Maturity, as defined by Wikipedia, is a psychological term used to indicate how a person responds to the circumstances or environment in an appropriate manner. At TeamQuest, we define maturity as the moment when IT views everything from a business point of view, rather than a technical standpoint. The focus is on actions that will benefit the company as a whole.

We’ve entered the nascent stages of understanding how to manage cloud computing and virtual heterogeneous environments. This means management complexity increases since there’s no longer a permanent and exclusive relationship between physical resources and the software that runs on it. IT needs the right people, processes and tools to navigate through the hype to make this work.

Capacity management isn’t the Holy Grail, but it can provide the information you need to make miraculous decisions. The process is simple. Realize where you are now, plan to move ahead, and take the first step toward greater maturity.

Take this quiz to discover where you are now. Once you get your score, review this 8-page paper. Then take the steps necessary to move to the next stage of maturity. The majority of companies are between stages 1 and 2 (i.e., reactive and proactive).

If that’s good enough, then continue on. If you’re looking to accurately weigh costs against benefits and risks, measure process efficiency and effectiveness, and link IT services to business processes, then it’s time to get to work. Get in touch with us or leave a comment.

Of course, if you’re already providing value to the business, let us know how you’re doing it. In fact, tell everyone how you’re doing it. We all want to respond to business needs in an appropriate manner.

Last month, I watched this video from Kathryn Schulz who is a “wrongologist”. What she said caught my attention about how we react from being right or wrong and the emotions and beliefs that go along with it.

Then I asked myself these questions:

1. How can this relate to IT?
2. What can we learn from being wrong?
3. Who do we blame when something goes wrong?

Kathryn talks about how the aviation industry got it right after many years.  Let’s face it, this is an industry where mistakes are not acceptable.  Imagine you are about to board a plane, and they tell you the availability of the plane is 99.5% or the capacity of the plane is over by 20%.  Would you feel comfortable?  The changes and decisions they make on a daily basis have great consequences for all of their passengers.

The aviation industry realized that they had to move away from blaming an individual when something went wrong.  Individuals make mistakes.  It is inevitable.  So they figured out that the answer to something going wrong was not an individual’s fault.  Mistakes are great information and an opportunity to learn and improve.  So what the aviation industry decided to focus on was their system/process.  Where did the system/process fail and why?  We might not be able to get perfect people, but we can definitely improve the process, so that mistakes (by people or IT components) are minimized.

How can this relate to IT?  

IT obviously does not want to be wrong.  But it seems that when something goes wrong in IT, there is finger pointing from Developers to System Administrators, Database to Application Developers and everyone else blaming the Network group!

Processes and Best Practices like ITSO (IT Service Optimization) can help minimize those mistakes by ensuring that the business requirements are understood for all IT services, ensuring risk levels are considered and prioritized and planning for future scenarios and how they will affect services, applications and servers.

As the process matures, we provide better value to the business, better alignment and better risk assessment.

What can we learn from being wrong?

Danish scientist and Nobel laureate Niels Bohr defined an expert as “A person that has made every possible mistake within his or her field.”  So being wrong should be taken as an opportunity to learn that time and effort will lead us to…well…being right!!
In ITSO, there is an unknown sixth part of the process – Continual Service Improvement. When you complete the 5th step, go back to the 1st step.  Many variables in IT that affect services are in constant flux. There is a continuous need to realign IT processes to the changing business needs.  This continuous process is how we gain IT maturity.

Who do we blame when something goes wrong?

We can blame people or even computers/operating systems/application.  But that approach will only lead us to staying in a reactive mode, as people and IT components will eventually be wrong (they are not perfect).  For example, an excellent IT operator might be up all night sick and the next day might not be 100% alert and could make a mistake.  A disk, which has been working fine for years, all of a sudden might fail.  There are no guarantees for any of these two scenarios.  Following a process (whether it’s a written process or an application transaction process) can minimize – and in some cases – avoid the mistake completely.  A disk can be measured, diagnosed and also we could have a contingency plan in case the disk fails.

