Enabling Legacy Engineering Applications for Cloud Computing: Experience with the mOSAIC API and Platform

Currently, in many engineering areas, including civil engineering, there are increasing demands for various modelling and simulation services that would be accessible over the Web. The basis for such solutions could be existing legacy applications with proven properties, such as numerical stability of the used algorithms. When using traditional infrastructures, such as super computers, clusters or grids, it is necessary to make significant changes in the existing code or even complete re-writing to be able to run such legacy applications on a designated infrastructure. Cloud computing in general, and emerging sky computing technologies, such as mosaic API and platform in particular, make it possible to develop, deploy and monitor Cloud computing applications by re-using existing legacy codes. The mosaic platform can also be used to dynamically provision computational, storage and communication resources, which are needed for such applications, thus reducing operational costs. This paper analyses the possibilities for development of engineering applications by using the mosaic programming model. In the provided case study, an existing Math Works' MATLAB application used for analysis of structures under static loading is used on the Cloud and various benefits, such as elasticity and improved quality are discussed.