Cloud migration or Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the process of partially or completely shifting or deploying organization digital assets, services, and IT resources and useful applications on the public or private cloud. Cloud migration can also be referred as moving from one cloud to another it can be because of upgrading or degrading of resources or services.
Cloud Service migration is transitioning data from one cloud service provider to another also known as cloud to cloud migration. With the introduction of cloud computing, many organizations and small businesses are benefited due to scalability, easy to manage and most important pay per use service.
Cloud Migration Definition for Beginners

You must be thinking what is cloud migration in simple words, cloud migration facilitates the complete adoption of flexible cloud computing. The applications, services, and assets migrated are accessible behind cloud’s firewall. It is simply changing the environment from traditional patterns and technologies to cloud environment and platform.
The biggest advantage is that it is cost saving as it works on pay per use service and also it is easier to scale up or down. When the workload increases you can scale your storage and services and in another case, you can scale down.
The above diagram shows the difference between on-premise to cloud migration and shifting from one service provider to another. In on-premise migration, `your data, software, and application are shifted to a server with the use of virtual machines and in the second type of migration, there is shifting from one service provider to another. This can be due to some security issues or it can be due to any other reason.
Here the question arises is why some companies are shifting to cloud platform whereas others are not. For that first, you have to understand the cloud migration checklistand what should be your cloud migration strategy.
To build the bridge between vendors and customer technologies, cloud integration tools are available and for a successful migration to service, provider environment requires the use of middlewares.
There are many issues in transitioning to the cloud or between cloud environments because handling cloud platform requires technicians and trained professionals.
There are also many constraints on privacy, data integrity, business continuity, security, and interoperability.
There is 7 step model for cloud migration which guides you through the process or fully migrating your application or service to the appropriate environment.
For achieving real-time performance and efficiency, it must be important for any organization or company to carefully analyze and plan their cloud migration strategy and along with that execute to ensure the compatibility along with the organization requirements.
While migrating to public cloud or private cloud can present numerous challenges and also raise some serious security issues, there are also many cloud migration advantages and applications of migration to the cloud.