These are the areas of expertise that CMG builds, fosters and is chartered to advance:
Measurement
Everything we do starts with measurement (hence the name of our organization). Papers for this area include discussions of what data to gather, how to gather it, and where to keep it. Some matters apply across all environments; others may be specific to particular operating systems or subsystems (storage, networks, power and cooling, etc.). Both papers on what should be done, and user experiences trying to do it, are encouraged.
Capacity Planning
Especially in an economic environment where money is tight, the first thing that management wants from us is an answer to the question: "When will I have to spend more money?" Capacity planning attempts to give an answer to that question. This subject area includes issues of managing the capacity you have, determining what future demands will be, and combining those with data from the past to estimate when current capacity will no longer be sufficient and what it will cost to increase it.
Modeling/Statistics
This subject area focuses on a specialized sub-set of Capacity Planning: developing models of your systems, using statistics to clarify the range of data you have on the past, forecasting the future using those models, etc. Both theoretical discussions of modeling and user experiences in trying to fit models to real situations are desired.
Tuning
The second question management asks (once we have told them when they will have to spend more money for more capacity) is: "How can I put it off?" And, if they are already seeing missed Service Levels, it may even be the first question. Our answer depends on analyzing the current systems, finding the cause of the largest resource demands, and suggesting changes to performance parameters and programs which will reduce that demand. Papers are solicited on analysis methods, tools, techniques, approaches to selecting performance parameter values, and user experiences in tuning various systems and sub-systems.
Performance Engineering and Load Testing
The ideal approach to performance is to start when a system or application is in the design phase, and keep evaluating its performance as it moves toward production. This area includes Software Performance Engineering (SPE), simulation, stress/load testing, benchmarking, etc.
Management and Reporting
Management raises the focus of performance beyond the IT infrastructure and addresses the overall performance of the business. This includes ITIL processes and IT Service Management, business asset management (BAM), corporate governance issues, computer performance management (CPM), the use of key performance indicators (KPIs), and the establishment of customer Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It also includes the design of dashboards and reports that will allow managers (especially non-technical managers) to understand the meaning of the data we gather and the recommendations we make.
Hot Topics
This subject area introduces and offers a preliminary evaluation of hot topics and emerging technologies, including but not limited to: Capacity Planning for Green Datacenters, Software as a Service, Performance Visualization, Service-Oriented Architectures, Blade Servers, Grid Computing, Cloud Computing, and Emerging Technologies.