IT will make mistakes.  Take those mistakes as an opportunity to learn to be right. It is the only path to maturity.  Remember that IT maturity is a journey, not a destination. Enjoy the ride!

We are pleased to announce that Verizon Wireless has been awarded the 2011 IT Service Optimization (ITSO) Award. Verizon Wireless recently launched Apple’s iPhone 4 on the nation’s fastest and most advanced 4G network. By using TeamQuest software to optimize their IT services, the launch was a complete success.

“The launch of iPhone 4 for Verizon Wireless showcased how we utilize TeamQuest tools to enhance and optimize systems. Through continuous testing and strategic planning, we accomplished a record number of device sales without incurring any critical performance issues or outages,” said Rich Rodgers, Verizon Wireless Executive Director of IT Systems Engineering, Integration and Finance.

Can you hear me now?

Previous ITSO Award winner Law School Administration Council (LSAC) established an IT Service Optimization framework in tandem with TeamQuest software and has been able to streamline its infrastructure to completely fulfill its service demands. LSAC successfully negotiated its peak activity period with no service shortfalls, while adding new services at the same time.

ITSO Award nominees are judged on a variety of criteria:

1. Adoption: Implementation and use of TeamQuest software and best practices
2. Impact: The benefits obtained from implementing TeamQuest software and best practices
3. Innovation: The way the company uses TeamQuest software and best practices
4. Results: Concrete improvement and measurable change

Verizon Wireless implementation of TeamQuest software is a shining example of how to use sound capacity management people, process and tools to bring value to the organization.

Join us in congratulating Verizon Wireless on their achievement!

Speaking recently at a Gartner conference, Gartner analyst Milind Govekar said through 2015, less than 25% of enterprises will derive full benefits of virtualization and cloud computing.

Why? Because of the lack of understanding and investment in capacity planning.

He went on to say there is a perception that buying more compute resource capacity will solve performance and availability problems for every capacity-related incident. It doesn’t. And many think it’s cheaper to overprovision than to mess with planning. It isn’t.

Govekar said through 2015, 75% of organizations will plan compute resource elasticity by overprovisioning compute resources but will continue to face major outages.

Don’t let that be you. It is a journey to go from simply overprovisioning to proactive planning. And yes, there are likely to be some speedbumps along the way. But it’s worth it from so many angles. And you have a trusted companion to guide you.

Join the Journey!

Jennifer

Many of us who have been involved with Capacity Management for some time have experienced the situation of not being able to recreate past work. We built a plan and then six months later, have a need to measure progress against predictions. The only problem is that we can’t recreate the original results. I have spent hours trying to figure out what went wrong with my calculations, only to find out that I had changed my process to create the report, missed a parameter or two and used a different reporting tool against someone else’s data. After being embarrassed a time or two, I took steps to avoid those mistakes.

Well now you don’t have to worry about those reporting and data disconnects. There is an ITIL Version 3 concept, called a Capacity Management Information System or CMIS, which can make life easier for all of us by helping to prevent problems such as these. An upgrade to the previous ITIL Capacity Management Database (CDB), the CMIS not only stores a wide variety of infrastructure usage and performance data, it includes a set of reporting tools. The CMIS is the book of record for all Capacity Management usage and performance data so no questioning who collected what data and how. A common reporting tool means you don’t have to worry about different reporting algorithms or distribution methodologies which can skew results. Operating with a consistent set of reporting tools and synchronized data, you will get the same answer every time, even if it’s six months from now.

Want to know more? Read our new CMIS white paper or contact your friendly TeamQuest representative to find out how TeamQuest’s implementation of a CMIS can help you maintain consistency and uniformity in your reporting.

Until the next post,

Ron

One of the more common complaints I hear is the issue of conflicting reports. Two different people using different tools to report against data from the same time period arrive at different answers. The situation drives senior management crazy and makes them question the credibility of both parties.

