There have been a lot of changes in capacity management over the years. In the last decade alone, the shifts have been huge. We’ve gone from managing capacity in physical environments to managing a hybrid IT infrastructure.
Translation: there’s a lot you need to do to effectively manage IT capacity today.
Creating better capacity plans is something everyone should be excited about in 2022. Here’s why.
1. Every IT Organization Needs to Do Capacity Planning
Every IT organization needs to do capacity planning. Period.
Capacity planning makes a difference between an agile IT department—and one that’s constantly running behind, trying to keep up. That’s because capacity plans help organizations make sure they have the right resources to meet their needs.
But not enough organizations are making capacity plans. Or at least they’re not making effective capacity plans. Recent research has found that 25 percent of physical servers are comatose—and so are 30 percent of virtual servers. That means there has been no activity for six months.
While these servers might be sitting empty for a reason, they are likely representing a waste. There might be users paying licensing fees on virtual servers. On top of that, there’s a security risk if servers aren’t maintained.
By creating capacity plans, you can find those servers that are underutilized. From there, you can investigate if there’s a reason—like seasonality—that those servers are dormant. And if there isn’t, you can reclaim them.
2. Creating a Capacity Plan is Just the Beginning
Having an IT capacity plan is one thing. Acting on it is a whole other thing.
A capacity plan will only help your organization if you know what to do next. If the capacity plan raises a red flag on risk in March and it’s January now, then you need to create a plan to make sure that risk doesn’t actually happen.
So, once you have your capacity plan, you need to interpret it. If overutilization (or underutilization) are looming, you need the expertise to formulate next steps. (Or you need advice that you can trust.)
3. Your Capacity Plans Need to Keep Up
Your IT infrastructure is only going to get more complicated. You’re dealing with servers, systems, and software that span physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Migrations and new technology will always be a factor.
Getting control over everything is difficult. And traditional methods for capacity planning won’t help you get visibility over everything.
Your capacity plans need to change with the times and account for every aspect of your infrastructure. Factoring everything into your capacity plans will make them accurate. And accuracy means that you can manage performance in real-time—and add the right IT resources at exactly the right time.
Vityl Capacity Management Brings Capacity Planning to the Masses
Creating capacity plans isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s a must-have for every organization in 2022—not just the ones with in-house capacity planning experts.
If your organization is lacking in capacity planning expertise, Vityl Capacity Management can bridge that gap.
Capacity plans in Vityl are built on queuing theory, which helps you predict your future needs with superior accuracy. And you don’t need to have an advanced math degree to benefit from queuing theory. All you have to do is walk through the wizard while Vityl crunches the numbers.
You’ll get accurate predictions of when and where you’ll have risk. On top of that, you’ll get automatic advice for steps you can take to mitigate the risk—before it happens. And that’s very exciting, indeed.
Let 2022 be the year you create and act on capacity plans.