What is Capacity Management?

To understand Capacity Management, we first need to define “capacity”

What is “capacity”?

IT capacity or IT resources primarily refers to the processing capacity allocated to each component of IT infrastructure.
This includes but is not limited to the following components that constitute the overall IT solution
Ø Server Capacity (cpus & memory)
Ø Storage Capacity (disk space)
Ø Network Capacity (underpinning networking infrastructure like firewalls, switches, routers etc)
Ø Software

Capacity Management: Capacity management is the process of planning, analyzing, sizing, and optimizing capacity to satisfy demand in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost. This process must proactively respond and adapt to changing business needs because the business cannot add resources after a capacity problem has ensued without it impacting performance first

At a high level, Capacity Management & Planning is primarily needed to tackle 2 forms of growth

Ø Organic growth: A company’s business grows over time and since IT is the platform to transact this business, the usage of the IT resources increases steadily

Ø Inorganic growth: This represents a sudden, expected increase in IT resource usage as a result of a variety of circumstances

Ø New complement of business users using the application

Ø New project implementations typically involving both new software products and additional users being rolled out on the existing IT infrastructure.