Cloud migration is a process where your business apps and servers are shifted to a cloud-based hosting provider, which comes with numerous benefits compared to shared hosting and in-house physical servers. There are several reasons businesses migrate to cloud-based hosting, and here are a few of them.

• High operational costs of in-house servers, including the cost of in-house disaster recovery.

• Data storage requirements, it's more economical to purchase cloud storage than physical hard disks, enclosures, and RAID cards. It also reduces energy consumption.

• Meeting operational demands, such as traffic spike mitigation and dealing with scaling server resources.

• Better security, as on-premise data storage is vulnerable to unauthorized physical access.

Those are just a few of the reasons why business owners consider the cloud migration process - in fact, 90% of Fortune 500 businesses run with Microsoft Cloud.

There are several types of cloud migration, and numerous things to be aware of, such as strategies when going with on-premise cloud migration. Let's explore the various options for cloud migration and what they offer.

IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service, your server is moved from the local or shared hosting server to a dedicated cloud. The migration itself can take a bit longer, as post-migration, data, and application must function as intended on the new IaaS server. IaaS offers the most degree of control, such as when patching is done to your OS.

PaaS: Platform as a Service, a bit less technically complicated since PaaS companies focus on an easier migration process for all users. PaaS cloud migration will typically use a browser-based web portal to accomplish most of the migration process, and it is intended for users with moderate technical knowledge. Your cloud service provider manages a larger part of the infrastructure, but you have less control over resources.

SaaS: Software as a Service, this generally gives complete control of server management to your cloud provider. It is a solution for business owners who want minimal amounts of configuration required on their end.

So of those three types of cloud migration processes, IaaS is the most technically demanding, and is good for developers who need complete control of their resources, while SaaS is the least demanding, but offers very limited control. PaaS is a good in-between for business owners who, for example, know how to use a network monitor software, but aren't comfortable with full-scale responsibility of the server management.

To use vehicular transportation as an analogy, on-premise hosting is like owning your own car, IaaS is like leasing a car, PaaS is like taking a taxi, and SaaS is taking the public bus.

Benefits of cloud migration for your business

Cloud migration offers new possibilities for high-level architecture applications, particularly those that gather and process data in realtime. With flexible server resources, you can opt for scalable server solutions to ensure that your server experiences minimal 'lag' due to high traffic volume, for example.

There is also significant cost reduction in cloud hosting compared to on-premise. You'll be able to save significant budget on your on-premise hardware costs, and the employees needed to maintain a server room and other network tasks. In most cloud hosting companies, you pay-as-you-go, which means you only pay for the resources that your server consumes.

A cloud server is also accessible from anywhere, with features like IP whitelisting to grant specific authorization to users. Also, many server management tasks that are rather time-consuming with on-premises storage, such as backend server API updates, are fully automated with cloud hosts.