Case Study: Bedford Systems Management Ltd achieves 30% lower development costs and UI modernization with OpenText Visual COBOL

Bedford Systems Management Ltd - Customer Case Study

Bedford Systems Management Ltd., a Canadian ISV behind the 25‑year‑old Aspire project-management suite, faced limitations from its legacy COBOL codebase (Micro Focus Net Express with Dialog Systems) that forced a 32‑bit, procedural deployment and hindered UI modernization and mobile plans. Rewriting or replacing the application was too costly and time‑consuming, so the company sought a way to modernize the interface and architecture while preserving proven business logic.

Bedford adopted Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Visual Studio and COBOL Server, migrating roughly 2,000 programs and 640 screens with minimal intervention and integrating with the .NET/ASP.NET stack. This reuse of backend code enabled UI modernization, standard templates for faster development, easier maintenance and a clear path to mobile—reducing development costs by about 30% and significantly improving delivery speed and flexibility.

Bedford Systems Management Ltd

Michael Purser

President