In my previous career, I racked and stacked, in addition to managing and architecting data centers for small start-ups to large financial firms.  You would probably agree that while the cobwebs in this comic takes infrastructure utilization (or lack thereof) to a whole new level – it also sheds light on the fact that data center utilization is still at extremely low and inefficient rates.

While you may not be taking a feather duster to your servers, storage and network gear like Kip and Gary, it’s not a secret among most server admins that the infrastructure they maintain could probably be processing a lot more workload then they currently are.  Honestly, it’s what this equipment was built for, right?

Clean house with Capacity Management

Implementing capacity management will give you the insight and tools needed to run a right-sized and cost-effective data center that will support the ongoing success of your business. It will help organizations who are struggling with slashed IT budgets and managing executive requests to improve service delivery while saving millions of dollars in wasted IT spend and energy use.

A comprehensive enterprise capacity planning solution should evaluate current utilization rates across a broad range of hardware from various vendors and virtualization platforms – like many of us have in our data centers today – then automatically trend and project the future capacity needed to support increased workloads or platform migration efforts.  Just as important, the capacity management solution should accurately identify potential consolidation candidates and right-size bloated virtual machine templates for increased efficiency.

The ROI of Capacity Management is real

• The power of CA Capacity Management enables a global 500 beverage company to provide budget and capacity recommendations to proposed business or IT changes.
• A large global bank has been able to reduce up to 50 percent of under-utilized hardware with CA Capacity Management.
• Many CA Capacity Management customers have seen a significant improvement in IT productivity while realizing reduced costs related to capital expenses (CapEx) and operating expenses (OpEx).

Remember, it’s not about the fear of an under-utilized data center being revealed to executives. It’s about doing what’s right for the organization – aligning IT to the business with controlled and efficient spending. It’s also about having accurate predictions for future capacity needs, and improving productivity and service delivery that supports successful business outcomes and most importantly, the customer experience.

Check out our entertaining CA-sponsored comic series in which Kip & Gary highlight some of the other challenges IT and facilities teams face every day. Cast your vote for your favorite!

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