Intelligent Cloud Migration Strategies using AI for Enterprise Legacy Application Modernization Frameworks

Abstract

Enterprise organizations increasingly seek to modernize legacy applications by migrating them to cloud environments to improve scalability, flexibility, availability, maintainability, and operational efficiency. However, legacy applications frequently contain tightly coupled architectures, outdated technologies, undocumented dependencies, obsolete interfaces, and business-critical logic that make conventional migration approaches costly and risky. Artificial intelligence provides new opportunities to improve migration decision-making through automated application discovery, dependency analysis, workload classification, modernization-path selection, code transformation, risk prediction, testing, and post-migration optimization. This research proposes an intelligent cloud migration strategy that integrates AI techniques with an enterprise legacy application modernization framework. The proposed approach combines machine learning, natural language processing, generative AI, knowledge graphs, predictive analytics, AI agents, cloud assessment tools, and automated testing to support migration across rehosting, replatforming, refactoring, repurchasing, and rebuilding strategies. The methodology adopts a design science and experimental research approach involving literature analysis, framework development, prototype implementation, controlled migration experiments, and quantitative and qualitative evaluation. The framework evaluates application complexity, dependencies, business criticality, security requirements, performance characteristics, migration cost, and modernization benefits before recommending an appropriate migration strategy. Evaluation focuses on migration effort, cost, application performance, defect rates, modernization coverage, migration risk, downtime, automation level, and decision accuracy. The research aims to establish a systematic and intelligent approach for reducing migration complexity while improving the reliability and business value of enterprise cloud modernization.