Many organizations want to leverage cloud computing as a means of reducing the operational costs associated with maintaining legacy applications. In these cases, the cloud solution architect is faced with an application migration task where application maturity may become a decisive factor in whether a cloud environment is beneficial or detrimental. Application characteristics could also profoundly influence the decision regarding CSP choice. Many legacy applications, for example, are tightly coupled to data, specific processes, and other related applications. This makes them very difficult to transition to a commodity-based technology service model. Embedded dependencies and unusually undocumented assumptions don't easily fit into a strictly standardized and not easily tailored environment.
Cloud-friendly applications are loosely coupled, with RESTful...