The problem? The people probably use different reporting tools against independently collected data, probably with different collection parameters. Some data may be averaged over the entire collection period where others may be an accumulation of 30-second data points within that same collection period. One may be using a statistical analysis program, the other a spreadsheet.

The solution? Perhaps a Capacity Management Information System (CMIS) is the answer. It is a database or databases containing all capacity management information, including service level and business statistics. All data in the CMIS is synchronized so collection parameters and periods are consistent across the enterprise. The CMIS also has a reporting element to ensure that two different people reporting on the same data with the same parameters will arrive at the same results every time.

Want more information? Watch this blog for the announcement of my upcoming white paper on the subject.

Until the next post

Ron

When I read the eWeek article entitled, “How to Manage Capacity in Virtualized Environments” I finished wanting more. Actually, I finished realizing TeamQuest already has more to offer.

Explaining the ITIL definition of Capacity Management is great, but how about expanding a bit further and drilling down into the details - from a Capacity Management perspective. Since the author, Rob Smoot, is a Group Product Marketing Manager at VMware, let’s focus on VMware.

TeamQuest offers scalable, agentless performance data collection for both VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisors and:

• vSphere 4
• AIX PowerVM, including LPARs and WPARs
• Solaris Containers, Zones, and LDOMs.

TeamQuest Model, one tool in our suite, can predict performance in advance, help to optimize services and avoid costly bottlenecks altogether. We can find the least-expensive, best-performing configurations for P2V consolidation, ensuring that service levels will be met. IT managers can quickly determine the best way to allocate resources to VMware guests. And unlike other tools, TeamQuest Model understands response times inside virtual machines.

Take a look at a previous blog post entitled, “It’s CRAZY to Run Just One App Per Virtual Server.” Ron Potter, TeamQuest’s Manager of Best Practices outlines the benefits of running multiple applications on a virtual machine and the planning needed to ensure you have the right configuration for the right situation. In fact, Potter takes this a step further in his white paper, “Grab More Post-virtualization Savings.”

Also, check out the press release on TeamQuest’s VMware capabilities, or our website on managing a virtual environment, or for some real nitty gritty details, see our white paper entitled, “Managing a Virtual Computing Environment - How TeamQuest Supports VMware’s Virtual Machines.”

Remember virtualization is not a cure-all. Capacity Management improves your virtualization tools. It’s a discipline that, when used with the right tools, allows you to get the most from your virtualization efforts.

If you would like to further the discussion on how to truly manage capacity in virtualized environments, don’t hesitate to contact us directly or leave a comment below. We look forward to hearing from you!

Many organizations operate IT in firefighting mode, reacting to performance incidents when they occur. It is surprisingly less often that organizations perform capacity planning up front, though that would ensure that systems will provide necessary service levels without interruption. Being reactive is more expensive, but nonetheless, more common than being proactive. Maybe it’s human nature. It seems that few organizations possess the maturity to see the value of formally addressing capacity issues in an organized manner.

Maybe that’s changing.

A recent Network World article, “10 best IT jobs right now,” predicts that “Capacity Manager” will be an up and coming job title in 2010. In the article Denise Dubie suggests that tough economic conditions combined with added complexity from virtualization should help influence companies to pay more attention to capacity planning. Evelyn Hubbert of Forrester and Cameron Haight of Gartner are both quoted as emphasizing the strategic importance of capacity management for organizations seeking to maximize the value provided to a business by its IT organization.

At TeamQuest we’ve got tools for both proactive and reactive performance management, but we always try to influence customers to take a more proactive, service point of view. We suggest that the organizations with the highest level of capacity management maturity analyze IT capacity in terms of the business value that it can bring to an organization. (See the recent post here on the TeamQuest Capacity Management Maturity Model).

Demands for more services are increasing and high performance and reliability are expected, yet budgets, labor and floor space are all being constrained. I guess nobody said running a data center was easy.

The need for increased efficiency and reliability points to capacity management processes. And like anything else, you have to crawl before you walk, but the value of capacity management practices is there. So what’s it take to adopt more mature processes?

