Data Portability

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What Does Data Portability Mean?

Data portability refers to the ability to move, copy or transfer data easily from one database, storage or IT environment to another. Portability describes the extent to which the data can easily be ported between different computers and operational environments.

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Techopedia Explains Data Portability

Data portability primarily enables individual end users or enterprises to seamlessly move, integrate and interlink data sets within disparate systems. Typically for data portability to work, the data must be in a format that is interoperable between several platforms. Data portability concerns are especially common in cloud computing solutions when data needs to be transferred from an in-house facility to the cloud, from the cloud to an in-house facility or from the cloud to another location in the cloud. If data portability is addressed prior to creating a cloud setup or any IT solution, data can easily be ported between separate environments and platforms.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.