To understand whether an application or workload is viable for cloud migration, you should critically assess its metrics in order to make informed decisions. The application’s technical complexity, security parameters, and interdependencies with other applications are essential points of attention. By creating a “health check,” you gain a strategic perspective of the application’s capacities and can search for the most relevant cloud services that offer a corresponding level of integration and availability. After contacting a cloud services vendor, you can acquire an in-depth analysis of these parameters and gain a comprehensive understanding of how to improve your cloud-based investment in the long-term perspective.

Your final choice between cloud service models (SaaS, PaaS, or IaaS) and cloud deployment models (public, private, community, and hybrid) heavily relies upon your organization’s size, maturity, and application portfolio. For instance, some businesses revamp their internal HR services with SaaS (Software as a service) providers, while others opt for SaaS to improve their customer service capacities. Meanwhile, organizations in need of on-demand cloud services for critical workloads often choose IaaS (Infrastructure as a service). Overall, the cost expands from IaaS to SaaS as the control over the cloud operations shifts from the business to the provider.

Cloud adoption is typically related to the implementation of new policies for access and control of your data, so businesses are required to set up rules for data storage. In this case, attribute-based controls, encryption, and data tagging are beneficial instruments for data management in the cloud. Before deploying cloud services, it is also crucial for an organization to build transparent service level agreements (SLA) with a cloud provider so as to sustain sufficient trust and efficiently manage data in the long haul.

Regardless of the chosen cloud services, security is one of the key considerations that should be discussed beforehand. Several international, industry, and government standards (e.g., HIPAA, PCI, GDPR) can serve as a common baseline for your organization. Yet, moving data to the cloud should also imply continuous improvements in an organization’s security capacities. It is vital to monitor the performance of the chosen cloud service and update the company’s security controls to diminish any operational risk.