Assessing workloads Using a cost estimator tool Other vendors may offer total cost of ownership (TCO) calculators. These calculators may ask you a series of For example, a calculator may ask you a series of questions  about the number of compute instances, storage needs, data  transfer, load balancing, and IPs needed and then provide you  with a monthly estimate. Of course, your monthly usage and,  therefore, the charges may vary from the estimates that the  calculator provides. A number of cloud providers and vendors offer calculators  for helping you estimate charges for their services or to help  you estimate the cost savings from cloud computing services.  Some vendors provide monthly calculators for their web services. To manage all these capacity requirements without having to  invest in excess capacity, you need to plan ahead and decide  which workloads can be moved to a dynamic infrastructure.  Some vendors, such as IBM, provide workload assessment  tools and services, to help prioritize and classify potential  workloads for cloud delivery. After selecting inputs in a  spreadsheet-like form, the tool gives you a pain versus gain  score that reflects a combination of effort (to migrate), investment, and benefit of migration. Many kinds of workloads are far from static and predictable.  Workloads generally have a stable base but experience minor  fluctuations and occasional peaks. The peaks may be seasonal  in nature or triggered by a business event (such as a product  launch), a sudden change in market conditions, or a product  recall. When considering a migration to a cloud environment, you  need to know which applications transition easily and give  you the best return on investment (ROI). Assessing potential  workloads is key to understanding what you should migrate  and what should remain in a traditional IT environment.  Chapter 3: Diving into Cloud Economics 33 These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any  dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.