October, 2007
by Denise P. Kalm
Denise Kalm has 30 years experience in IT including application programming, enterprise systems management and performance management/capacity planning at Pacific Telephone and Bank of America. She moved to vendor land in 2000, spending 5 ½ years with BMC on the EPA product line, then recently became the senior product marketing manager for enterprise job scheduling products at CA, Inc., formerly Cybermation. She is a regional officer of CMG, has held many volunteer positions within that organization and is a frequent contributing author. Prior to entering the IT profession, she was a biochemical geneticist. Her hobbies include flying, Jazzercise, writing and scuba diving. Her book, Lifestorm, on the Oakland Hills fire, is available on Amazon. She is an executive and personal coach as well, offering phone and in-person coaching.
About the Author
Denise P. Kalm, CA, Inc. formerly Cybermation
Robert Chaney won the 2005 Mullen award for his paper, "DDF Performance Analysis - Does It Really Have to Be This Complicated?" highlighting how he resolved a performance problem with the Delta Revenue Pipeline application. At the same time, his paper gave much useful information about how to approach problems of this kind. Bob has a long track record of writing quality papers for CMG, and this award recognizes his contribution. The Measure IT staff noted that he had never been interviewed for this award, so, belatedly, we are pleased to offer you...the rest of the story.
MeasureIT: Tell us something about your work for CMG and how you got started.
Bob Chaney: I attended my first CMG conference in 1987 and was immediately hooked. At that time, the capacity planning/performance management area was new to me, so it was a way to learn quickly from people who were actually involved day-to-day. After a few years of just attending, you realize the real value is in getting involved. I wrote my first paper in 1991, and have since not only presented at the conference but also volunteered as a referee and paper editor.
MI: What is your day job?
BC: I am currently an Enterprise Architect with a primary focus on capacity planning. My new role exposes me to more of the application development effort at Delta Technology and is helping me understand better how we in capacity planning can get involved earlier in the development process.
MI: How did you get inspired to write your award-winning paper?
BC: This paper was the third in a series that shared my experiences with a DDF (Distributed Data Facility) implementation of a very large DB2 database with multiple distributed application servers. Each year at CMG I noticed more folks were using DDF in their companies, so the topic generated a lot of interest. I've always valued the "user experience" papers at CMG, so I wanted to share my experience in this area. I guess it only took me three tries to get it right!
MI: What were some of your biggest challenges in putting it together?
BC: The biggest challenge was making this third paper provide new information that was not in the previous papers.
MI: What was the greatest satisfaction to you about getting this paper accepted and recognized?
BC: Well, there's a story on this one. I came to the capacity planning area from Finance in 1987 as part of a chargeback project. I was more fascinated with how the systems were running than with how much they cost, so it seemed like a good move for me to get into the IT department. I was working for Westinghouse at the time and we were consolidating data centers, one of which was located in Sunnyvale, California. I was sent to Sunnyvale to gather utilization and performance information so we could size the appropriate machine in the consolidated data center. The Sunnyvale data center did not have a PDB at the time, so the only capacity and performance data available was from RMF Post Processor reports. Since this was my very first capacity study, I needed some help analyzing RMF data and the best resource I could find at the time was a CMG paper, "MVS/XA Performance and RMF Data Analysis" by Bill Mullen in the CMG88 Proceedings. I think it started on page 987 of a 2-volume set (remember, this was before CDs). So I packed my CMG Proceedings book and went to Sunnyvale. During the day I would run and print a number of RMF postprocessor reports and in the evening analyze them with my proceedings book open to the appropriate page. I would look at IN/READY counts and then see what Bill had to say about them. Likewise for DASD response and paging rates. As a result, I was able to recommend a consolidated environment that not only made sense from a capacity/performance perspective but also actually worked when we subsequently consolidated the workload. I took the executive presentation from that effort and turned it into my very first CMG paper, "A Successful Capacity Analysis", which was accepted for CMG '91. So in a way, I feel like I've come "full circle" as the recipient of the 2005 J. William Mullen Memorial Award. I think I've always strived to meet the standard set by Bill Mullen, and in 2005 I came close enough to be recognized.
MI: What are you working on for this year?
BC: This year I'm working on Enterprise Architecture, trying to tie together application development, infrastructure support and systems operations. The struggle is to "stay out of the weeds" while we create higher level strategies for both the near term and long term future. The strategy I'm working on right now is Systems Management, which is very ITIL-focused and of course includes Capacity Management.
MI: Over the years, what has CMG meant to you? How has it affected your career?
BC: I believe Capacity Planners look at IT differently. We see systems as capacity lines or performance "hot spots". We know what someone means when they say there is a "Capacity Planning Limit" or "Effective Capacity Line" on a chart. We can visualize "knee of the curve" lines when someone mentions "the queuing effect" of high CPU utilization. We know that utilization must also be equated to IN/READY or RUN queues. CMG is where we go to validate our work by comparing it to our peers, and where we immerse ourselves in all things Capacity and Performance related.
MI: Where would you like to see CMG go in the future?
BC: Actually, more of the same. I have been impressed by CMG's ability to stay relevant in this ever-changing IT world. The presentation content has changed as the IT environments have changed, and it continues to be the best forum for companies to learn how to achieve the continuous improvement that Capacity and Performance Management techniques can provide. The Scottish physicist Lord Kelvin is quoted as having said: "If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it." That is so true in today's IT world.
MI: What would you be willing to tell us about your family and personal life?
BC: Kathy and I have been married for 36 years. We have two married daughters, two grandchildren and two granddogs. We're scattered in Georgia, South Carolina and Maryland so we do spend some time visiting. We enjoy arts and crafts fairs and our home is in constant "interior decoration" mode. I like to run, no, make that jog (real slow) on the treadmill. It relaxes me as long as I don't go too fast.
MI: What is the most interesting thing about you that most of us don't know
BC: I once played in a band and we actually worked about 40 weekends a year. I have pictures, and no, you can't have one!
MI: Who inspired you?
BC: I once worked as a financial analyst for Dr. Paul Pan, who was the Chief Scientist at Westinghouse and was responsible for the R&D budget. He would often tell his engineers, "Numbers don't lie.", then turn to me and say, "Chaney, what do the numbers say?" Obviously, he was a stickler for meeting his financial goals. As a capacity planner, I remember those words and always double or triple check my work to make sure MY numbers don't lie.