Maturing your Capacity Management processes - Information and Governance ( 7 of 11 )

With the complexity of today’s modern IT environments and the multitude of delivery mechanisms available, it’s safe to say that organizations are swamped with data. 

The challenge for implementing capacity management is being able to distil this wealth of information into a useable form.  Rather than concentrate on specific platforms or metrics, I have found the following to be a useful guide for filtering information:

·         If implementing for the first time, follow the usual ITIL guidance of starting small and building up.  For capacity management this could be starting with a particular platform, service or application. 

·         Work with technical teams to understand which metrics are available for each of the platforms.  This is especially important when dealing with virtualized platforms as these tend to have various levels e.g. cluster, host, guest etc which are key for capacity planning

·         Work with the application and service support teams to determine all valid metrics and importantly how these can be correlated with the underlying infrastructure data

Remember, the more data captured, the more you need to store, manage and understand.  As well as the obvious capacity implications of storing more and more data, you are also increasing the likelihood of missing key alerts and data trends.

On Wednesday I’ll be looking at your most important asset, People. 

In the meantime why not find out where you are on the Capacity Management Maturity Scale and receive your free 20 page report.

www.metron-athene.com/survey/

Jamie Baker

Principal Consultant

Hardware's a commodity - Why bother managing capacity? - What is Capacity Management?(2 of 7)

A fairly standard definition of Capacity Management is ‘An IT process that helps ensure capacity meets current and future business requirements in a cost-effective manner.’

A well-defined Capacity Management process will focus on four sub-processes:

·        Business Capacity Management – translating business needs and plans into capacity and performance requirements for services and infrastructure.

·        Service Capacity Management – managing the capacity of live, operational IT services.  This includes both proactive and reactive activities to ensure SLAs are met.

·        Component Capacity Management – managing the performance, utilization, and capacity of IT resources and individual IT components.

·        Capacity Management Reporting – To provide other ITSM processes and management with information related to service and component capacity, utilization, and performance.

In order to support the process, specific activities (monitoring, analysis, tuning, modeling, etc.) are undertaken in both proactive and reactive ways.

Capacity Management – a “people” process

Today’s Capacity Manager must be a “people” person – the days of the person looking at charts in a corner cubicle that nobody dare enter are (or should be) over.

An effective Capacity Manager today is someone who should know and interact with key people within both IT and the business. Further, Capacity Management has some key interfaces to the other ITSM processes, including:

-- Incident Management

-- Problem Management

-- Change Management

-- Service Level Management

…and many others.

Those interfaces do not only consist of data and information.  They also consist of effective communication by the Capacity Manager and relationships built on trust and respect.  Building these relationships require that the Capacity Manager have personal and communication skills that were probably less important decades ago.

Capacity Management is a key resource for evaluating the effects of change, both within IT and with the business.

On Friday I'll be looking at Capacity Management Maturity.

In the meantime, register now for the next webinar in our Capacity Management Maturity series where we'll be looking at Repeatable to Defined, with an emphasis on what is involved when maturing to a Defined level. 

https://www.metron-athene.com/services/webinars/capacity-management-webinars.html

Rich Fronheiser

Chief Marketing Officer

Why carry out a Gap Analysis?

Increasingly organizations need to justify that processes and procedures used throughout the business meet industry standards for good practice, and can be audited and proven to be so. This gives stakeholders in your business and in-house staff the confidence that expenditure in the business is being optimized.

ITIL is the leading approach for good practice in the management of IT infrastructure and its interaction with the business.  By understanding ITIL’s position for all infrastructure management processes and implementing what is appropriate for your organization from within those guidelines,you can justify to stakeholders that your environment is being managed in line with or better than industry expectations.

Effective adoption of the ITIL approach to good practice means understanding what is good and bad in your environment, what is needed to make your organization more effective and bringing these together as a set of processes and procedures that help your business achieve its goals.

Often a gap analysis is undertaken in-house but many organizations are now opting to use external Consultants, as their impartiality is invaluable.  One of the biggest challenges when implementing business level processes is being able to interface with the appropriate areas of an organisation.  The impartiality that external consultants provide, allows for a better dialogue and without the internal politics that may restrict the flow of information.

Our Gap Analysis service helps define your understanding of where you are, where you should be, and how to get there in terms of Service Management and is one of many services that we offer in our Professional Services division.
http://www.metron-athene.com/services/consulting/index.html

Jamie Baker
Principal Consultant