Capacity Planning: A Revolutionary Approach for Tomorrow's Digital Infrastructure
Amy C. Spellmann, Richard L. Gimarc · Int. CMG Conference · 2013
Capacity planning has been a well-established practice for over 30 years. During that time, the tools, techniques and processes have been defined and refined. However, our traditional approach cannot keep pace with today’s rapidly changing environments; we need to revolutionize the practice of capacity planning. This paper will examine the current scope and focus of capacity planning and propose an innovative methodology to evaluate, predict and plan for the all-inclusive Digital Infrastructure. It is no longer sufficient to utilize yesterday’s outmoded approach when planning for tomorrow’s applications, systems and facilities infrastructures. We need to revolutionize the practice of capacity planning. This paper identifies the goals and challenges of Digital Infrastructure capacity planning and defines a new approach that adapts to tomorrow’s extraordinarily dynamic, diverse and expanding environments. 1 The World Has Changed Capacity planning has evolved over the past 30 years, adapting to the changing landscape of IT systems and application architectures. However, the evolutionary process can no longer keep up with the rapidly increasing complexity, size and scope of today’s IT enterprises. The exponential transformation in technology, applications and infrastructures is demanding today’s capacity planning practice to include the entire Digital Infrastructure. Our use of the term Digital Infrastructure is important and intentional since it describes the breadth of today’s capacity planning world view: The 451 Group defines Digital Infrastructure as encompassing the enterprise-wide computing environment and the data center; including business requirements, technology infrastructure, and facilities infrastructure [SPEL2012]. The practice of capacity planning must be revolutionized to embrace a methodology that keeps pace with the rate of technological evolution, necessitating the inclusion of all components in the Digital Infrastructure. Traditional brick and mortar, mainframe and distributed systems no longer support the needs of today’s dynamic business environment. In today’s marketplace, businesses must be visionary and aggressive in providing IT services. Keeping pace with clever competitors and innovative entrepreneurs has driven the need for accelerated delivery of IT services to support business requirements more cost effectively than ever before.