ESTIMATING SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE CLOUD COMPUTING RESOURCE CAPACITY REQUIREMENTS FOR A CUSTOMER BASED ON CUSTOMER WORKFLOWS AND WORKLOADS

A method, system and computer program product for evaluating capacity needs of a customer. A selection of an industry workflow is received from the customer, or alternatively, the customer provides a custom workflow. Furthermore, the initial workload estimates and the capacity requirements for implementing the selected industry workflow or the custom workflow are determined based on the answers to a set of questions presented to the customer. A model is then created to represent a data flow of the selected/custom workflow as well as represent the transaction rates. A system is provisioned to simulate production usage based on the determined capacity requirements. Furthermore, a workload is simulated based on the model and the initial workload estimates. The usage patterns in the simulated workload and the usage of the system are monitored which are used to update the capacity requirements of the system.