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Cloud

Cloud Strategy

Cloud with confidence

The right cloud strategy is the one that fits your workloads, budget, and timeline. We build that plan with you and then stay to execute it.
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Cloud costs and complexity on the rise

Cloud used to be a destination. Now it’s a set of tradeoffs. Public cloud offers elasticity, but lift-and-shift migrations routinely cost far more than the on-premises environments they replaced. Hybrid and multi-cloud spread workloads across providers, but that also drives up complexity. Meanwhile, renewals from major vendors are reshaping budgets on short notice, and the people who sort it all out are consumed with keeping the current environment running.  

When strategy work gets postponed, the cloud tab keeps climbing.

 

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The OnX approach

Enterprise cloud strategy services

We start with a candid assessment of your environment, spend, and application portfolio. Before any platform decision is made, we align on business objectives and what success looks like. Then we build a prioritized roadmap that includes workload placement, sequencing, and a cost model. For environments already in the cloud, we identify the spend that lift-and-shift left behind and suggest ways to bring it down.  

Cloud Strategy capabilities

Here's how we help you sharpen cloud performance.

Where to start

Advisory engagements

An OnX advisory is a time-bound, fixed-fee engagement designed to give you a clear answer to a specific strategic question — fast. 

Cloud Migration Assessment & Wave Planning

Best for: Organizations facing a migration or re-platforming decision that want a sequenced, dependency-aware plan before committing budget or moving workloads.

You walk away with:

  • Application inventory and dependency map across the migration scope
  • Per-workload assessment of the right destination (public cloud, managed infrastructure, or stay-put) and the right approach (rehost, replatform, modernize, or retire)
  • A wave-sequenced migration roadmap that orders the move from lower-risk proof workloads to complex interdependent systems
  • A defensible total cost model comparing current-state spend against projected future-state spend
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What success looks like

Three outcomes show up most consistently.

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Cost optimization

 The biggest cloud cost lever is upstream of FinOps. Workload placement, right-sizing, and architecture decisions made during strategy work determine whether the bill is manageable a year later. 

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Business agility

 With a coherent cloud plan, the business can say “yes” faster. Workloads land in the right environment the first time, new initiatives have a defined path to production, and platform decisions stop being one-off scrambles.

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Reduced risk

 Lift-and-shift, hyperscaler lock-in, and unmanaged sprawl all carry risks that emerge later as cost, downtime, and/or compliance exposure. Strategy work surfaces those risks early, while the decisions that drive them are still reversible.

“What starts as a licensing conversation often uncovers a broader opportunity. We take a step back to assess business needs, cloud strategy, and operational requirements, helping clients build a roadmap that not only optimizes licensing costs but strengthens the overall technology foundation.”

Celio Casadei

Celio Casadei

Senior Vice President, Professional Services & AI Consulting 

Don’t take our word for it

“OnX has been an incredible partner and really takes the time to understand our needs and our culture. They have been fantastic throughout and represent OnX professionally and with curiosity about our technology landscape.”

DirectorHealthcare

“Onx is exceptionally agile partner, consistently attentive to our needs and always quick to adapt. Their customer focus and responsiveness truly set them apart as a top-tier service provider.”

Deputy CTOBFSI

“OnX is a reliable and trusted partner whose deliberate focus on understanding our environment, challenges, and business outcomes helps us advance complex initiatives with confidence.”

ManagerGovernment

“The OnX account team consistently demonstrates professionalism, expertise, and a strong commitment to service. They translate customer requirements into practical, cost-effective solutions, making them a valuable partner.”

 Sr. ManagerBFSI

“The OnX account team consistently demonstrates professionalism, expertise, and a strong commitment to service. They translate customer requirements into practical, cost-effective solutions, making them a valuable part.”

DirectorUtilities

Set strategy, then operationalize.

 Strategy is the starting point. The work that follows lives across migration, resilience, and ongoing operations.

What makes the difference

National expertise with local accountability.

For 40+ years, OnX has helped Canadian organizations solve complex technology challenges. Our national reach provides access to deep technical capabilities, industry specialists, and leading technology partners, while our local teams remain accountable for outcomes and invested in your success. We listen before we recommend and stay engaged throughout delivery.

Industry knowledge that matters. 

Regulatory requirements and operational realities shape your technology decisions. OnX brings deep experience supporting complex, highly regulated organizations through modernization, cybersecurity, cloud transformation, and AI adoption. With a deep understanding of governance, compliance, and security, we know how to deliver outcomes within those constraints.

Partnership that goes the distance.

Technology initiatives succeed when the right partner stays committed after implementation. OnX works alongside you from strategic planning and procurement to modernization, managed services, and AI transformation. We strive for partnerships built on trust, accountability, and a shared commitment to long-term success.

Related insights 

Frequently asked questions 

What’s included in a cloud strategy engagement? A cloud strategy engagement from OnX covers current-state assessment, business-objective alignment, workload placement analysis, total cost of ownership and ROI modeling, and a prioritized roadmap. For organizations already operating in the cloud, it also includes optimization work to reduce the spend that early lift-and-shift migrations tend to leave behind. The goal is a defensible plan that decides what belongs in public cloud, what runs better in a managed or private environment (and what should stay where it is) before any migration begins.
How does OnX help with Broadcom and VMware licensing changes? Broadcom’s VMware licensing changes have prompted many organizations to evaluate moving virtual workloads to another hypervisor or to public cloud. OnX treats this as a strategy decision rather than a procurement scramble. We assess which workloads should move, which belong in public cloud, and which run more predictably in a managed environment. Then we model the true multi-year cost of each path. That analysis becomes the foundation for a re-platforming or migration plan, which our teams can help you execute.
Does OnX support Google Cloud? Yes. OnX helps organizations evaluate, adopt, optimize, and operate Google Cloud environments as part of broader cloud and multi-cloud strategies. Our approach is platform-agnostic, meaning we help determine whether Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft Azure, or a hybrid architecture is the best fit for your business, technical, security, and cost objectives.
What is the difference between cloud strategy and FinOps? FinOps is the ongoing financial-operations discipline of governing cloud spend over time. OnX cloud strategy focuses on the technical and architectural decisions that determine that spend in the first place: workload placement, platform selection, and right-sizing. We concentrate on the engineering side of optimization, identifying the services and configurations driving cost so they can be reduced or eliminated. For many organizations, getting placement and architecture right is what makes spend predictable enough to manage.
Is cloud strategy worthwhile even if we are already in the cloud? Yes. Many organizations move to public cloud through lift-and-shift, which is the fastest path but also the most expensive way to operate long term. A cloud strategy engagement identifies workloads that are over-provisioned, services that can be consolidated or removed, and workloads that would run more cost-effectively in a managed environment. The result is lower, more predictable spend and a clearer plan for what to modernize next.

Decide before you spend.

 Book a cloud strategy session and start with a plan you can defend.