Blog: What We Learned Moving to the Public Cloud: A Conversation with Christian Delcid

Most Workday customers are heading toward a major transition: moving from Workday’s private cloud to a hyperscaler-backed public cloud. And while the change is inevitable, the experience of going through it varies dramatically depending on how prepared you are — not just technically, but organizationally.

In a recent episode of Workday Gold, I invited my co-host, Christian Delcid, to walk through his organization’s public-cloud migration: what worked, what almost broke, and what he wishes he had known sooner.

“This migration is not a configuration project — it’s a project management project wearing a Workday label.”

That single sentence might be the most important takeaway from the entire conversation.

 

Why Now? Why Not Wait?

When Workday first asked his organization to schedule their migration, Christian’s instinct — and mine at the time — was to delay. Let Workday sharpen the process through a few earlier customers. Let the documentation catch up.

But what changed for his team was the mental load of carrying the decision month after month.

Eventually, the conversation shifted from
“Should we?” to
“When do we get this off our roadmap?”

That moment matters.

Many Workday admins feel the pressure of major transitions sitting in the background of everything else they’re trying to deliver — security updates, new enhancements, integrations, year-end. At some point, finishing becomes the bigger ROI than optimizing.

 

The Real Risk Isn’t Technical — It’s Communication

There’s a common misconception that the scary part of this migration is the Workday-side configuration or the data move. Christian’s story shows the opposite.

The heavy lifting wasn’t Workday setup. It was coordination.

• Vendors
• Firewalls
• Job boards
• Customer career sites
• RAS report connections
• SSO redirects
• Safe listing/White listing
• Internal IT and marketing
• Candidate communication

And most of those are not “inside Workday” work.

“You don’t realize how many places your Workday URL is embedded until the day you have to change all of them.”

That’s why Christian’s team treated the migration like a go-live: checklists, cross-functional roles, and clear communication about when Workday wouldn’t be available.

 

Planning the Window

Interestingly, they chose a Thursday migration — not a weekend one — to protect payroll continuity.
Why Thursday?

Because vendors are reachable.
Because payroll starts Monday morning for them, and payroll must not break.

Their tenant was down for roughly six hours, but they communicated a full two days of blackout time to give themselves room for cleanup, link validation, and vendor confirmation.

On Friday afternoon, they reopened — after they were sure approvals, time entry, and candidate experience would not be disrupted.

 

What Actually Broke?

Two things — both fixable:

1. Training vendor access for users in mainland China
2. Workday Learning Center courses redirect to the old URL

That’s it.

The big “doomsday failures” never materialized.

They also implemented a smart internal routing assist — IT detected requests to the old Workday URL and auto-redirected users with a message explaining the change. That one idea alone saved dozens of tickets.

 

If You Haven’t Scheduled Yours Yet…

Here was Christian’s biggest personal lesson learned:

“If I could do it again, I would have pushed Workday harder to get our test tenant earlier. That delayed our ability to test integrations and to speak clearly with vendors.”

If migration is on your horizon, treat this not as a configuration event — but as a coordination event. Get your test tenant. Build your vendor map. Start communication early. And don’t underestimate how valuable “just getting it done” can be for your roadmap.

The public cloud is coming for all customers. The question isn’t if — it’s how gracefully you move there.

And this conversation with Christian reminded me: grace comes from preparation, not luck.

👉 Listen to the full episode here!