Abstract: The large majority of existing pieces of software in industry are long-living systems (a.k.a., legacy systems), which represent strategic value to companies. However, over the years, user requirements changed, technologies evolved, and new business models emerged, leading to changes of such systems. As a result of extensive maintenance and obsolete technology, legacy systems usually have decayed and degraded architectures. Consequently, any maintenance/evolution such as fixing bugs, adding a new feature, or keeping up with new trends (e.g., digital transformation) become extremely complex, time-consuming, and costly (e.g., the US government spent over $90 billion on IT in 2019, from which about 80% to operate and maintain legacy systems). To remain competitive, efficient, sustainable, retain value, and embrace digital transformation, companies must have their legacy systems modernized. Nowadays, a common modernization strategy is to move systems to the cloud using modular and highly-decoupled architectures (e.g., microservices). However, several challenges are faced by practitioners when planning and performing software modernization. In this talk, Dr. Wesley K. G. Assunção will present industry needs, challenges, automated support (i.e., using AI), and the developers’ perception on using automatically generated solution. This talk is based on a work in collaboration with an industry partner and many research collaborators, resulting and several research studies, covering both empirical results and solution proposals. Additionally, existing limitations/gaps in the field and research opportunities will also be discussed.

Wesley K. G. Assunção is an Associate Professor with the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. Wesley was a University Assistant in the Institute of Software Systems Engineering (ISSE) at Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Austria (2021-2023); a Postdoctoral Researcher at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), Brazil (2019-2023); and an Associate Professor at Federal University of Technology - Paraná, Brazil (2013 to 2020). He obtained his MSc and PhD in Computer Science from Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) also in Brazil. He published many research papers, in collaboration with students and well-known and international researchers, in conferences like ICSE, ICSME, SANER, MSR, EASE, SPLC, SSBSE, GECCO, to cite some, as well as in journals such as EMSE, IST, and JSS. Wesley has also been serving as reviewers for many conferences and journal, and as organizer of conference, symposiums, workshops, competitions, and meetings. Further information: https://wesleyklewerton.github.io/