When public cloud resources first became readily available, many companies charged ahead with migration initiatives. They rushed to capitalize on lower costs, virtually unlimited scalability, and other benefits. Unfortunately, most failed to perform adequate due diligence on public cloud capabilities.
As a result,
more than half of the IT leaders we surveyed in 2017 said their organizations had moved one or more workloads back in-house for various reasons. What companies learned, either from their own mistakes or those of other organizations, is that the time and effort committed to laying the groundwork for a public cloud migration and determining which workloads are best suited for the public cloud is a very wise investment.
Understanding workloads
People tend to have a general sense of what the term “workload” means, but what is it, specifically? A workload consists of an application plus the underlying resources it needs to operate. This can include compute, network, security, and storage capabilities. However, other considerations such as location, cooling, heat, and power come into play as well.
Understanding the makeup of workloads is foundational. This knowledge supports better decision-making when it comes to platform-workload alignment, provider selection, migration planning, and even core operations. It’s easy to see how business outcomes can be positively impacted by doing this necessary due diligence.
As explained in our whitepaper titled “
Public Cloud Workload Migration: 9 Common Mistakes to Avoid,” the process of platform and workload alignment best begins here; with thorough understanding of key workloads, including their business function and underlying dependencies.
What is platform workload alignment?
With important information about the workload documented, the optimal cloud platform can be determined. However, some workloads will be identified as not ideal, or even ineligible, for migration to public cloud. Mistakes related to platform-workload alignment described in the aforementioned whitepaper include the failure to prioritize workloads for migration and the failure to consider workload dependencies.
Another resource, our ebook titled “
Key Considerations When Migrating Workloads to Public Cloud,” provides additional insights on the importance of workload assessment. It emphasizes again that the objective is to determine the most technically appropriate and cost-effective cloud platform to support the business requirements of a workload. Making this determination can result in benefits such as reduced risk, time savings, increased agility, and reduced cost.
A cautious approach when migrating workloads to public cloud
Our survey revealed that 76% of IT leaders are more cautious when assessing which workloads to migrate to public cloud than they were in the past. There are still very compelling reasons to migrate appropriate workloads to the public cloud. Conducting due diligence is essential for determining which workloads are best suited for public cloud.