Authors: Komal Choudhary
Abstract: Middleware platforms such as JBoss and IBM WebSphere have long served as critical foundations for enterprise applications, yet they face mounting challenges in today’s digital-first landscape. High licensing costs, complex administration, and limited scalability increasingly hinder organizations that must deliver agility, resilience, and compliance at scale. This review article explores the strategic and technical dimensions of migrating legacy middleware to cloud environments. It examines common challenges in on-premises deployments, identifies key drivers such as cost optimization, DevOps enablement, and security enhancement, and evaluates multiple migration strategies ranging from rehosting to complete refactoring. Technical considerations—including application compatibility, data integration, and performance tuning—are analyzed alongside emerging cloud-native alternatives like WebSphere Liberty, JBoss on OpenShift, and serverless frameworks. Case studies from diverse industries highlight real-world migration successes and lessons learned, while best practices underscore the importance of assessment, automation, and compliance. Finally, future trends such as AI-driven middleware, container-native runtimes, and multi-cloud integration are considered as enablers of ongoing modernization. The findings emphasize that cloud migration is not simply an infrastructure shift but a business transformation, positioning enterprises to achieve faster innovation, reduced operational costs, and enhanced strategic flexibility.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17140061
