Case Study: FordonsData Nordic AB achieves Agile DevOps modernization and improved development capacity with OpenText

Breaking down the monolith: FordonsData embraces Agile and DevOps with Visual COBOL

FordonsData Nordic AB is a leading Swedish provider of the Kobra II Dealer Management System used by more than 600 customers and 9,000 retailer employees. Kobra II was developed in COBOL since the early 1990s and had grown into a monolithic, waterfall-driven system (5.5 million LOC, 5,000+ programs, 1,000 ISAM files), creating inflexibility, data limitations, poor transparency and key-person dependency. The company wanted to adopt industry standards (REST APIs, message queuing, relational DB) and move to an agile, DevOps way of working.

To modernize, FordonsData introduced Git for version control, upgraded to Micro Focus Visual COBOL for Eclipse with DevHub integration, enabled cross-platform debugging, and began building REST APIs while proofing web clients, messaging and SQL database options. The changes delivered more transparent, parallel development and bi‑weekly releases, improved development capacity and application quality, reduced key‑person risk, supported a trainee program and provided a clear, future‑proof roadmap for the 30‑year COBOL system.

FordonsData Nordic AB

Sonja Larsson

Chief Technical Officer