Customer Story: TJIP migrates to azure devops to optimize application management.

The platforms facilitate the process of implementing innovations and continuously embedding new technologies into an organization. TJIP is located in Delft, the innovative heart of the Netherlands. Until the middle of 2017, the company used Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS) as its main management platform for application development. However, new functionalities of Azure DevOps (previously known as Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)), including automatic update management, were a logical motive to migrate to Azure DevOps. In order to ensure a smooth migration path, TJIP involved Xpirit to pave the way.

Automated application update process with Azure DevOps

TJIP’s business platforms constitute a solid but versatile foundation for its customers’ application infrastructure. To facilitate continuous optimization processes, the platforms themselves are continuously expanded and optimized, which requires meticulous release management and regular testing and updating. Raymon van Tunen, TJIP’s Support and System Engineer, explains that TFS has been an excellent management platform for application development. Raymon: “This was certainly the case until the middle of 2017. But because the number of applications we develop has increased rapidly over the years, the process of keeping them up-to-date had become too time-consuming. We needed more efficient tooling that could automate a large part of this process, so a migration to Azure DevOps, was a self-evident step.”

Do it yourself migration made easy by Xpirit

Raymon continues: “Because we are a software development company, it would have been logical for us to perform the migration ourselves. After all, our team offers plenty of relevant software expertise. However, we decided to involve a partner with dedicated TFS-Azure DevOps migration experience, which is why we contacted Xpirit. They analyzed our situation, created a project plan, and assisted us in a first test, thus paving the way for us to do the rest of the work ourselves. And this approach certainly worked. The project plan offered sufficient clarity and guidance, while their assistance during the test migration gave our staff the assurance and confidence they needed to be able to walk the rest of the way themselves.”

Multi-ride ticket ensures flexible and cost-effective support

In order to arrange a flexible yet cost-effective contractual baseline for on-call support, Xpirit offered a multi-ride ticket. Raymon explains: “Before we started we didn’t know how much assistance we would need. And what’s more, we wanted to be flexibly concerning the moment we would do all the work ourselves. The multi-ride ticket arrangement offered by Xpirit therefore seemed an attractive solution.” “And it worked, because it created a low threshold for our calls for assistance,” Raymon emphasizes. “And what’s more, due to the know-how, experience and clear communications from Xpirit’s Jasper Gilhuis, the answers immediately struck home.”

Worthwhile effort and valuable result, well within budget

Raymon concludes: “Jasper’s assistance enabled us to perform the first two migrations ourselves, and the applications we migrated already require much less time in terms of keeping them up-to-date. That’s definitely a valuable result, and excellent encouragement for the rest of the work we need to do, as there’s a lot more applications to migrate. However, although this is a matter of finding time in the busy schedules of our development teams, I’m confident that those teams will be able to continue on the path outlined by Xpirit. But should we need more assistance, there’s still a couple of rides left on our ticket. In other words, it was certainly worthwhile involving Xpirit, and they provided their assistance well within budget.”