Keyhole Software partnered with a national grocery distribution organization to accelerate the modernization of its legacy COBOL systems by implementing a cloud-native microservices architecture on Microsoft Azure.
In an environment with limited DevOps maturity, Keyhole played a pivotal role in establishing both the technical foundation and cultural framework for scalable, developer-driven software delivery and ongoing digital transformation.
Our Approach
A Keyhole senior consultant led the early planning and implementation of the organization’s DevOps strategy, guiding both development and infrastructure teams through the adoption of modern Azure cloud-native and Agile practices.
This engagement combined hands-on DevOps architecture, infrastructure automation, and team mentorship—helping transition the client from siloed operations to a collaborative DevOps-driven culture.
Key Highlights
- Cultural Transformation: Guided the transition from a traditional waterfall release model to a modern DevOps culture. Helped establish a dedicated Application Operations team, mentoring new leadership and promoting ownership of CI/CD pipelines, Azure infrastructure, and Kubernetes environments.
- Cloud Architecture & Automation: Designed and implemented the client’s first Azure DevOps pipelines supporting Java and React microservices with automated build, test, and deployment.
- Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC): Created modular, reusable Terraform components to provision Azure VNETs, DNS, storage accounts, AKS clusters, and databases—ensuring scalable and consistent environments.
- Kubernetes Deployment: Deployed Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) environments using Helm, RBAC, and network policies for secure, multi-tenant configurations.
- Crossplane Integration: Introduced Crossplane for Kubernetes-native infrastructure management, developing and teaching Composite Resource Definitions (XRDs) to enable self-service provisioning by development teams.
- Standardized Build Pipelines: Established consistent Gradle-based Java microservice builds with Docker image generation, integrated testing, and Helm-based deployment pipelines. Integrated React front-end applications for coordinated full-stack releases.
- Agile Mentorship & Enablement: Mentored over 15 engineers and stakeholders on Agile principles, GitOps workflows, and observability best practices. Provided coaching on Azure service usage, microservice architecture, and DevOps best practices for scalable cloud deployment.
- Observability & Security: Delivered architectural guidance for Kubernetes observability tooling and implemented secure secrets management, compliance controls, and artifact handling within CI/CD pipelines.
Results
Though still in its early implementation phase, this engagement has established a sustainable DevOps foundation and driven a significant cultural shift toward collaborative, developer-led software delivery. The client is now positioned for long-term success in its Azure cloud modernization efforts, equipped with reusable cloud infrastructure, improved deployment reliability, and empowered engineering teams driving continued innovation.
Technologies Used
Azure, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Crossplane, Azure DevOps, Terraform, Java, Gradle, Helm, React
“Keyhole Software helped establish the DevOps culture and cloud-native foundation that now powers scalable, developer-driven delivery across the enterprise.”
