Test/Dev

The cloud lends itself so well to application testing and development that those were essentially the first use cases attempted at scale.

Test/Dev environments are natural fits for the cloud, for several reasons, Dada said.

Because those workloads aren't in production, the risk is minimal. They're self-contained, so they don't have many dependencies with other applications or latency concerns; and most test environments are ephemeral, only needing to be live and able to scale in short-lived cycles.

Those workloads allow companies to dip their toes in the water, gaining experience and finding the confidence they will need to deploy production applications in the cloud on a broader scale later on.

"They also learn about cost," Dada said, and "cost in the cloud is very different from an on-premises environment."