ITIL Capacity Management

ITIL Capacity Management is the discipline that ensures IT infrastructure is provided at the right time in the right volume at the right price, and ensuring that IT is used in the most efficient manner. This involves input from many areas of the business to identify what services are (or will be) required, what IT infrastructure is required to support these services, what level of Contingency will be needed, and what the cost of this infrastructure will be.

In short, the object of ITIL Capacity Management is to understand the future business requirements (the required service delivery), the organization’s operation (the current service delivery), the IT infrastructure (the means of service delivery), and ensure that all current and future capacity and performance aspects of the business requirements are provided cost effectively.

These are inputs into the following ITIL Capacity Management processes:

• Performance monitoring
• Workload monitoring
• Application sizing
• Resource forecasting
• Demand forecasting
• Modeling

From these processes come the results of ITIL Capacity Management, these being the capacity plan itself, forecasts, tuning data and Service Level Management guidelines. ITIL Capacity Management is concerned with the monitoring and tuning of existing services to ensure that optimum use is made of the hardware resources and that agreed performance and throughput levels can be achieved and maintained. ITIL Capacity Management covers Performance Management, Capacity Planning and Performance Forecasting. Both performance management and capacity planning are essential components of the infrastructure to underpin SLAs.

ITIL Capacity Management is has three main areas of responsibility.  First of these is BCM, which is responsible for ensuring that the future business requirements for IT services are considered , planned and implemented in a timely fashion.  These future requirements will come from business plans outlining new services, improvements and growth in existing services, development plans etc.  This requires knowledge of existing service levels and SLAs, future service levels and SLRs, the Business and Capacity plans, modeling techniques (Analytical, Simulation, Trending and Base lining), and application sizing methods.

The second main area of responsibility is SCM, which focuses on managing the performance of the IT services provided to the Customers, and is responsible for monitoring and measuring services, as detailed in SLAs and collecting recording, analyzing and reporting on data.  This requires knowledge of service levels and SLAs, systems, networks, service throughput and performance, monitoring, measurement, analysis, tuning and demand management.

The third and final main area of responsibility is RCM, which focuses on management of the components of the IT infrastructure and ensuring that all finite resources within the IT infrastructure are monitored and measured, and collected data is recorded, analyzed and reported.  This requires knowledge of the current technology and its utilization, future or alternative technologies, and the resilience of systems and services.

Actually, ITIL Capacity Management helps to optimize the capacity of IT resources and services in alignment with business requirements. ITIL Capacity Management is also responsible for ensuring that the Capacity of the IT Infrastructure matches the evolving demands of the business in the most cost-effective and timely manner. ITIL Capacity Management needs to understand the business requirements (the required Service Delivery), the organization's operation (the current Service Delivery) and the IT Infrastructure (the means of Service Delivery), and ensure that all the current and future Capacity and performance aspects of the business requirements are provided cost-effectively.

However ITIL Capacity Management is also about understanding the potential for Service Delivery. New technology needs to be understood and, if appropriate, used to deliver the services required by the business. ITIL Capacity Management needs to recognize that the rate of technological change will probably increase and that new technology should be harnessed to ensure that the IT services continue to satisfy changing business expectations.

ITIL Capacity Management process should be the focal point for all IT performance and Capacity issues. Other technical domains, such as Network Support, may carry out the bulk of the relevant day-to-day duties but overall responsibility lies with the Capacity Management process. The process should encompass, for both the operational and the development environment: 

• All hardware - from PCs, through file servers, up to mainframes and super-computers

• All networking equipment (LANs, WANs, bridges, routers etc.)
• All peripherals (bulk storage devices, printers, etc)
• All software - operating system and network software, in-house developments and purchased packages
• Human resources - where a lack of human resources could result in a delay in end-to-end response time

ITIL Capacity Management leads to increased efficiency and cost savings in several areas, including:

• Deferred expenditure - if it is possible to defer the cost of new equipment to a later date, then the money that is currently in the budget can be spent in other ways. It may be possible to defer the expenditure permanently, so that the money need never be spent. Also, with the pace of technological change, the later a purchase is left, the more Capacity is obtained for the money
• Economic provision of services - Capacity is matched to business need. Unnecessary spare Capacity is not being maintained and therefore cost savings result. Use of existing Capacity is optimized as far as possible, again resulting in cost savings through not paying for unwanted Capacity during quiet usage periods
• Planned buying - is always cheaper than panic buying

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