Capacity planning in a cloud environment

Getting Your Network in the Cloud

By G C Network | May 25, 2016

Join us with Virtual Newsmakers on Saturday, May 28th at 11:00am for a YouTube Livestream on cloud computing. Virtual Newsmakers is a webcast show featuring virtual newsmakers, who are bridging…

Enterprise Networking in a Cloud World

By G C Network | May 17, 2016

Enterprises must rethink network management in the cloud computing world. This new reality is driven by the rise of software defined networking, the virtualization of everything and a business imperative…

The Game of Clouds 2016

By G C Network | May 13, 2016

In the mythical, medieval land of AWS, a civil war brews between the several noble Cloud Services over rulership. Meanwhile, across the sea, the former controlling dynasty, Traditional IT, attempts…

10 Ways to Flash Forward

By G C Network | May 7, 2016

Not to long ago I was honored to be included as a storage expert in the Dell ebook, “10 Ways to Flash Forward: Future-Ready Storage Insights from the Experts.” This…

The Future of Storage

By G C Network | April 28, 2016

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of doing a Blab on advanced storage with Daniel Newman and Eric Vanderburg.  We covered some pretty interesting points on enterprise storage…

DevOps and Hybrid Infrastructure Synergy

By G C Network | April 3, 2016

(This post first appeared in IBM’s Point B and Beyond) The definition of DevOps emphasizes collaboration and communication between software developers and other IT professionals while automating the software delivery…

Are electronic medical records worth it?

By G C Network | March 23, 2016

The use of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) by medical professionals has increased dramatically. According to HealthIT.gov, 2015 statistics show that 56 percent of all U.S. office-based physicians (MD/DO) have demonstrated meaningful use…

Finding a Framework for Hybrid Cloud Risk Management

By G C Network | March 6, 2016

 (Sponsored by IBM. Originally published on Point B and Beyond) Hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming essential to today’s information technology processes. This is why hybrid cloud risk management has become…

Cancer, cloud and privacy shield

By G C Network | February 23, 2016

(Originally published in Dell PowerMore) For more than 10 years, the rapid rise of cloud computing has enabled an even more rapid application of cloud to genomic medicine. In fact,…

Hybrid Cloud Versus Hybrid IT: What’s the Hype?

By G C Network | February 3, 2016

(Originally posted on Point B and Beyond) Once again, the boardroom is in a bitter battle over what edict its members will now levy on their hapless IT organization. On…

In her post “Cloud computing killed the capacity star“, Ivanka Menken brings up some good points. Just think what changes this could bring to the government budgeting process. The trends that Ivanka addresses could result in the following:

  • Traditionally, demand management is used as an input into a capacity plan that is then used for capital expenditure budgeting. In the new world, this will no longer be sufficient, because the ability to rent capacity on “pay as you go” basis will now be a much more important input into the operational side of the budget.
  • In economically unstable times (such as today) the focus is on low fixed cost. The accompanying budget strategy is to purchase infrastructure with excess capacity and sit on it for as long as possible. While this may not be the lowest initial cost approach, it does minimize the risk of mission failure over the longer term. In the new budget world, agencies can purchase the minimum infrastructure needed to meet current steady state requirements. This would typically result in an IT platform with minimal excess capacity. If more is needed later, one would use operational funds for cloud based services. This new strategy would conceivably result in lower initial cost and lower lifecycle cost as well.
  • With IT services as a utility, budgeting for it will become more akin to budgeting for office electricity. Do agencies do a annual capacity plan for electricity? No. A flat rate is set based on another related factor ( number of employees, number of offices, etc). This approach could actually result in absolutely zero capital budget for IT !!

What do you bean counters think about that !!

Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network