Case Study: DFDS modernizes mission-critical Phoenix application to Microsoft .NET, cutting risk and cost with Avanade

DFDS - Customer Case Study

DFDS, a global freight and passenger shipping company, relied on Phoenix, a decade‑old, mission‑critical VB6 application for bookings, contracts and invoicing. With mainstream support for VB6 long ended and the codebase too large and fragile to evolve, DFDS faced unacceptable risk and few practical options other than migrating the system to a supported platform.

Avanade used an automated ArtinSoft translation to move roughly 90–95% of the 550,000‑line application to .NET, supplemented by an offshore team to handle the remaining code, while keeping the same database and user interface for parallel testing. The six‑month, fixed‑price project was delivered on time and on budget, reducing risk and cost, restoring Microsoft support, enabling future enhancements, and producing clean, maintainable code—outcomes DFDS’s CIO praised.

DFDS

Gert Møller

Chief Information Officer, DFDS