During a data protection operation, a data storage system can collect computing attributes associated with hosting of an application generating data being backed up and may also obtain information relating to physical characteristics of the computing device hosting the application and the data. At the time of migration to a cloud, the system can use the collected attributes and/or information to provision cloud resources. For instance, the cloud storage system may accept provisioning requests, and may provide several templates which each specify a cloud resource that can be provisioned upon request, such as a cloud computing resource. The system can compare the collected attributes with the attributes of the available templates to determine the best match. Then, the system can issue a provisioning request to the cloud provider according to the best-matched template. After provisioning the resources, the system can restore backup data of the application to the cloud storage system to migrate the data.