Developing Legacy System Migration Methods and Tools for Technology Transfer

This paper presents the research results of an ongoing technology transfer project carried out in coopera- tion between the University of Salerno and a small software company. The project is aimed at developing and transferring migration technology to the industrial partner. The partner should be enabled to migrate monolithic multi-user COBOL legacy systems to a multi-tier Web-based architecture. The assessment of the legacy systems of the partner company revealed that these systems had a very low level of decompos- ability with spaghetti-like code and embedded control flow and database accesses within the user interface descriptions. For this reason, it was decided to adopt an incremental migration strategy based on the reengineering of the user interface using Web technology, on the transformation of interactive legacy programs into batch programs, and the wrapping of the legacy programs. A middleware framework links the new Web-based user interface with the Wrapped Legacy System. An Eclipse plug-in, named MELIS (migration environment for legacy information systems), was also developed to support the migration process. Both the migration strategy and the tool have been applied to two essential subsystems of the most business critical legacy system of the partner company

Evaluating Legacy System Migration Technologies through Empirical Studies

We present two controlled experiments conducted with master students and practitioners and a case study conducted with practitioners to evaluate the use of MELIS (Migration Environment for Legacy Information Systems) for the migration of legacy COBOL programs to the web. MELIS has been developed as an Eclipse plug-in within a technology transfer project conducted with a small software company [16]. The partner company has developed and marketed in the last 30 years several COBOL systems that need to be migrated to the web, due to the increasing requests of the customers. The goal of the technology transfer project was to define a systematic migration strategy and the supporting tools to migrate these COBOL systems to the web and make the partner company an owner of the developed technology. The goal of the controlled experiments and case study was to evaluate the effectiveness of introducing MELIS in the partner company and compare it with traditional software development environments. The results of the overall experimentation show that the use of MELIS increases the productivity and reduces the gap between novice and expert software engineers

Migrating Legacy Systems in the Global Merger & Acquisition Environment Teaching Case

MetaFrame system migration project at Worldpharm, driven by the fiesta of merger and acquisition, had engendered both technical challenges and convoluted organizational issues in the climate of uncertainties. This project was aligned with IT strategy that aimed to streamlining IT resources and enhancing system efficiency of the post-merger organization. In spite of recognizing that it was treading in the treacherous water, Worldpharm still insisted on instigating this post-merger MetaFrame system migration project, which served to (1) consolidate all legacy MetaFrame systems from the three pre-merger pharmaceutical organizations into one globally managed system and (2) develop a global support team for the globally managed MetaFrame system

Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures

Tying Together Solutions for Digital Manufacturing: Assessment of Connectivity Technologies & Approaches

This paper concerns the development of low-cost solutions to address challenges in digital manufacturing (DM). Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) are a promising approach for addressing the requirements of a low-cost DM architecture. Interaction between services in a SOA is facilitated by a connectivity technology, i.e., a framework for interoperable data exchange between heterogeneous participants. We review a variety of connectivity technologies according to their suitability for use in an SME manufacturer’s production environment, and we assess how they have been integrated into past architectures. We then provide insights into an incremental and modular architecture for manufacturing SMEs.Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring [Digital Shoestring]. EPSRC Reference: EP/R032777/1

Cloud migration

Migrating on-premises applications to cloud environment has become a popular task for organizations. In this thesis, cloud migration is defined to be an action where one or more parts of an application are migrated to a cloud platform. Multiple motivations are mentioned for such migration like reducing costs, flexibility, and scalability of the application. This thesis also goes through different strategies for cloud migration. After that, a literature-based, generalized migration process for cloud migration was created. This created migration process was then validated against case process. Phases in the case process were investigated through interviews. Interviews were done in two parts. First, all interviewees were interviewed one at a time. From these interviews, a draft of the case process was done. This draft was then validated and supplemented with a group interview. After creating both processes, they were compared. It was found that the literature-based process had a lot of similarities with the case process. Also, it was found that the case process had a few tasks that were not mentioned in the literature-based process. These tasks were discussing future of the application, estimating workload and project end date, defining migration scope, and familiarizing customers with application. These can be said to be important tasks, and they should have been in the literature-based process too