Enterprise Capacity Planning

Purpose

Forecast capacity demand 1-4 quarters ahead, size infrastructure with the right headroom for each service tier, and trigger procurement with enough lead time for bare-metal/colo. Translate business growth assumptions into compute/storage/network units and money.

Framework/Methodology

PREDICT Methodology

A five-phase framework for systematic capacity planning:

Phase 1 - Profile: Establish baseline usage for every resource across all services. Collect median, p95, p99, and peak values over a rolling 90-day window. Segment by service tier, region, and deployment environment.

Phase 2 - Review: Analyze historical trends and identify growth patterns. Correlate usage spikes with business events (product launches, marketing campaigns, seasonal peaks). Document assumptions about future growth drivers.

Phase 3 - Estimate: Apply growth models to each resource. Run linear, exponential, seasonal, and event-driven projections. Assign confidence intervals based on historical accuracy and business certainty.

Phase 4 - Determine: Calculate required capacity including headroom by tier. Account for failure tolerance, maintenance windows, and deployment overhead. Generate procurement schedule aligned with lead times.