Confidential global mobility technology company
5 Min
Overview
The economics of modernisation
An established global mobility technology company needed to modernise a complex product while operating with constrained capital, high development costs and growing pressure to deliver faster for customers.
Arenema worked across software delivery, Quality Engineering, cloud, DevOps and innovation to reduce the cost of running and changing the platform while creating a more flexible foundation for future development.
The engagement progressed a .NET monolith towards Java microservices, accelerated API development, consolidated seven testing tools and frameworks, increased cloud automation and reduced the cost of cloud and application monitoring.
The transformation had to improve the economics of technology while modernisation continued.
Impact
Lower costs. Greater flexibility.
- 40% reduction in development costs
- 30% reduction in cloud costs
- 50% reduction in APM costs
- Seven testing tools and frameworks consolidated into a common enterprise strategy
- Progressive modernisation from a .NET monolith towards Java microservices
- Greater Terraform and Ansible automation
The situation
The product needed to evolve but the cost of change was becoming a constraint
The answer could not simply be more people or a large replacement programme. The existing platform still had to operate while the organisation improved the architecture, engineering model, testing approach and cloud economics around it.
The organisation had an established product sitting second in its market, but limited available capital meant technology investment had to be tightly controlled. At the same time, development costs were high, the underlying technology was complex, and customers were frustrated by slow delivery and frequent overcommitment.
The transformation therefore had to reduce the cost of change while improving how the platform was operated.
Transformation
From expensive change to sustainable engineering
Several economic levers moved together: application architecture, engineering model, testing, cloud consumption and observability.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| High software-development cost | After: More cost-efficient, elastic delivery | |
| .NET monolith | After: Progressive Java microservices modernisation | |
| Slow API development | After: Accelerated API delivery | |
| Seven testing tools and frameworks | After: Common enterprise testing strategy | |
| Testing friction and delivery toil | After: Continuous testing embedded into delivery | |
| High cloud consumption | After: Optimised cloud resource management | |
| Expensive commercial APM | After: Lower-cost observability using more open-source tooling | |
01. Software modernisation
Modernising while continuing to operate the business
Arenema used AI as an engineering accelerator while progressing the migration from a .NET monolith towards Java microservices. The work accelerated API development and identified areas of heavy engineering toil for remediation.
A more elastic workforce model and AI-augmented delivery helped reduce development cost while allowing modernisation to progress alongside ongoing product delivery.
02. Quality Engineering
Consolidating the testing landscape before increasing automation
Arenema assessed the existing testing landscape, identified pain points and defined a common enterprise strategy and roadmap. Seven tools and frameworks were consolidated, and continuous testing was embedded into delivery.
The objective was to reduce testing toil, improve consistency and accelerate release cycles and test practices.
Consolidating the testing landscape before increasing automation.
03. Cloud & DevOps
Reducing cloud cost while improving repeatability and operations
Arenema improved cloud resource management and increased automation using orchestration and Infrastructure-as-Code practices including Terraform and Ansible.
The work reduced unnecessary cloud consumption while creating more repeatable infrastructure and operational practices.
04. Observability
Reducing observability cost without losing operational insight
Application Performance Monitoring had become a significant technology cost. Arenema reduced APM expenditure by moving from an expensive commercial service towards greater use of open-source tooling.
The objective was to preserve the operational insight engineering teams needed while improving the economics of the observability stack.
05. Innovation
Creating capacity to explore new technologies and approaches
Alongside the core transformation, Arenema worked with the organisation to explore new API technologies, serverless approaches and Generative AI use cases.
Innovation work was tied to real product and engineering needs, rather than being run as a standalone technology exercise.
Evidence of improved technology economics
Alongside the core transformation, Arenema worked with the organisation to explore new API technologies, serverless approaches and Generative AI use cases.
40%
reduction in development costs
30%
reduction in cloud costs
50%
reduction in APM costs
Long-term value
Lower technology costs gave the organisation more room to modernise.
Arenema helped reduce the cost of software development, cloud infrastructure and application monitoring while modernising the underlying engineering model.
Testing became more consistent and continuous. Infrastructure became increasingly automated. Application architecture progressed towards microservices. API development accelerated. The organisation gained greater flexibility in how engineering capacity could be applied.
Reducing the cost of the existing technology estate gave the organisation more capacity for future development.
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