10 items to consider when migrating your workloads to the cloud.

Moving an on-premise datacenter workload to a cloud offering can bring many benefits, such as scalability, reduced costs, and increased flexibility. However, before making the move, it’s important to evaluate various criteria to ensure that the cloud offering is the right fit for your workload. Here are some key criteria to consider:

1. Cost: One of the biggest drivers for moving to the cloud is cost savings. Evaluate the costs associated with running your workload on-premise, including hardware, software licenses, maintenance, and personnel. Compare these costs with the costs of running your workload on a cloud offering, including compute, storage, network, and management fees.
2. Security: Evaluate the security features offered by the cloud offering, including encryption, access control, monitoring, and compliance certifications. Ensure that the cloud offering meets your organization’s security and compliance requirements.
3. Scalability: Determine if the cloud offering can easily scale to meet your workload’s changing demands. Consider the ability to scale both horizontally (adding more instances) and vertically (increasing instance size).
4. Availability: Ensure that the cloud offering provides high availability and disaster recovery capabilities. Evaluate the service level agreements (SLAs) for availability and uptime.
5. Performance: Evaluate the performance of the cloud offering and compare it to your on-premise environment. Ensure that the cloud offering can provide the necessary levels of performance for your workload.
6. Integration: Determine if the cloud offering can integrate with your existing systems and applications. Evaluate the availability of APIs and tools to facilitate integration.
7. Support: Evaluate the level of support provided by the cloud offering. Ensure that support is available 24/7 and that there are clear escalation paths for issue resolution.
8. Data governance: Evaluate the cloud offering’s data governance and compliance policies. Ensure that the cloud offering meets your organization’s data governance and compliance requirements.
9. Migration complexity: Determine the complexity of migrating your workload to the cloud offering. Evaluate the availability of migration tools and services provided by the cloud offering or third-party vendors.
10. Training and skillset: Ensure that your IT staff has the necessary skills and training to manage the cloud offering. Evaluate the availability of training resources and support provided by the cloud offering or third-party vendors.

Overall, the decision to move an on-premise datacenter workload to a cloud offering requires a thorough evaluation of various criteria to ensure that the cloud offering is the right fit for your organization’s needs.