SoftwareOne case study

HR SaaS provider migrates developer codebase to GitHub in 3 months

A global HR SaaS provider migrated its codebase to GitHub Enterprise in just three months, saving USD 20,000 a month in costs.

A global HR Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider had access issues with its Azure DevOps Server. To resolve this, the company decided to migrate its codebase to GitHub Enterprise to support its global growth ambitions. SoftwareOne assisted the entire migration process, which involved transitioning large repositories from both on-premises and cloud-based instances of Azure DevOps Server to GitHub. The project, initially planned for six months, was completed in half the time.

SoftwareOne helped the company adopt GitHub best practices and identified critical code validation elements during dry runs. The migration was smoothly completed in a single weekend. The company also switched to Atlassian’s Jira for better project management and to GitHub Copilot, an AI-assisted software development tool that developers can use for research, code completion, security scanning, test creation and more . A self-service tool developed by SoftwareOne has enabled the company to independently handle future migrations.

The migration led to faster build times and release cycles that can be carried out without any disruptive impact on users. It has also helped save costs by consolidating the GitHub instances of companies acquired by the HR SaaS provider. SoftwareOne’s ability to act as a partner helped to quickly resolve any issues and deliver the project on time.

USD 20,000
costs saved per month
3 months
to complete migration – half the time expected
Zero impact
on revenue-generating applications during migration

Client: Global HR SaaS provider
Industry: Information technology
Services: Application Migration

Developer codebase migration to GitHub Enterprise

A US-based provider of SaaS for human resources, payroll and workforce management provides its software to customers worldwide, with key operations across Asia, Japan, Latin America and North America. It has been growing rapidly through acquisition.

The company had been hosting its codebase on its on-premises Azure DevOps Server. It wanted to modernise its environment for an enhanced developer experience, so decided to migrate part of its codebase to Microsoft’s GitHub Enterprise, a leading AI-powered developer platform. This would better support software release cycles, pave the way for global growth and help meet financial targets.

Because the project involved migrating large repositories from the company‘s on-premises and cloud-based instances of Azure DevOps, GitHub asked for support from SoftwareOne, a Large Enterprise DevOps specialist that is also an Advanced Services Partner and Advanced Channel Partner of GitHub.

Creating a consistent approach with best practices

SoftwareOne played a variety of roles throughout this project. It guided the company in the creation of a governance and compliance framework that was built on industry-standard DevOps best practices. SoftwareOne then created a technology roadmap to get the company from its existing environment to its desired future state. This process included design, planning, testing, pipeline conversion from XAML to YAML, a migration from Azure DevOps Server to Azure DevOps Services, and then a two-hop migration to GitHub Enterprise. SoftwareOne also supported the company with consulting on modifying the architecture of its existing pipelines and monolithic applications.

The migration project team was tasked with completing the migration in a three-month window – half the time it had anticipated. “For the initial migration, we needed to support over 100 internal teams,” says the company‘s senior project manager. “SoftwareOne was critical in helping us meet our project deadlines.” SoftwareOne also completed a significant amount of work leading up to the migration, encompassing a series of four projects that took more than a year and a half to complete.

SoftwareOne worked with the company on areas where Azure DevOps works differently from GitHub Enterprise and helped the team understand the tremendous value offered by the GitHub feature set, working these features into existing workflows . After this was complete, planning began for the actual codebase migration, dividing that process into stages and performing dry runs for each stage. During these tests, SoftwareOne identified several areas in which critical elements for code validation were missing and helped to develop solutions to validate the integrity of the migrated repositories for these.

The company also began using Jira for work access management because of its seamless integration. This has boosted the developer team’s ability to collaborate and has increased productivity. The company also began using GitHub Copilot for research and to help with tasks such as completing code and creating tests. This helped to reduce licensing and administrative costs, standardise development delivery across projects and made the onboarding of new team members more efficient.

With SoftwareOne’s migration plan thoroughly tested, the company was able to complete the migration during a single weekend in November 2023. “The transition was smooth,” says Adam Jagocki, SoftwareOne Leader Platform Engineering – GitHub. “Our client‘s developers finished work on Friday using Azure DevOps and started working on the new platform on Monday morning.”

During the project, SoftwareOne incorporated the lessons learned from migration planning into the design for a self-service tool. The tool, which can be easily modified by the company‘s developers, was designed to assist the company in handling migrations on its own. This gives it more control, so it can schedule repository migrations without affecting customers, for example, when product updates are released. “Because of the ease of use of the self-service tool, our team has been able to migrate 1,587 repositories, covering 10,000 branches and 1,200 users,” says the company’s project manager.

SoftwareOne worked to ensure we had a true partnership with each side bringing their best to quickly address any big issues and devise a solution that worked.

Director of Development and Project Sponsor, Global HR SaaS provider

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Addressing concerns and overcoming issues quickly

The thorough planning for migration paid off for the client. “At no point did their production environment go down,” says Jagocki. “Everything was carefully planned and orchestrated to make sure that the client’s primary revenue-generating application was never impacted, and everything was built to make sure that continuity was enabled.”

SoftwareOne meets with the company every two weeks for strategic planning sessions so any concerns can be addressed. “There has been none of the typical finger-pointing from the partners on this project,” says the company‘s director of development and the project’s sponsor. “SoftwareOne worked to ensure we had a true partnership, with each side bringing their best to quickly address any big issues and devise a solution that worked.”

Everything was carefully planned and orchestrated to make sure that the client’s primary revenue-generating application was never impacted, and everything was built to make sure that continuity was enabled.

Adam Jagocki

Leader Platform Engineering – GitHub, SoftwareOne

Because build times are faster, the HR SaaS provider has speeded up development and can release software updates without impacting its customers. After acquiring four companies in the past several years – Ascender, eloomi, Excelity and Riteq – the company has also been able to bring four separate GitHub instances from those acquisitions into one common instance, cutting costs by USD 20,000 a month. And Microsoft’s Copilot AI chat interface is helping to minimise work for its customers. Workers can use the chatbot to answer questions, such as when the next pay date is due, without having to consult the HR department.

“This was the easiest project I’ve had to manage in 40 years,” concludes the company’s senior project manager. “SoftwareOne met our changing needs with grace and an incredible focus on us as a client and, importantly, they always delivered on time.”