Moving parts of your technology estate to the cloud promises many benefits. But as you transition applications and databases from on-premises data centers into the cloud, you’re introducing lots of new variables that can impact on how your applications or websites might perform. And this can have big consequences for your customer experiences. It’s tempting to brush these concerns off and assume everything will be fine. After all, your application performs well now, the cloud servers you’re using are fast, and so is the internet. That means everything will be fine, right? The truth is, it may not be.

Know how your cloud transition will affect performance

You need to make absolutely sure you know what impact your cloud transition will have on your user experiences. And remember, it isn’t just the application or database you’re moving to the cloud that you need to test: it’s also anything connected to it. So as well as testing your newly cloud-based application and database for performance, you also need to test any on-premises ones that use the same database. The cloud move could, for example, add latency that makes the onpremises application unusable. By testing things thoroughly before you make the final move, you give yourself the opportunity to mitigate any problems that would have affected your users.

Why testing can be challenging

Testing the impact of a cloud transition can be challenging. Creating realistic conditions that emulate your production application workload is tricky enough. Imagine trying to test without the ability to answer simple questions such as ‘how long does task P take on-premises? How long does it take in the cloud? Why the difference?’ The standard tools many IT professionals use to manage production operations, such as Oracle Enterprise Manager and AWR, don’t help answer these simple questions.

Using Method R Workbench to measure the performance impact

This is where the Method R Workbench comes in. Once you’ve put in place a realistic test environment for your application and/ or its Oracle databases, Method R Workbench enables you to measure performance in the hours, minutes and seconds your users feel. Using the same Method R Workbench software every day in your development, testing and production environments helps you keep on top of performance as you plan and carry out your cloud transformation. It’s how you know when your performance is on target, when it isn’t on target, and even when it’s getting subtly worse – before your users have the chance to sense trouble was on its way.

An invaluable tool

Method R Workbench is an incredibly powerful measurement tool for planning and delivering a successful journey to the cloud. By having the ability to accurately measure performance in the on-premises production and realistic cloud test environments, you can identify and resolve potential performance issues early, before they affect your users. This will enable you to enjoy the many benefits of cloud, without being hamstrung by unexpected problems.