On this page you can find the video presentations and PowerPoint slideshows from the St. Louis CMG Virtual Conference on November 15, 2022.

Fill out the form and press “Access the presentations” to access all the materials.

The mini conference includes presentations from SMT Data, Topdanmark, and DataKinetics.

Abstracts

Month to Month – Year to Year Capacity Planning by Elise Bundgaard, Topdanmark and Carsten Rasmussen, SMT Data

Real world experience with capacity planning from Topdanmark, a large insurance company in Denmark. In TopDenmark’s mainframe environment, the hardware and software are outsourced, but system programming remains inhouse. The capacity management process starts with a selection of SMF records. Next step is to turn raw data into useful information for capacity planning. The historical capacity usage provides a baseline on top of which is added planned increases in business volume, estimated unplanned workload and working “white space” for final capacity allocation.

Mainframe Capacity and Performance Challenges in an Outsource Environment by Steven Thomas, SMT Data

Managing mainframe performance and capacity in outsourced environments presents special challenges both to the customer and to the outsourcer. Mainframe customers often lack transparency into how well their outsourcer is managing mainframe capacity and performance relative to what is optimal for the customer. The outsourcer, on the other hand, has to juggle many different and often conflicting priorities such as maximizing profit, living up to SLA’s , and ensuring happy customers. Often the outsourcer is working with at least three different cost structures – their external cost, their internal cost allocation to different lines of business, and their billing model towards the customers. Seldom are these well aligned and or the relationship between them well understood by the people making capacity and performance decisions.

This presentation provides an overview of some of the common pitfalls and recommended best practices around capacity and performance management in an outsourced mainframe.

What colo(u)r is your grass? by Larry Strickland, DATAKINETICS

This presentation is about Larry’s learnings about unnecessary change during a 30 year technology career building products around the globe.

Getting Transperancy using ITBI by Steven Thomas, SMT Data

A presentation and demo on getting transparency into capacity and performance using SMT Data’s IT Business Intelligence.