Consistency Man–the understated superhero (5 of 5)

In the previous blogs in this series we’ve identified cost value analysis, P2V migration of more sophisticated applications, Cloud and managing your virtual environment once live as four of the key trends for the capacity manager to address in 2012.

The fifth and final trend is one that has always been needed, never really gone away and is now perhaps more important than ever because of some of the things discussed earlier in this series. 

The capacity manager has to manage ever increasing complexity plus an ever more dynamic environment.  Jump back twenty years and it was terminals connected to a mainframe, annual upgrades and an annual capacity plan.  Ten years ago it was buy more kit to avoid any risk to service levels and keep everything on its own server – capacity management became capacity reporting and little more.  Now we have virtual servers sharing resources, rapid redeployment of applications across the estate, and elements of that estate in the Cloud on top of more solutions for storage, network and security.  Where our users used to be sat in an office, now they could be anywhere: different offices; working from home; sat at a ballgame checking that everything is OK with their application on their smartphone.

The greater the scope for confusion and the greater the need for complexity thenthe greater the need for the capacity manager to be Consistency Man, the understated superhero. 

Users want a single pane of glass through which to assess their applications, no matter how complex the underlying infrastructure.  The capacity manager needs to be able to pull together a picture of capacity across that environment and present a concise, cohesive picture.  Service needs to be expressed in user experience and business impact, not technology terms.

Consistency comes through good process implementation.  Using a guiding light such as ITIL enables time to be saved by implementing common, repeatable processes across any environment.  Starting at a business level to understand what is required from the capacity manager, you can then put together a picture of what services need reporting on.  Only then do you need to look at the underlying technology to gather the metrics needed to work your way back to reporting what the business requires. As the technology changes again, as it surely will, having mapped down through the three ITIL capacity management layers: business; service; component, you will have established processes that readily accommodate whatever change is needed to adequately report on the new regime.

Consistency Man will never be as glamorous as the other superheroes, as they fly in to handle the crisis.  He will however save you having to depend on their services so much and save your management considerably more money in the long term.  A wise boss will appreciate the difference between prevention and cure.

Andrew Smith

Chief Sales & Marketing Officer