A Process Framework to Migrate Legacy Application to Cloud

An enterprise has a challenge in keeping pace with the quickly evolving technology. The biggest challenge comes in terms of legacy application migration to technologies like cloud. Legacy application migration should be well thought out at the very start (i.e., pre-migration and supported by migration framework). In this chapter, the author proposes a legacy application migration framework with a focus on pre-migration area. A robust technical and business analysis of existing/legacy applications, based on the enterprise's focus parameters, during pre-migration sets the migration path for subsequent area of framework. The proposed pre-migration mathematical assessment helps an enterprise to understand a legacy application's current state and also helps in unearthing the information with respect to candidate application and helps in taking well-informed decisions like GO or NO-GO w.r.t legacy application migration. Considering application migration a journey, it is important that it reaches its destination, so pre-migration is an important area of the migration journey.

Virtual reality as integration environments for facilities management

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of virtual reality environments (VRE) for maintenance activities by augmenting a virtual facility representation and integrating relevant information regarding the status of systems and the space itself, while providing simple ways to control them. Design/methodology/approach The research focuses in the implementation of a VRE prototype of a building management system using game engine technologies. To evaluate the prototype, a usability study has been conducted that contrasts the virtual reality interface with a corresponding legacy application showing the users perception in terms of productivity improvement of facilities management (FM) tasks. Findings The usability tests conducted indicated that VREs have the potential to increase the productivity in maintenance tasks. Users without training demonstrated a high degree of engagement and performance operating a VRE interface, when compared with that of a legacy application. The potential drop in user time and increase in engagement with a VRE will eventually translate into lower cost and to an increase in quality. Originality/value To date no commonly accepted data model has been proposed to serve as the integrated data model to support facility operation. Although BIM models have gained increased acceptance in architecture engineering and construction activities they are not fully adequate to support data exchange in the post-handover (operation) phase. The presented research developed and tested a prototype able to handle and integrate data in a flexible and dynamic way, which is essential in management activities underlying FM.

NoSQL Application Redesign may be Unnecessary for Most Corporation Cloud Migration Deployments

A great deal of cloud research implies that application redesign is a necessity in order to take full advantage of migration to the cloud, and developers are urged to consider migrating legacy application onto various NoSQL architectures. It may be argued however, that many enterprises have non-web-centric business models and relatively few of their applications may need the database scaling capability that cloud deployment with NoSQL affords. The authors contend that these corporations, in the process of cloud migration, are less motivated by the promise of NoSQL than by gaining greater operational efficiencies and cost-effectiveness. Several Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) migration scenarios for five top cloud vendors were studied using cost versus effectiveness ratios (CE). The results show that the greatest cost-benefit was gained by simply moving off physical resources and onto the cloud. This was coined the 'simple yet effective' model, as opposed to continuing along the technology curve to fully implement NoSQL solutions, coined the 'complex and robust' model.