Processing large scientific applications generates a huge amount of data, which makes running experiments in the cloud computing environment very expensive and energy-consuming. To find an optimal solution to the workflow scheduling problem, several approaches have been presented for scheduling workflow on cloud resources. However, more efficient approaches are needed to improve cloud service delivery. In this paper, an energy-efficient virtual machine mapping algorithm (EViMA) is proposed to improve resource management in the cloud computing environment to achieve effective scheduling that reduces cloud data center energy consumption, execution makespan, and execution cost. This ensures that the requirements of cloud users are met, and improves the quality of services offered by cloud providers. Our proposed mechanism considers the heterogeneity of scheduling from both cloud users’ and workflow applications’ perspectives. Through simulation experiments on real workflow datasets, the proposed EViMA can provide better solutions for both cloud users and cloud providers by reducing energy consumption, execution makespan, and execution cost better than the state-of-the-art.