Role of Capacity Planning During a Recession

Financial crisis. Turbulent markets. Decreased budgets. With a recession looming over the heads of businesses, many IT staff are asked to do more with less. This isn't a new issue, but it's one that many IT professionals should be prepared to move forward on as they try to control operating and capital costs.

The computing environment is expanding and becoming more complex, the resources and budget to manage it are, in many cases, diminishing. IT organizations need to find ways to realize higher productivity from existing staff, increase utilization of the existing infrastructure, and reduce acquisition, implementation and management costs for their IT infrastructure.

According to some reports, utilization rates average 10 to 20 percent, which equates to nearly $150 billion in unused server assets sitting in data centers around the world.

Do More
TeamQuest has identified five ways to help you do more.

Improve hardware-to-personnel ratio
Improve staff productivity by automating routine server management tasks, freeing personnel time for other duties.

Maximize the use of existing infrastructure
Reduce costs by reclaiming significant amounts of IT resources currently sitting idle in your data center.

Deploy applications into a shared environment
Determine whether new applications will function in a shared environment and identify underutilized server resources on which to host them.

Right-size hardware investments for new applications
Avoid over- or under-provisioning with capacity planning software that helps you determine requirements of new applications.

Forecast hardware investments to handle growth
Manage growth proactively with accurate forecasts for hardware investments required to meet business demands.

Focus on Capacity Management
Capacity Management is responsible for ensuring that IT infrastructure resources are in place to satisfy planned business needs and that those infrastructure assets are effectively used. The desired goal is to provide a service that is proactive rather than reactive in nature.

Use predictive modeling to partner with business units to simulate the potential impact of a new application or changes in IT requirements. The outcomes can provide accurate cost data that aids decision-makers in deciding whether to move forward with a project and how to budget for the project.

In today's turbulent times, this data can provide the detail needed for cost justification.

Identify underutilized capacity and determine opportunities for consolidation, as well as track and report improved utilization rates while maintaining application and service performance.

A Fortune 500 company used TeamQuest software to analyze current usage, increase utilization of existing resources and gain greater control over their budget. As a result, all new services were deployed without purchasing any new servers in a two-year period, providing a $12 million savings in only 18 months.

Savings can be found if you effectively plan and provision when times are rocky and not-so-rocky.

How are you doing more with less?