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"It felt like Levi9 and Essent were working under the same roof with a shared achievement, and not like a typical relationship with a service provider. The cooperation, common goals and the way we worked together really made a difference.”
Kim Terpstra
Head of Product and Agile Transformation at Essent
About the project
Essent N.V., the largest energy company in the Netherlands, has been a reliable provider of gas, electricity, heat, and energy services for over 90 years. However, they faced a significant challenge with their main B2B billing, contracting, and onboarding system. The platform was a cumbersome Java monolith application containing more than 1 million lines of code. It required an expensive team of 100+ employees and freelancers to maintain and adapt and hundreds of people to manage the B2B services. Essent needed a cutting-edge, cost-effective solution to streamline processes and reduce their high operating spend.
They turned to Levi9 to support their efforts based on our blend of technical expertise and development resources. Essent favored our approach of assembling a dedicated team to specifically meet the needs of the project, rather than providing individual experts. We also offered our architectural assessment on a “no cure, no pay” basis to show our commitment to modernizing the underlying Unity system and helping to overhaul organizational processes. Together, we created a vision for a state-of-the-art, microservices-based system to reinforce Essent’s position as an innovative market leader.
Transforming monolith architecture to a modern microservices platform
During a kick off meeting with the Essent team at the Levi9 offices in Serbia, our experts presented our technical analysis and discussed business goals. Together, we developed a three-to-four-year roadmap that balanced short-term goals with long-term solutions, establishing a transparent and collaborative approach from the start.
“Levi9 brought a lot of advanced technical capabilities and we brought critical aspects as well from our side. We were all open to learn from each other. Communicating with trust and openness was also key.” Kim Terpstra
The project launched with two teams of 15 Levi Niners and gradually expanded to 50 developers. Our primary goal was to smoothly transition the monolithic architecture to AWS-hosted microservices. Another key initiative was cultivating a DevOps culture to facilitate team ownership of the system’s operation. The team set clear technical and organizational KPIs to assess the added value of these initiatives:
- Improve the B2B customer platform and reduce time-to-market.
- Decrease operational costs by 25%
- Achieve a SIG score of at least 3.5 to ensure platform reliability, stability, and security
- Foster operational agility and flexibility to meet fluctuating market demands
We took a couple of strategic steps our team made to achieve these ambitious goals, ultimately elevating Essent’s B2B customer experience and organizational processes:
Migration to Essent VPC 2.0 Amazon Cloud
Within one year, our team successfully migrated the Unity environment to the Essent VPC 2.0 Amazon Cloud. Essent lowered their costs and gained more control over their operational budget. The migration also enables Essent to scale cloud capacity and applications according to business demands. In this flexible environment, Agile teams manage their development and testing processes without interruption. The automated infrastructure and continuous delivery pipeline provide seamless updates and modern tooling that keep Essent ahead of competitors.
Continuous Delivery and Test Automation
We also worked to improve the process of bringing platform changes to production and making new features more reliable. The Levi9 team established infrastructure as code (IaC), a key step towards automation and efficiency. We fully automated the deployment pipeline on the new environment in the Essent VPC 2.0 Amazon Cloud, significantly advancing test automation maturity and coverage. This enabled quicker, higher-quality releases, aligning with the goal of accelerating time-to-market.
Micro-Service Architecture
To boost the system’s flexibility and maintainability, we developed a clear architectural vision for splitting the monolithic application into microservices. By refactoring common services and the iPay domain into microservices, our team slashed Essent’s technical debt and made the Unity system easier to manage. This architectural change supports a more agile and responsive operational framework.
Quality of Unity as a Software Product
Levi9 developers focused on upgrading the platform code quality to achieve a SIG score of at least 3.5. They reduced code duplication and implemented better testing for a more stable, secure and robust platform. These improvements exceeded industry standards, resulting in a truly cutting-edge product.
Cultivating an Agile and DevOps culture
Through our guidance, Essent successfully transitioned to Agile and DevOps processes, enabling the company to operate more efficiently and respond swiftly to market demands. By prioritizing tasks through strong product ownership and educating teams on planning and technical problem-solving, our teams created a seamless alignment between IT and business goals.
