Draft for Tamir's review. Not published.
Decide per system
List your systems with their age, how often they change, and what moving each would cost and give. Some are ageing, some need to change fast, and some never change. The answer differs for each.
Separate the urgent decision from the broad one. An expiring data centre lease or a hardware refresh forces a hosting choice for some services. It does not decide the destination for every application.
Compare the real numbers
When the CIO and the CFO disagree, ask both for numbers on the same few systems and compare the assumptions. Include the hardware refresh if nothing moves, and when it falls due. Model the cost over the whole period you must keep the data, including growth and retrieval fees.
Cost is half the decision. Ask how the vendor controls releases in the cloud: notice, a test window, and the right to defer. Confirm the exit path: export format, time to return everything, and who pays. Test performance from your own network at peak hours.
Depending on your seat
If you're on the board, the question may be moving existing customers to your own cloud product. Ask for confirmed customer acceptance rather than assumed demand, and have counsel review the support commitments affected. Compare a uniform deadline with segmented, voluntary and extended-support options.
If you run IT in a regulated business, start with workloads that are new, have few dependencies and carry data you can classify easily. Document the risk assessment, exit plan and data classification for each one. If an integrator proposes a cloud move mid-project, ask for the measured load that breaks the current design.
What to check before you decide
- List the systems with age, change frequency, and what moving each would cost and give.
- Ask for the CIO's and the CFO's numbers on the same three systems, and compare the assumptions.
- Price the hardware refresh if nothing moves, and note when it falls due.
- Ask the vendor how it controls cloud releases: notice period, test window, and the ability to defer.
- Confirm the exit path: export format, time to return all your data, and who pays for it.
- Test performance from your own network at peak hours before deciding.
- Choose a first group of systems with a measured result before any company-wide commitment.
Questions people ask
What should a board verify before requiring existing customers to move to cloud?
Require evidence that the proposed migration can preserve valuable customer relationships and meet existing commitments. It depends on customer constraints, product readiness, transition economics, and whether a segmented approach is more viable than a uniform deadline.
My CIO says move to cloud and my CFO says it costs more, how do I decide?
Both are usually right about different things: cloud costs more for steady workloads and less for variable ones, and it changes what the company can do and how fast. Ask for the decision per workload with the business reason, rather than one answer for everything. It depends on which systems are ageing, which need to change fast and which never change.
Integrator says our on-prem data platform won't scale and wants to move to cloud mid project, what should I check?
A mid-project architecture change is sometimes right and sometimes a way to recover a bad estimate. Ask for the measured load that breaks the current design and the specific component that fails. It depends on whether the scaling limit is real, and on whether your regulator and security team can accept the cloud design at all.
Bank starting with public cloud, how do we choose which workloads go first and what the regulator expects to see?
Go first with workloads that are new, have few dependencies and carry data you can classify easily, so the governance gets exercised before anything critical moves. Document the risk assessment, exit plan and data classification for each workload as you go. It depends on your regulator's outsourcing and cloud expectations and on your team's cloud operating skills.
Replacing our LIMS, cloud version or on premises for a validated quality environment?
Both can be validated; the difference is who controls change and how you prove it. Ask the vendor how it handles releases, change notice and validation evidence for cloud customers, and ask quality which of their concerns that answers. It depends on your validation approach and on whether the vendor's release cadence can be controlled or only observed.
Imaging archive at end of life, refresh on premises or move to the vendor's cloud archive?
Decide on retrieval behavior, cost over the retention period and exit, because the images must outlive the vendor. Test how fast priors load from cloud on your network during a busy morning. It depends on your study volume growth, your retention obligations and your network's reliability.
Does faster banking product delivery require moving the core ledger to cloud?
First establish which product constraints actually originate in the ledger and which sit elsewhere. A cloud move depends on business value, transaction integrity, resilience, retained capability, and requirements confirmed by the responsible regulatory and legal owners.
Should an expiring data centre lease force us to migrate to cloud?
Separate the immediate facility decision from the application modernization decision. It depends on workload readiness, relocation alternatives, support obligations, and the cost and risk of temporary coexistence.
How I can help with this decision
- Ask or talk (Free)
- I give my view on how to frame the question per system, and which assumptions in each set of numbers to check.
- Review (Pay if it was worth it)
- I write an independent assessment of the systems, costs, regulation and exit terms behind each position. I recommend what moves, what stays, in what order and on what conditions.
- Retain (When it makes sense)
- I stay close through the first moves to review the results against the numbers each side gave.