## Developing an Economic Strategy 

An organization typically has many different types of workloads to manage in its data center that may be better suited for a cloud environment. So, to optimize your economic benefit from the cloud, you must first have a good understanding of your workload requirements. 

Developing an economic strategy for the cloud can be a balancing act. Some workloads may be more suited to your data center. There are compelling reasons why others belong in the cloud. And, while most organizations can’t predict the actual costs of running any given service in a data center, looking at direct and indirect costs of moving to the cloud is important. 

## Comparing traditional models with the cloud 

As companies move to consider a cloud model, they no doubt are looking at their traditional data center. So, here’s an important point: The data center doesn’t go away. After all, almost all medium-size and large companies run their own data center to support and operate their systems of record, including accounting systems, payroll, and human resource as well as industry specific applications. 

When you think about a traditional data center, you generally picture a centrally managed data center that contains all of a company’s applications and data. While initially the data center was well planned and architected, it has typically evolved over decades to be less streamlined. Today, the typical data center supports different hardware, architectures, operating systems, applications, and tools. 

Although IT has made the data center more efficient, organizations are taking a hard look at what workloads the centralized data center is well suited for. The reality is that the traditional data center is often best suited for a complex line of business applications. These applications are often 