“It was really a blueprint for how DevOps could work—not just theory, but actually tackling complex technical challenges through true collaboration.” – Kim Terpstra
Essent credits the following approach as a cornerstone of the project’s success
- Establishing Agile practices: First, we introduced Sprint/Release Goals, providing clear objectives for each development cycle so teams can focus on promptly delivering high-quality features. By engaging development teams in Story Mapping sessions, Levi Niners gained a better understanding of customer needs and project requirements. As a result, we enhanced alignment and integration between teams.
- Streamlining issue management: To address operational challenges, Levi9 established a single point of reporting for all issues, making it easier to track and resolve problems. We used the ITIL approach for Incident and Problem Management, which helped in systematically handling incidents and reducing the backlog of production issues. Prioritizing production issues meant that critical problems could be addressed promptly, maintaining system stability.
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Fostering a collaborative culture: We streamlined management reporting practices to strengthen communication and trust among team members. This collaborative environment encourages innovation and aligns stakeholders with project goals. Moreover, our teams were committed to facilitating transparency and openness through regular face-to-face meetings that included many trips to our offices in different countries.
"Our product owner was there at least once a quarter. Most of the time, twice a quarter. And management was there every quarter as well. We all really looked forward to going to Serbia because even when we had a heavy project agenda, we spent time together afterwards. Going for dinner, drinks and a nice activity as one team fostered our sense of team spirit and shared understanding.” Kim Terpstra - Implementation of DevOps Practices: From both technical and organizational perspectives, Levi Niners meticulously planned and implemented a DevOps approach. We embedded IT Operations (IT Ops) within development teams, promoting the philosophy: “you build it, you run it.” This integration led to more efficient and effective workflows between the development and operations teams.
- Measurable Results: A notable achievement in this project was transforming Essent’s B2B services into a profitable business again. The digital transformation enabled Essent to shift from an in-person, interactive call center to a fully digital, self-service platform that allows B2B customers to manage their energy needs independently. By optimizing IT systems and reducing personnel costs, Essent achieved a dramatic and successful turnaround.
A snapshot of the project results that underscore the value delivered from our partnership with Essent:
- Reduced Hosting Costs and Improved Cost Control: By migrating to the Essent VPC 2.0 Amazon Cloud, we significantly cut hosting costs for Unity system environments and made it easier for Essent to manage their operating budget.
- Accelerated Responses: The move to a modern cloud infrastructure led to faster response times and the ability to implement infrastructure changes more swiftly.
- Operational Agility and Flexibility: Levi9 cultivated operational agility and flexibility, enabling Essent to scale cloud capacity and application
- Flexible Environment for Agile Teams: The new platform allowed for rapid setup and teardown of environments, fostering a dynamic and responsive Agile development environment.
- Automated Infrastructure and Continuous Delivery: The implementation of automated infrastructure and a continuous delivery pipeline within the cloud streamlined operations and minimized manual intervention.
- Competitive Edge through Cloud Technology: By adopting cloud technology, Essent gained a competitive edge, enhancing their ability to innovate and adapt to market changes quickly.
- Improved Time-to-Market and Reduced Operational Costs: Our efforts led to an improved time-to-market and a significant reduction in operational costs, achieving the targeted 25% reduction.
- Higher Quality and Reliability in Production: he project resulted in higher quality and reliability in production, with reduced time-to-market for new features and updates.
We achieved consistently high ratings across various KPIs. In fact, in many instances Essent rated our work higher than our own self-assessment, underscoring the exceptional value and impact of our team’s contributions. We are proud of our ability to surpass client expectations, foster strong collaboration, and deliver outstanding results in complex, high-stakes environments.
Through our comprehensive roadmap to modernization and commitment to Agile and DevOps principles, we empowered Essent to become even more competitive and innovative in their evolving sector. Moreover, we’ve demonstrated how improving flexibility, scalability, and collaboration can drive technological progress and lead to more reliable and sustainable energy solutions.
“It felt like Levi9 and Essent were working under the same roof with a shared achievement, and not like a typical relationship with a service provider. The cooperation, common goals and the way we worked together really made a difference.” – Kim Terpstra
Agile
Legacy System Transformation
Java Monolith
Microservices Architecture
Software Quality Enhancement
DevOps
Cloud Migration
ITIL
Infrastructure as Code
Agile Methodology
IT Governance
AWS
Cloud
