Cloud application portability: an initial view.

Growing interest towards cloud application platforms has resulted in a large number of platform offerings to be already available on the market and new related products to be continuously launched. However, there are a number of challenges that prevent cloud application platforms from becoming widely adopted. One such challenge is application portability. This paper reports on an ongoing effort to explore the area of cloud application portability. We briefly examine the issue of heterogeneity in cloud platforms and highlight specific platform characteristics that may hinder the portability of cloud applications. We present some high level approaches and existing work that attempts to address this challenge. In order to narrow down the area of our exploration we have been carrying out an experiment in cross-platform application development and deployment with four prominent cloud platforms: OpenShift, Google App Engine, Heroku, and Amazon Elastic Beanstalk. We briefly discuss our initial conclusions from this ongoing experimentation

An exploration of the determinants for decision to migrate existing resources to cloud computing using an integrated TOE-DOI model

Migrating existing resources to cloud computing is a strategic organisational decision that can be difficult. It requires the consideration and evaluation of a wide range of technical and organisational aspects. Although a significant amount of attention has been paid by many industrialists and academics to aid migration decisions, the procedure remains difficult. This is mainly due to underestimation of the range of factors and characteristics affecting the decision for cloud migration. Further research is needed to investigate the level of effect these factors have on migration decisions and the overall complexity. This paper aims to explore the level of complexity of the decision to migrate the cloud. A research model based on the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory and the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework was developed. The model was tested using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The quantitative analysis shows the level of impact of the identified variables on the decision to migrate. Seven determinants that contribute to the complexity of the decisions are identified. They need to be taken into account to ensure successful migration. This result has expanded the collective knowledge about the complexity of the issues that have to be considered when making decisions to migrate to the cloud. It contributes to the literature that addresses the complex and multidimensional nature of migrating to the cloud

Leveraging Platform Basic Services in Cloud Application Platforms for the Development of Cloud Applications.

Cloud application platforms gain popularity and have the potential to alter the way service based cloud applications are developed involving utilisation of platform basic services. A platform basic service is considered as a piece of software, which provides certain functionality and is usually offered via a web API, e.g. e-mail, payment, authentication service. However, the proliferation and diversification of platform basic services and the available providers increase the challenge for the application developers to integrate them and deal with the heterogeneous providers' web APIs. Therefore, a new approach of developing applications should be adopted in which developers leverage multiple platform basic services independently from the target application platforms. To this end, this paper presents a development framework whose objective is to enable the consistent integration of the platform services, and to allow the seamless use of the concrete providers by alleviating the heterogeneities among them

Rapid Development of Service-based Cloud Applications

Cloud application platforms gain popularity and have the potential to alter the way service-based cloud applications are developed involving utilisation of platform basic services. A platform basic service provides certain functionality and is usually offered via a web API. However, the diversification of the services and the available providers increase the challenge for the application developers to integrate them and deal with the heterogeneous providers' web APIs. Therefore, a new approach of developing applications should be adopted in which developers leverage multiple platform basic services independently from the target application platforms. To this end, the authors present a development framework assisting the design of service-based cloud applications. The objective of the framework is to enable the consistent integration of the services, and to allow the seamless use of the concrete providers. The optimal service provider each time can vary depending on criteria such as pricing, quality of service and can be determined based upon Big Data analysis approaches

Rapid development of service-based cloud applications

Cloud application platforms gain popularity and have the potential to alter the way service-based cloud applications are developed involving utilisation of platform basic services. A platform basic service provides certain functionality and is usually offered via a web API. However, the diversification of the services and the available providers increase the challenge for the application developers to integrate them and deal with the heterogeneous providers' web APIs. Therefore, a new approach of developing applications should be adopted in which developers leverage multiple platform basic services independently from the target application platforms. To this end, the authors present a development framework assisting the design of service-based cloud applications. The objective of the framework is to enable the consistent integration of the services, and to allow the seamless use of the concrete providers. The optimal service provider each time can vary depending on criteria such as pricing, quality of service and can be determined based upon Big Data analysis approaches

On the Role of Ontologies in the Design of Service Based Cloud Applications

The wide exploitation of cloud resources has been hindered by the diversity on the provision of these resources and thus resulting in heterogeneity between them. Research efforts on the design of cloud applications, leveraging resources form heterogeneous cloud environments, have been concentrated on traditional cloud platform resources such as deployment capabilities and data stores. However, the emergence of the cloud application platforms has made available a wide range of platform basic services (e.g. e-mail, message queue and authentication service) that can drastically decrease the application development time. Our work focuses on eliminating the heterogeneity among the providers offering those services. To this end we propose an ontology-driven framework, which facilitates the seamless and transparent use of platform basic services provisioned by multiple clouds environments. Ontologies are leveraged to enable the homogeneous description of the functionality of the service providers