A computer-implemented method comprising: implementing technical utility services and capabilities in a hierarchical list of service categories that describes technical utility services and capabilities, each service category including a tag which indicates a file to search for patterns corresponding to the service category, wherein the hierarchical list includes one or more of the following: package names or definitions for each service category, signatures of APIs, interfaces and methods in each package, and at the lowest level, property files; receiving, with an automated migration assessment tool, code associated with an application that is to be migrated to a target cloud computing platform, the code comprising one or more.jar files; analyzing, using an analysis engine of the automated migration assessment tool, the code to produce an XML file that describes the dependence of the code on the technical utility services and capabilities, the analyzing comprising recursively searching the.jar files to extract dependencies from the.jar files and produce the XML file; matching, using a rule engine of the automated migration assessment tool, patterns in the hierarchical list with the dependencies described in the XML file to provide a subset of patterns which are present in the application, as well as information regarding where they are detected in the application; evaluating, using a migration evaluation engine of the automated migration assessment tool, support for dependent technical utility services and capabilities in the target cloud computing platform by mapping the subset of patterns extracted from the code to elements on a list that contains information about the level of support for dependent technical utility services and capabilities in the target cloud computing platform; and producing a report that describes support, in the target cloud computing platform, for the dependent technical utility services and capabilities; wherein the report includes migration suitability indicators and/or recommendations to allow an evaluation of migrating the application to the target cloud computing platform. implementing technical utility services and capabilities in a hierarchical list of service categories that describes technical utility services and capabilities, each service category including a tag which indicates a file to search for patterns corresponding to the service category, wherein the hierarchical list includes one or more of the following: package names or definitions for each service category, signatures of APIs, interfaces and methods in each package, and at the lowest level, property files; receiving, with an automated migration assessment tool, code associated with an application that is to be migrated to a target cloud computing platform, the code comprising one or more.jar files; analyzing, using an analysis engine of the automated migration assessment tool, the code to produce an XML file that describes the dependence of the code on the technical utility services and capabilities, the analyzing comprising recursively searching the.jar files to extract dependencies from the.jar files and produce the XML file; matching, using a rule engine of the automated migration assessment tool, patterns in the hierarchical list with the dependencies described in the XML file to provide a subset of patterns which are present in the application, as well as information regarding where they are detected in the application; evaluating, using a migration evaluation engine of the automated migration assessment tool, support for dependent technical utility services and capabilities in the target cloud computing platform by mapping the subset of patterns extracted from the code to elements on a list that contains information about the level of support for dependent technical utility services and capabilities in the target cloud computing platform; and producing a report that describes support, in the target cloud computing platform, for the dependent technical utility services and capabilities; wherein the report includes migration suitability indicators and/or recommendations to allow an evaluation of migrating the application to the target cloud computing platform.