CAPACITY PLANNING INSIGHT 2015

As technological complexity, change and automation continues to accelerate, capacity planning looks set to re-emerge as a necessity to ensuring IT efficiency.

The research:• gains insight into the current enterprise IT and capacity

planning landscape• And uncovers emerging trends for 2016

Sumerian & Populus Research

Respondent profile

IT

Financial Services / Insurance

Public Services

Manufacturing

Transportation, Logistics

25%

11%

11%

11%

5%

Business Sector

25,000 or more employees

10,000 to 24,999

5,000 to 9,999

2,500 to 4,999

1,000 to 2,4999

32%

15%

15%

18%

19%

Business Size

£1,000,000+

£450,000-£999,999

£100,000-£449,999

£10,000-£99,999

£0-£9,999

10%

5%

8%

8%

6%

Est. Annual Spend on Capacity Planning

Businesses predict an increase in the importance of Capacity Planning in the next year, and a rise in expenditure in this area.

A majority of businesses acknowledge that Capacity Planning is to become increasingly important to them in the coming year, however the current state of Capacity Planning management is not sophisticated and many businesses admit that they have a gap in their Capacity Planning capability. Nearly half currently rely on simple spreadsheets to aid in their Capacity Planning, and a fifth of businesses have no analytics in place for managing server capacity.Key stats at a glance

45% rely on Excel spreadsheets for Capacity Planning, and 6% don’t use any tools at all.56% of businesses acknowledge that Capacity Planning will be increasingly important to them over the coming 12 months.36% admit they have a gap in their Capacity Planning capability.20% of businesses don’t use analytics for Capacity Planning.43% predict an increase in spending on Capacity Planning in the next year.

A quarter of businesses adopt cloud-based technology for cost reasons, yet many find it costs more than they budgeted, and suspect they have over-provisioned.

The main reason for adopting cloud technology is cost, yet cost savings – and accurate provision – are not universal. A fifth report that their cloud-based resources have actually cost them more than they initially budgeted for, and a similar proportion suspect they have over-provisioned. This underlines that while cloud can deliver elasticity and scale, it needs to be managed to remain cost effective.

Key stats at a glanceProportion of server estate that is virtual or cloud based now is 37% on average.Percentage increase of cloud based estate in three years’ time is 38% on average.24% adopt the cloud for cost reasons.20% find that cloud computing costs more than they have budgeted for, and 17% suspect they have over-provisioned.

Capacity issues account for a sizable proportion of critical outages, leading to a variety of negative impacts on business.

The majority of businesses have experienced a critical system outage in the past 12 months and these are not infrequent; on average businesses experience an outage every other month. Around a third of critical outages are directly related to capacity issues and in virtually all cases these outages have a negative impact on the business, ranging from affecting service performance, damaging internal customer satisfaction and, importantly, incurring additional costs for businesses.

Key stats at a glance85% of businesses have experienced a critical system outage in the past 12 months, and on average there is an outage every other month.29% of critical outages in the last 12 months were specifically related to capacity issues.Critical outages have negative effects in 97% of cases, and incur additional costs in 47% of cases.

Although businesses have large-scale IT improvements planned for the coming year, many lack access to vital information needed to support this activity.

An overwhelming majority of businesses have large-scale IT improvements planned for the next 12 months, with many planning a technology refresh, and two fifths specifically looking to undertake a cloud migration. However, planning for this type of change necessitates an assessment of IT capacity, and over a third said that they would currently find it hard to access this type of capacity information to support the upcoming transitions.

Key stats at a glance94% of businesses have IT improvement plans in the coming 12 months.69% mentioning a technology refresh, and 42% a migration to cloud-based technology.On average, businesses plan around two of these changes in the coming year.A third of businesses (34%) report that they would find it difficult to access capacity information to support them with planning for such IT growth.

Learn how Sumerian’s Capacity Planning as a Service can future proof your IT and confidently drive growth, click here to book a demo.

In 2016, as the pace of technology adoption quantity of data continues to increase, those who invest in IT capacity planning and extend their planning horizon will be in a strong position to future-proof their IT and help drive business value and growth. Is your organization prepared?

Get more information on Sumerian’s solutions:• Take IT Service Management up a level• Pre-empting Capacity Issues• De-risking the Impact of Growth• Streamlining a Technology Refresh• Assessing Disaster Recovery