Migration is the process of transferring data between data storage systems, data formats or computer systems. A data migration project is usually undertaken to replace or upgrade servers or storage equipment, for a website consolidation, to conduct server maintenance or to relocate a data center.

It is necessary when an organization decides to use a new computing systems or database management system that is incompatible with the current system. Migration is performed by a set of customized programs or scripts that automatically transfer the data. It could also mean

Data migration is a phrase used to describe the process of moving data from one storage device to another.

In relating it to cloud computing, it is the process of transitioning all or part of a company’s data, applications and services from on-site premises behind the firewall to the cloud, where the information can be provided over the Internet on an on-demand basis.

Here, using the cloud can also enable a company to potentially reduce capital expenditures and operating costs while also benefiting from the dynamic scaling, high availability, multi-tenancy and effective resource allocation advantages cloud-based computing offers.

A perfect example is AWS Application Discovery Service, which helps Systems Integrators quickly and reliably plan application migration projects by automatically identifying applications running in on-premises data centers, their associated dependencies, and their performance profile.