Economics-Aware Capacity Planning for Commercial Grids

Abstract

Currently, capacity planning is fairly simple, due to the few options that are available. With the advent of Grid markets, this discipline for analyzing resource purchases must be adapted. A commercial Grid provides many different resource types at variable prices, making capacity planning more complicated than it currently is. In this paper, we describe the functionality of an online Grid Capacity Planning Service, which helps companies with little IT expertise to make use of the Grid in a cost-effective manner. The requirements of the capacity planning service are derived in part from a survey carried out among SMEs in the region of the German city of Bruchsal. Using the requirements, we identified all the necessary information from the Grid and we designed and implemented parts of the capacity planning service.