Capacity planning in a cloud environment

EITAGlobal and Cloud Expert Kevin L. Jackson Team To Deliver Business Focused Cloud Computing Training

By G C Network | December 9, 2013

Today I am announcing my partnership with EITAGlobal to produce and deliver a series of business focused training webinars on cloud computing. Headquartered in Fremont, California, EITAGlobal is a continuing professional…

NRRC Video Series – Video 6 : Telos Demonstrates Cloud-based Communications System

By G C Network | December 8, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration. Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

NRRC Video Series – Video 5 : Boeing Ozone Dashboards for Emergency Management

By G C Network | December 7, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration. Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

Proud To Be Joining Veterans 360 and Cloud for Vets!

By G C Network | December 5, 2013

Today I’m proud and honored to announce my appointment to the Board of Advisors for Veterans 360. Their mission is to provide young, recently-separated combat veterans with a program of…

Take Charge, Lead Change, Do Cloud Right!

By G C Network | December 4, 2013

The theme for next week’s Gartner Data Center conference, “Taking Charge, Leading Change — Your I&O Transformation Can’t Wait”, is a real wake up call for today’s I&O leaders. Gartner’s…

Cloud Computing at the Potomac Officer’s Club

By G C Network | November 27, 2013

Across the Federal IT landscape, terms like “cloud”, “cloud computing” and Software as a service (SaaS) are at the center of a seismic shift by the agencies away from building…

NRRC Video Series – Video 2 : Building the Cloud Infrastructure

By G C Network | November 26, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration.  Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

NRRC Video Series – Video 1 : Introduction and Overview

By G C Network | November 25, 2013

In September, the NCOIC delivered the Geospatial Community Cloud (GCC) demonstration.  Sponsored by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, this demonstration showed how an interoperable, hybrid-cloud operating environment can be quickly enabled…

NCOIC To Rollout Open Process for Creating Secure, Hybrid IT Computing Environments

By G C Network | November 20, 2013

Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium to offer capability to organizations that seek to combine traditional and cloud infrastructures for greater efficiency and mission success WASHINGTON-November 19, 2013-Next month, the Network…

So what kind of consultant are you?

By G C Network | November 15, 2013

Yesterday over lunch, a good friend of mine from the Limelight Marketing Group and I started talking about my recent transition. As you can imagine being in the DC metro…

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 !!

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