Cloud Migration: Issues and Developments

Cloud computing is a dynamic paradigm that is influencing activities in virtually all facets of the IT world. It has become quite easy to deploy applications on the cloud. Storage is also available based on user’s needs and can be scaled up or down as required by the user. Computing resources have also been made available on virtual machines. Furthermore, applications are available to users supplied by cloud providers. The activities on the cloud has made migration to the cloud desirable to most organizations and enterprises. Adopting the cloud is expected to reduce cost and the need for investment in computing infrastructure. However, most organizations are still concerned about the likely challenges of migrating to the cloud. The goal of this paper is to provide an insight into cloud computing with respect to migration issues. The paper discusses cloud computing and the benefits of migration. It also examines the challenges of migration. Furthermore, present issues of migration as espoused by the industry are discussed. The survey observed that not much is being discussed in terms of current trends and procedures of migration

The state of SQL-on-Hadoop in the cloud

Managed Hadoop in the cloud, especially SQL-on-Hadoop, has been gaining attention recently. On Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), analytical services like Hive and Spark come preconfigured for general-purpose and ready to use. Thus, giving companies a quick entry and on-demand deployment of ready SQL-like solutions for their big data needs. This study evaluates cloud services from an end-user perspective, comparing providers including: Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Rackspace. The study focuses on performance, readiness, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of the different solutions at entry/test level clusters sizes. Results are based on over 15,000 Hive queries derived from the industry standard TPC-H benchmark. The study is framed within the ALOJA research project, which features an open source benchmarking and analysis platform that has been recently extended to support SQL-on-Hadoop engines. The ALOJA Project aims to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of big data deployments and study their performance characteristics for optimization. The study benchmarks cloud providers across a diverse range instance types, and uses input data scales from 1GB to 1TB, in order to survey the popular entry-level PaaS SQL-on-Hadoop solutions, thereby establishing a common results-base upon which subsequent research can be carried out by the project. Initial results already show the main performance trends to both hardware and software configuration, pricing, similarities and architectural differences of the evaluated PaaS solutions. Whereas some providers focus on decoupling storage and computing resources while offering network-based elastic storage, others choose to keep the local processing model from Hadoop for high performance, but reducing flexibility. Results also show the importance of application-level tuning and how keeping up-to-date hardware and software stacks can influence performance even more than replicating the on-premises model in the cloud.This work is partially supported by the Microsoft Azure for Research program, the European Research Council (ERC) under the EUs Horizon 2020 programme (GA 639595), the Spanish Ministry of Education (TIN2015-65316-P), and the Generalitat de Catalunya (2014-SGR-1051).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

The moderating influence of device characteristics and usage on user acceptance of smart mobile devices

This study seeks to develop a comprehensive model of consumer acceptance in the context of Smart Mobile Device (SMDs). This paper proposes an adaptation of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model that can be employed to explain and predict the acceptance of SMDs. Also included in the model are a number of external and new moderating variables that can be used to explain user intentions and subsequent usage behaviour. The model holds that Activity-based Usage and Device Characteristics are posited to moderate the impact of the constructs empirically validated in the UTAUT2 model. Through an important cluster of antecedents the proposed model aims to enhance our understanding of consumer motivations for using SMDs and aid efforts to promote the adoption and diffusion of these devices

Enterprise 2.0 – Is The Market Ready?

Enterprise 2.0 family technologies have growing popularity, the cloud computing market is growing rapidly and, as a consequence, companies of all sizes start to evaluate the potential fit. The use of “Software as a Service”, “Platform as a Service” and “Infrastructure as a Service” has been evolving during the past years and has become increasingly popular. As its computing viability and benefits are legitimized, the adoption rate is rapidly increasing. The most popular business model in the abovementioned family is by far “Software as a Service” (also called SaaS), which is a software distribution model assuming the software applications are hosted and maintained by the vendor or the distributor, and user access is granted exclusively by means of the Internet. Based on both literature review and action research, the paper at hand is a synthesis for the results of an empirical study performed during the last two years among Romanian and foreign companies, in order to outline and provide an objective and unbiased answer to the question: “Is the market ready for these technologies or did they come too soon?”. The paper is a part of a larger research performed by the author in the field of Enterprise 2.0 technologies.Enterprise 2.0, Software as a Service, Platform as a Service, Infrastructure as a Service, Empirical study

Analysis and Summary of Feasible Marketplace Business Models Covering All Trials

This report analyses the market for cloud services of the type that POSTMARK is pioneering including type, scale, readiness and barriers to adoption. The POSTMARK trials are reviewed in terms of the business benefits that the services offer, the validation of these by those involved in the trials, and the further work needed to move from trials to a fully commercial and production setting. Business benefits were wide ranging and included lowering costs, better meeting of deadlines, increase in volume of business, and improved customer service. Response from the trials was positive in all cases. This was echoed by the two public demonstration events hosted by the project in 2012 where the attendees (around 100 in total from the film and post communities) were positive about the services that POSTMARK is offering. The main barriers encountered were security, the need for high levels of availability and trust, the need for complete out-of-the box solutions, and of course concerns over cost. These mirror findings in industry surveys and analyst reports. These barriers are not insurmountable but do require further investment to address. The key question is whether the market as a whole is sufficiently aware of, and ready to adopt, new services of the type developed by POSTMARK.Indications are good, but large scale adoption would be necessary to give sufficient return on the investmentneeded to provide fully operational POSTMARK services on a supported and commercial basis

Using Microservices to Customize Multi-Tenant SaaS: From Intrusive to Non-Intrusive

Customization is a widely adopted practice on enterprise software applications such as Enterprise resource planning (ERP) or Customer relation management (CRM). Software vendors deploy their enterprise software product on the premises of a customer, which is then often customized for different specific needs of the customer. When enterprise applications are moving to the cloud as mutli-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the traditional way of on-premises customization faces new challenges because a customer no longer has an exclusive control to the application. To empower businesses with specific requirements on top of the shared standard SaaS, vendors need a novel approach to support the customization on the multi-tenant SaaS. In this paper, we summarize our two approaches for customizing multi-tenant SaaS using microservices: intrusive and non-intrusive. The paper clarifies the key concepts related to the problem of multi-tenant customization, and describes a design with a reference architecture and high-level principles. We also discuss the key technical challenges and the feasible solutions to implement this architecture. Our microservice-based customization solution is promising to meet the general customization requirements, and achieves a balance between isolation, assimilation and economy of scale