Case Study: Large Municipal County Government Agency achieves nearly 90% operational cost savings and Azure-based modernization with OpenText

Astadia and Micro Focus Visual COBOL deliver close to 90% cost savings and establish Azure-based foundation for interoperability, efficiency, and increased innovation

A large U.S. county government with nearly 30 mission‑critical applications on a Unisys mainframe needed to improve citizen services, increase workforce mobility and transparency, and cut costs. Aging, complex COBOL code, a growing skills gap, limited interoperability and high operating expenses made innovation difficult and modernization urgent.

Astadia migrated the applications to Microsoft Azure Government using Micro Focus Visual COBOL, which generated native code and supported the county’s 11 databases to ensure uninterrupted operations. The project finished in 14 months—10 months ahead of schedule—delivering nearly 90% in operational cost savings (about $500K+ per year), removing legacy licensing and hardware expenses, and giving the development team modern tools and a cloud foundation for future innovation.