One trigger that can expose the lack of an effective capacity management process within a company is a pending merger or acquisition.
I had the privilege to manage a project where a team of talented consultants was tasked with starting from scratch and providing capacity planning guidance and recommendations to a company undergoing a series of merger-related application consolidations.
When I say starting from scratch, I mean just that: The first step of the project was to quickly start capturing performance data on mainframes and servers that underpinned a few dozen applications and services so we could use a variety of techniques (including analytic modeling and trending) to predict the effects of expected change on these systems.
Probably a good time if you're reading along to stop and think about this -- do you have quality, capacity management data stored in a CMIS (or related mechanism) that you can quickly access? Do you know how utilized (over-utilized, under-utilized) your systems are? Are you able to look at underlying trends and potential changes to the environment and make recommendations to the business?
In my past, I worked as a capacity planner in a number of industries. At each of those companies, we had regular data capture in place on all production and many test systems. The cost of doing this was clearly outweighed by the benefits provided to the business. We were the first point of contact whenever there were performance problems with applications and we were the first point of contact when business conditions warranted a predictive look at the services and the resources that provided those services.
In future blog entries, I'll come back to this and pass on some wisdom I gained from the process ... hopefully a nugget or two of which you'll be able to take back and apply in your own environment.
In the meantime you might want to sign up to our community and take a look at some of our white papers on Capacity Management
Rich Fronheiser
Chief Sales & Marketing Officer
No comments:
Post a Comment