Relationship between Capacity and Availability Management

[Chris]

On the course I took recently, they told us that Capacity and Availability should not be covered by the same person. Our organization is quite small vis a vis technical staff and at this point, the person who does these (undefined but done nonetheless) is one. Can anybody clarify why they should not be done by the same person??

Thanks and I hope I get some response!

[Tania]

Hi Chris,

While it is ideal to have different roles undertaking Availability/IT Service Continuity and Capacity Management, for some organisations this may not be possible due to size of the organisation or even the level of complexity of the infrastructure.

What is certain is that the roles are very different and have different focuses (that do overlap) and activities. What is important, is to ensure the planning activities of each role can be accommodated by a single position within the organisation.

As the production of the Availability and Capacity Plans would happen at the same time each period, it is important that the person in the target role is able to devote sufficient time to the production of each or produce a consolidated plan within the required timeframe. Alternatively if sufficient supporting resources are available to assist in the activities associated with each process then the requirement on the Manager role would be reduced significantly.

Best wishes,
Tania

[rjp]

The reason they are deemed to be in (potemtial) conflict and therefore best not done by the same person is because:

a) When availability you tend to want to beef up the infrastructure - remember availability isn't just about up and down, it's also about throughput and performance - being able to cope with demand peaks.

b) It's is Capacity management's goal is utilization - to get as lean an infrastructure as it can - which if over zealously pursued can lead to 'brown-outs'.

Each acts as a guard against the potential excesses of the other.

[javierarcal]

Hi,

I fully agree that capacity and availability managers are quite different roles, specially because of modelling and predicting future demands for the capacity managers one of the skills for a capacity manager is:

• Ability to plan for and implement appropriate IT capacity to match business requirements and predictions

But from my point of view ITIL Philosophy says that should be done an Sscaleable Process driven approach and should be understood company culture so it is not so a huge issue that capacity manager and availability manager are exactly the same person

Javier
Madrid-Spain