As thousands of companies world-wide have already learned, ITIL is a major mechanism for turning IT organizations into efficient, service-centric engines that are laser-focused on the business needs of companies and their internal IT consumers. However, a key ITIL process with the greatest potential dividends—Capacity Management – is often overlooked, delayed, or just plain forgotten.

This paper describes Capacity Management’s capability of lowering tangible costs and improving service delivery. It also details a methodology for evaluating an organization’s Capacity Management program with the goal of designing a roadmap for initiating or improving an ITIL Capacity Management process.

There’s little doubt that the concept of "utility computing" is gaining momentum. Claiming advantages in reliability, scalability, flexibility and economy, leading vendors like IBM, HP and Sun are all promoting "on-demand" solutions. These advantages come with a payment plan that promises to charge only for what is used. For organizations that are concerned with the cost and value of information technology (IT), the prospect of reliable, fast IT services on a pay-as-you-go basis can be very appealing.

This paper discusses the following concepts and provides an overview of the requirements for creating an in-house corporate on-demand computing environment with IT services metering and usage billing.

• Utility-Computing and Metered-Services Concepts - What is really meant by IT utility services.
• Cost, The Driver for On-Demand Services - How cost drives the on-demand model and why costing has been so difficult.
• Service Model Concepts - Practical expectations and methods for determining IT usage and cost allocation.
• Solution Requirements - The elements required for accurate data collection and cost allocation.

Although chargeback systems are usually imposed on data center management as a means of recovering costs, the value of chargeback can be felt throughout the entire enterprise. A well-designed chargeback system gives organizations the power to increase service levels, make IT more relevant to the business, align IT with the strategic goals of the enterprise, balance service versus costs, and provide a method to understand and control the consumption of IT resources.

A well designed IT chargeback system will provide the granularity needed to create enterprise-wide accountability for IT utilization and allocation, offer the means to quantify the value of IT to the organization, and deliver the means to lower the cost of operations. This white paper is a guideline for choosing billable units of charge along with the caveat that no rules of thumb in the area can apply to every IT organization.

This white paper from the CMX Group demonstrates that even in complex data centers consisting of shared and dedicated servers the ability to charge back for IT services is not only feasible but can provide tremendous benefits, both financial and organizational.