to ensure the continuity of business services, whilst minimising additional spend on ICT infrastructure. What will the business What happens if we have a demand be for next year? major infrastructure failure?
Can we support the Can our existing service business demand for next support increased demand year? resulting from a merger or acquisition? About Capacitas What level of business demand can we support? What will our ICT operating We are Performance and As an independent professional and capital costs be next What is the impact on our Capacity Management Experts. services organisation, we act as year? service if we launch a new Founded in 2002 and based in a trusted advisor to our clients, product? What should our cloud Central London, we have a team tailoring our service offerings budget be next year? of 40 consultants. We deliver to meet their specific business substantial reductions in risk and objectives and working hard service cost for business-critical to become long-term strategic IT systems. partners. We are thought- leaders within performance We have delivered amazing FIGURE 3 and capacity management and results, protecting e-commerce invest heavily in R&D in these revenue of £6.3 billion p.a. for areas; as well as enabling us our clients and saving individual Business to deliver industry-leading clients more than £23 million p.a. Continuity managed services, our research through cloud optimisation and and innovation forms the basis Meet Service application optimisation. Cost Control of our whitepapers and thought- Levels leadership events. Capacity Management Benefits
ICT Services Sized to Meet Reduced Risk Demand Avoid Over Capacity Bring us Your Capacity and Performance IT Challenges If you want to see big boosts to performance, with risk managed and costs controlled, then talk to us now to see how our expertise gets you the most from your IT.
www.capacitas.co.uk +44 (0) 20 7566 4869 [email protected]