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TeamQuest Best Practices Manager Ron Potter took a look at the future during a talk at TeamQuest Technology Summit 2007. He discussed five core trends to be aware of:

• ITIL v2 will be superceded by v3
• Web 2.0 will become mainstream
• Extreme Transaction Processing (XTP) will be a real challenge to IT
• Business alignment and competitive advantage will become key
• Virtualization will transition to shared image operating systems

"Web 2.0 provides a greater capability to collaborate, improve sales potential, and integrate corporate blog and wiki technology," said Potter. "This is important moving forward, as service will become the key differentiating factor in the market due to the fact that products from different manufacturers will be very much alike."

XTP, he said, becomes necessary as increasing adoption of Web-based technologies drives transaction volumes sky-high. Such volumes are already beginning to exceed technology capabilities in large firms, and that adds directly to the cost per transaction (XTP makes use of an appliance to cache transactions in order to speed up processing, as well as a grid architecture and software).

"XTP is the long-term answer, but for now remains in its infancy," said Potter. "However, it is likely that only large companies will be able to adopt this technology."

How will all of this impact IT? Capacity managers cannot just crunch numbers and churn out forecasts. They have to be involved in the many different facets of their position. They may have to put out fires, perform financial analyses, understand the business, collaborate with internal staff and external consultants, know their technology well, and deliver spot-on forecasts.

"Capacity planners have to be prepared for faster rates of change, higher transaction volumes, and the trend toward greener data centers," says Potter.

"It is their job to find the sweet spot between cost and service levels. Rather than taking orders from management, it is up to the capacity planner to provide a range of options as to cost and service from which management decisions can be made."