• New: Capacity & Performance Management Foundation Certificate
• Forthcoming training courses and associated price changes
• Workshop: Excel for Effective Capacity & Performance Management
• New Article: Cost-Effective Capacity Modelling: A Case Study
• 2 New Presentations: Performance Assurance; ITIL V3
• Forthcoming Conference and Exhibition
• The On-line Self-Assessment and Capacity Management Audit

The Capacitas Accreditation Programme is a unique offering that enables ICT capacity and performance management professionals to gain a recognised qualification. The programme is based around Capacitas's leading suite of training courses with accompanying examinations. Examinations are sat at the Capacitas Training Centre in Farringdon, London and are multiple choice based. The Accreditation comprises four levels:

• Foundation Certificate
• Practitioner Certificate
• Advanced Practitioner Certificate
• Management Certificate

Capacity and Performance Management Foundation Tutorial

This half day tutorial prepares students for the Capacity and Performance Management Foundation exam. The syllabus for this certificate is based on the Capacity Planning: Tools & Methods course, which is a pre-requisite. The tutorial covers the key learning points from the Capacity Planning: Tools and Methods course and also includes mock examination questions for the students to complete. This half day tutorial is ideal for those planning to sit the Foundation exam. The tutorial occurs in the morning and the examination occurs after lunch. The tutorial fee of £250+VAT also includes the exam fee.

Capacity and Performance Management Foundation Examination

The Capacity and Performance Management Foundation Certificate examination covers topics from the Capacity Planning Tools and Methods course including trending, demand forecasting, workload characterisation, capacity planning and analytical and simulation modelling. It is designed to measure each candidate's understanding of what data they need and which techniques to use in order to predict capacity and performance of a system. The examination is multiple choice of 40 questions with a pass-mark of 26 and the duration is one hour. It is possible to sit the examination without attending the tutorial session; the standalone fee is £75+VAT. Previous attendance of the Capacity Planning: Tools & Methods course is mandatory.

London, UK, Training Centre:

Please click on the above links to review the course descriptions or email us at Capacitas Training. More details...

Programme of half-day Capacitas Seminars

The Performance or Capacity Analyst faces many challenges such as changing business processes, new technology and standards. The Capacitas 2008 seminar programme is designed to provide the Performance and Capacity Analyst with an understanding of important current capacity and performance issues they face. The seminars will be run in central London close to our offices.

Capacitas Seminar Programme 2008

Feedback from attendees of previous events can be found by following this link. All seminars will cost £125+VAT. Those registered a month prior to the seminar date will quality for a discount of 20% (£25+VAT). To register please email Capacitas Seminars, or to pay by card click here or call 020 7841 7431. More details...

Using Microsoft Excel for Effective Capacity & Performance Management

Microsoft Excel is widely available but its capabilities are surprisingly underused, especially its ability to analyse and report on capacity and performance data. This seminar gives practical advice on how to undertake a multitude of tasks using Excel. The workshop is platform independent, using various sources of data in demonstrations, and focuses on providing a value-for-money approach to capacity and performance analytical tools. Topics covered include pivot tables, filtering, batch modelling, surface plots, forecasting functions, automation and charts.

Feedback from attendees of previous events can be found by following this link. This workshop will cost £500+VAT. Those registered at least one month before the event will quality for a discount of £100+VAT. To register please email Excel for Capacity and Performance Workshop, or call 020 7841 7431. More details...

Cost-Effective Capacity Modelling - A Real-life Case Study

The client needed to determine the server capacity requirements of a large real-time billing system over the next two years. A detailed capacity model was required to predict the memory and CPU requirements and model 'what-if' scenarios; including the purchase of a new hardware platform to support future growth in demand. The model was to be used and maintained by the organisation without requiring ongoing support from Capacitas. As well as the model, a two-day training course on how to use and maintain the model was delivered. Both deliverables were completed by Capacitas within ten weeks elapsed time.

Please see our Research section for a selection of white papers, presentations and articles on various areas of performance assurance and capacity management.

CMG 2007, 2nd-7th December 2007, San Diego

Andy Bolton, Chief Executive of Capacitas presented on Performance Assurance: How to Add Value Beyond Performance Testing and ITIL V3 Capacity Management: A Practitioner's Review at CMG in San Diego in December 2007.

Please see our Research section for a selection of white papers, presentations and articles on various areas of performance assurance and capacity management.

UKCMG Annual Conference, 19th-21st May 2008

UKCMG will be holding its Annual Conference in 2008 at Whittlebury Hall in Northamptonshire, close to Silverstone. Capacitas are a Silver Sponsor of this event and will be present to answer your questions about our services and training courses. We will also be providing updated information on our training and certification programme. All these will be covered in more detail at our vendor session.

Capacitas staff will be on hand to discuss our market-leading syllabus of training courses and programme of seminars. We will have a range of our course and seminar material available for you to review, please find us at stand 7 (see: UKCMG 2007 exhibition layout).

In addition Capacitas has submitted several presentations on hot topics.

The presentation material will be available after the event on our website Research area. The UKCMG 2008 Annual Conference is being held at Whittlebury Hall, near Northampton.

Capacity Management Self-Assessment

This is a web-based service that allows the user to answer questions relating to their organisation's Capacity Management discipline. The user then receives an emailed report presenting the results as a radar diagram comparing the user's results to the target, average and best previous results so far.

The questions are combined into five categories:

• Interfaces
• Organisation
• Resources
• Capacity Management Infrastructure
• Deliverables and Services

The service has been designed to be an improvement on the ITIL V2 Capacity Management Self-Assessment, which has 58 questions but only yes/no options as answers. The major flaw in the ITIL version is that it does not allow the user to describe the extent to which their practices are compliant with the ITIL practices. This confusion reduces the value in comparing one's results to other organisations as it is unclear if the same understanding has been reached by each respondent.

The Capacitas Capacity Management Self-Assessment avoids this confusion by asking unambiguous questions that should allow any user to clearly understand how they should answer (assuming of course that they know enough about their own organisation). Furthermore each question has a useful 'hovering' help tip to give further advice.

For more information on the Capacity Management Self-Assessment please follow this link.

For customers who need more assistance in bringing their Capacity Management discipline to the target level Capacitas offer a Capacity Management Audit.

This service is more comprehensive than the self-assessment. Capacitas consultants will work on site with the customer's staff and collect evidence of which activities are carried out and to what extent and quality standard they are carried out to.

For more information on the Capacity Management Audit service please follow this link or email us.

Recent customers of Capacitas include: easyJet, HBOS, EDF Energy, Skinkers, HSBC, ING, HM Land Registry, Prudential, Orange, BT, Scottish & Southern Energy, Accenture, Ericsson Services, LCH Clearnet and Orange. For more details on what some of our customers have to say about us please have a look at our testimonials and training feedback pages.

"Having previously attended the Capacitas 'Capacity Planning: Tools and Methods' course, I then signed up for the 'Capacity Planning Windows Server' course. I found this to be extremely relevant with a clear explanation of the most useful Windows performance indicators using real-world examples.

I now feel much more confident and competent in carrying out my capacity planning and performance management role on Windows servers." Read more...

Neil Rodan, HSS-IT Capacity Planning, HSBC

If you are interested in learning more about our services please email Enquiries, or call +44 (0) 20 7841 7431.