Let Your Workloads Guide Your Cloud Strategy

Today, many organizations are curing their dated infrastructure by taking their legacy applications to the Cloud. Before making the shift, however, you need a strategy.

And that strategy starts with a good hard look at your workloads (or more specifically, understanding how your workloads will be impacted by the move).

Knowing your workloads, and how strategically valuable they are, will help you decide which are good candidates for migration as well as the best Cloud type to use.

The Anatomy of a Cloud Workload

First things first. What is a Cloud workload?

A workload is a distinct capability or amount of work, such as the work that your applications perform. It may be a single-purpose application or capability like storage. It’s also commonly a “mixed” workload that combines applications, like email or financial reporting software.

A single Cloud workload typically consists of all the different capabilities and units of work that go into an application. Some examples include:

• Telecom, messaging, and conferencing
• Email
• Data processing and analytics
• Development and testing
• Business applications like ERP and CRM
• Word processing and other desktop capabilities
• Big Data and AI and machine learning

Do Your Workloads Need The Cloud Cure?

If you’re not sure if your business needs Cloud computing, perform a quick, in-office evaluation of your workloads answering these three questions:

1. Are any of your workloads fluctuating or high demand?
2. Can any of your workloads operate independently of your other systems?
3. Can any of them benefit from automation or lightning fast data processing?

If you answered ‘yes’ to at least one of the above questions, your enterprise IT isn’t as vigorous as it should be. You may need a prescription for agile, on-demand resources, scalable development and test environments, virtual desktops, and other aspects of a holistic Cloud strategy.

Achieving a ‘Cloud cure’ is not like an all-or-nothing crash diet or fitness fad. Rather, a Cloud workload migration should be thought of more like an incremental lifestyle change.

You do not need to move everything to the Cloud all at once (in fact, you probably shouldn’t). Some workloads are better candidates for the Cloud than others, and some will take higher priority.

Telecom is an example of an ideal workload to move to the Cloud.

Tired PBX systems don’t reflect the needs of today’s global enterprises. Enterprises around the world are discovering the freedom of replacing their dated legacy telecom systems with a Cloud-based solution.

From organization-wide phone systems to conferencing and messaging apps, Cloud-based telecom empowers organizations with the tools they need to communicate faster and easier.

Key Benefits of Cloud Workload Migration:

Commonly known as UCaaS (unified communication as a service), Cloud-based telecom solutions offer organizations a full-stack of benefits.

• Consolidates all telecom products into one platform.
• Major cost savings from no longer needing expensive telecom equipment.
• IT efficiencies — IT can remotely fix issues regardless of a user’s location.
• Features can be added or removed to suit organizational needs.

The Cloud Is Not a Miracle Cure, It’s a Lifestyle Change

The longer you wait to plan your move to the Cloud, the more your business will suffer. Your IT ailments aren’t benign; they’re actively harming your business by stunting growth, impairing innovation, and keeping you from competing at peak condition.

And just like treating an illness or recovering from an injury, there’s rarely a quick-fix for IT ailments. You can’t pop a pill and wake up the next morning with a fully secure, operational, agile and powerful enterprise in the Cloud.

You can, however, accelerate your journey to an optimal Cloud-powered business with a thoughtfully defined strategy for your Cloud workload migration.

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Well, an ounce of Cloud planning is worth pounds of efficiency, agility, innovation, and savings.

Look for Part 2 of this piece on Cloud Workloads coming soon!

Ready to learn more about how Cloud migration can help your workloads? Give us a call today.