Mobile Management Information System Application Development on Cloud Platform

Abstract

Cloud computing is a relatively new but well documented area of information technology in recent years. Fundamentally, cloud computing takes advantages of the World Wide Web where thousands of computers are networked together and they are interconnected with each other. As with the traditional client-server systems, people use these computers to exchange messages, send emails, write and read blogs. However in cloud computing, when they use these network resources as services, without the knowledge of where the program is running. In traditional client-server systems, additionally, when a user wants to run an application, they had to use a computer installed with the relevant application software. Once they were set up computer in their own premises they will need supporting software, keep track of software upgrades, security and so on. With cloud computing, by contrast , users do not need any of the above but simply access an application via the cloud service provider which can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Cloud computing is the future of enterprise software developments and, as such, many legacy systems will to be redesigned according to the new requirements and integrated with newer systems to continue business success. Broadly speaking most of these legacy applications in an organisation are running in a somewhat isolated environment and it is not easy to integrate with other applications. In particular, these applications are running on different platforms. Consequently, it is difficult to modify an application, transfer and retrieve data, and subsequently deploy new applications. This report first presents a literature review on comparing software system architectures and the current software application deployment issues in the context of an insurance business domain in Sri Lanka. It is followed by a discussion of the process of moving services into the cloud. The report describes a three-step methodology for identifying relevant services and the associated implementation strategies to migrate services into cloud. Finally, as a proof of concept, an application demonstrator was developed with the principal goal of providing a practical insight of cloud service integration.