Capacity PlanningNetwork planning is like designing a town's road system. In both cases, you need to understand how much traffic there is, who uses which routes, where journeys start and stop, and how all of these things vary over time. Not enough lanes, you get traffic jams. Too many lanes, you incur extra costs and may cause traffic problems for the smaller roads off the main one.
At Structured, we believe proper network capacity planning (like road planning) starts with careful capacity measurement. You need to monitor and assess the number and type of vehicles (whether cars or packets) using the system. When examining network traffic, Structured breaks it down into two types:
Background Traffic—or infrastructure traffic such as keep-alive packets between a PC and a server for mapping a drive to a network share
Transactional/Functional Traffic—which is generated when a task is performed, such as when a bank teller enters a deposit for a customer
We’ll also help you identify the peak days for each role in each department, measure the traffic, and document it. Depending on the nature of the peaks you observe, the network should be able to cope with peak traffic in all departments simultaneously, or if peaks seldom overlap, there is no need to plan for them doing so.
System and Organizational Optimization The network is the critical conduit through which your business information travels. If it stops working, your organization stops working. That’s why Structured’s expert professionals carefully calculate usage and make recommendations based on your unique usage patterns. With Structured’s expertise planning network capacity, you’ll be able to:
Save Time—A thorough capacity analysis keeps you from wasting time looking in the wrong places for network problems. It’s better to anticipate problems and plan proactively than to react to them when they occur.
Avoid Lost Productivity or Opportunity—Some industries (such as banking and financial services) need instantaneous transaction completion. Network delays can mean lost business or the risk of expensive regulatory non-compliance penalties.
Remain Flexible—Because business needs change over time, Structured helps you adjust your capacity needs accordingly.
Capacity planning should, within certain practical limits, help you anticipate the future. Structured can help you quantify the current state of your network and make educated predictions about how it could change. Our methods will prepare you for such changes and give you the greatest flexibility for reacting quickly to maintain your business advantages.