TeamQuest has released our Capacity Management Maturity Model that identifies different levels of IT management competency.

 

Following the lead of Gartner’s IT Management Process Maturity Model, we’ve drilled down even further to highlight the levels of Capacity Management maturity specifically.

After all, moving to mature Capacity Management tools and processes lowers costs, improves service quality and increases IT productivity since staff can focus on the most important duties rather than fight fires.

Take a look at our latest white paper entitled, Introducing a Capacity Management Maturity Model. Let us know what you think! Post your comments below.

Many organizations have saved both time and money by converting underutilized physical servers into virtual machines and consolidating those machines onto fewer physical servers. IT folks are understandably proud of what they’ve done at that point. But if you stop there, you might be leaving money on the table. There can be plenty of additional savings to be had by consolidating virtual machines, hosting multiple applications on some of your virtual machine instances.

How can that save me money?

I recently spoke with Ron Potter, TeamQuest’s Manager of Best Practices. Ron says there are two common avenues organizations can follow to exploit virtualization. The first is one primarily motivated by cost and environmental savings. The second is one of dynamic routing of transactions and images to provide massively scalable operating environments. If your motivator is primarily cost savings and you aren’t pursuing the massively scalable environments using tools such as VMware DRS, then Ron is a proponent for consolidating virtual machine instances, i.e. running more than one app per virtual machine.

Virtual machines need administrators too. Whatever your virtual machine-to-sys admin ratio is, eliminating some of those machines will save you some admin time. That’s time that would otherwise be spent monitoring, maintaining, securing, backing up, and tuning all of those virtual machines. The fewer machine instances you have to manage, whether they are virtual or physical, the less admin time and effort will be required.

Reducing the number of virtual machine instances usually reduces operating system overhead, which will in turn cut demand for physical hardware requirements. Reducing hardware infrastructure will help trim space, power and cooling requirements too.

Ron says not to forget about software license costs. Depending on the OS you are running, you’ll have to pay for each instance, not to mention the inevitable middleware and management software that is required for each virtual machine instance. Depending on the terms of your application software license agreements, there can be big savings there as well. Generally speaking, running software on fewer operating system images will simplify and reduce license costs.

What should I watch out for?

If you have the performance tools necessary to properly plan and monitor your virtualized environment, there’s no technical reason you can’t begin a wave of virtual consolidation after your initial P2V wave of consolidation. You might, however, run into some politics. Your virtualization vendor has likely sold folks on the idea that there should be just one app per virtual machine. You’ll need a plan that can convince everyone that running more than one will still perform while saving money.

You might also see resistance from business units unwilling to share a virtual machine instance with apps from other business units. That issue is probably best settled by working with management. You might need some new chargeback functionality to keep everyone happy.

How do I make it happen?

Create a plan with goals and metrics for success, such as the number of servers decommissioned, software license reductions, or overall cost savings. Make note of service level requirements coming from the customers, departments or business units you are serving.

• Survey your virtualized environment. Take inventory of your virtual machines and the apps running on them. Measure how they are performing now.
• Select candidates for consolidation. Ron has a long list of things to watch for, but suffice it to say you want to look for apps you feel will be complementary rather than competitive when asked to coexist on the same virtual machine instance.
• Run an analytic model to predict how the consolidated environment will actually perform. Will service levels be met? If not, try different configurations or different combinations of apps. The key to fast work here is a fast tool for making accurate predictions.
• Actually commission the consolidation work to take place.
• Monitor the results. Report your success to management!

Get Real

Basically our best practices manager is saying that a lot of the same techniques you used to consolidate physical-to-virtual will work virtual-to-virtual. And you’ll get similar results: savings in hardware, software, space, power, cooling, and system administration requirements.

Ron’s ideas sound like common sense to me, and yet they run contrary to the advice that you may have heard from other vendors. I think it’s because Ron is seeing it more from the point of view of a business manager rather than as a vendor of virtualization technology.

For more detail, be sure to check out Ron’s white paper on this subject, and by all means, add your comments and observations to this blog entry.