Cloud migration is the process of moving applications and data from one location, often a company’s private, on-site (“on-premises”) servers to a public cloud provider’s servers, but also between different clouds. The main cloud migration benefits include reducing IT costs and improving performance, but there are security, convenience, and other advantages, too.

Keep reading to learn more about the main types of migration, common benefits and challenges, how to move applications and data to a cloud, and the three main managed service models: IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS.