Case Study
Modernizing Legacy Architecture Drove a Substantial 82% Reduction in Operational Expenses
Architectural decisions based on assumptions that ultimately didn’t materialize, combined with limited technical insight and a shifting business environment, led to disproportionately high product maintenance costs.
In this case, the solution was initially designed with the expectation that in-car infotainment systems would support a wide range of embedded applications. This vision drove the implementation of a highly modular, scalable backend architecture.
Yet over time, it became clear that users strongly preferred interacting with services via their smartphones rather than through vehicle displays. The anticipated ecosystem of in-car apps never took shape, revealing that the system’s infrastructure was more complex than actual user behavior required.
Approach
As part of technology consulting services, the Grape Up team conducted an in-depth audit of the system’s architecture, performance, and cost structure.
Grape Up consultants prioritized hands-on analysis over theoretical review, leveraging direct access to cloud provider environments and monitoring tools to gain operational visibility and identify opportunities for optimization.
Following the assessment, Grape Up led a cloud-native architecture modernization focused on smart consolidation, performance tuning, and cost reduction – all without disrupting the system’s existing external interfaces and without any business disruption.
Outcome
The consolidation and re-architecting led to a leaner, more resilient system and allowed the automotive company to cut cloud infrastructure costs by 82%.
The transformation also brought indirect savings. Simplified communication flows and reduced internal traffic lowered telemetry volumes, cutting monitoring costs by up to 70%. A clearer architecture eliminated redundancy and streamlined operations.
With complexity removed, domain structures became easier to grasp, enabling faster onboarding and reducing the need for a large support team. The simplified system – 25 microservices to 5 domain-aligned applications – is now easier to test, debug, and evolve – laying a stable foundation for future growth.