Migrating service-oriented system to cloud computing: an experience report

Abstract

Cloud computing has gained significant attention of industry and academic sectors which are interested in adopting or experimenting with this technology. An increasing number of companies are expected to migrate their systems to cloud enabled infrastructures. However, there has not been much attention paid to provide sufficient process support. Since migration projects are likely to encounter several kinds of challenges, it is important to identify and share the process and logistical requirements of migration projects in order to build a body of knowledge of appropriate process, methods, and tools. This paper purports to contribute to the growing knowledge of how to migrate existing systems to cloud computing by reporting our effort aimed at migrating an Open Source Software (OSS) framework, Hackystat, to cloud computing. We report the main steps followed, the process and technical challenges faced, and some of the strategies that helped us to address those challenges. We expect the reported experiences can provide readers with useful insights into the process and technical aspects that should be considered when migrating existing software systems to cloud computing infrastructures.