A policy-driven method of migrating a virtual computing resource that is executing an application workload includes the steps of determining that at least one of multiple policies of the application has been violated by the virtual computing resource while executing the workload in a first virtual data center, and responsive to said determining, programmatically performing: (1) searching for a virtual data center to which the virtual computing resource can be migrated, (2) determining that the virtual computing resource will be able to comply with all of the policies of the application while executing the workload if the virtual computing resource is migrated to the second virtual data center, and (3) based on determining the ability to comply, migrating the virtual computing resource across clouds, namely from the first virtual data center to the second virtual data center.