Migration of Information Systems in the Italian Industry: a State of the Practice Survey

Context: Software migration - and in particular migration towards the Web and towards distributed architectures - is a challenging and complex activity, and has been particularly relevant in recent years, due to the large number of migration projects the industry had to face off because of the increasing pervasiveness of the Web and of mobile devices. Objective: This paper reports a survey aimed at identifying the state-of-the-practice of the Italian industry for what concerns the previous experiences in software migration projects - specifically concerning information systems - the adopted tools and the emerging needs and problems. Method: The study has been carried out among 59 Italian Information Technology companies, and for each company a representative person had to answer an on-line questionnaire concerning migration experiences, pieces of technology involved in migration projects, adopted tools, and problems occurred during the project. Results: Indicate that migration - especially towards the Web - is highly relevant for Italian IT companies, and that companies tend to increasingly adopt free and open source solutions rather than commercial ones. Results also indicate that the adoption of specific tools for migration is still very limited, either because of the lack of skills and knowledge, or due to the lack of mature and adequate options. Conclusions: Findings from this survey suggest the need for further technology transfer between academia and industry for the purpose of favoring the adoption of software migration techniques and tools.