Developing an Economic  Strategy Cloud Services For Dummies, IBM Limited Edition  26 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. 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  These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any  dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Comparing traditional models  with the cloud