From a slow VB monolith to fast, scalable microservices on Azure
For 5+ years, a dedicated SoftwareYard team has worked inside VPAR, rebuilding its legacy golf platform as cloud microservices. The result: a faster product, 40% lower running costs and more subscriptions.
The Challenge
VPAR's golf scoring and tournament platform had grown into a single, large application written in Visual Basic. Everything was deployed together, so small changes were risky, and releases were slow. Performance suffered as usage grew, especially during busy tournament days. Running costs kept rising, and the ageing technology made it harder to find developers and to build the new features VPAR needed to grow its subscriber base.
What We Did
- 1
Joining the team
We embedded with VPAR's in-house team, learned the golf domain and the existing codebase, and aligned with their planning, tools and release cycle. Our engineers took ownership of features from design to delivery.
- 2
Breaking up the monolith
We split the single application into independent microservices that can be developed, deployed and scaled on their own. Services communicate through Azure Service Bus, so a slow or busy part of the system no longer holds up the rest.
- 3
Serverless background processing
We moved background and event-driven work to Azure Functions. They scale automatically during peak load and cost nothing when idle.
- 4
Faster data and search
We introduced a NoSQL database for high-volume data, a caching layer for the most frequently read information, and Elasticsearch for fast search across the platform. Pages and APIs now respond quickly even at peak times.
- 5
Reducing running costs
Because each service now scales independently and serverless functions only run when needed, VPAR pays for the capacity it actually uses instead of running one large application sized for the busiest day.
- 6
Mobile experience
We improved the mobile apps golfers use on the course for live scoring and leaderboards, backed by the new, faster services.
- 7
Ongoing development
We continue to maintain and optimise the platform and ship new features as VPAR grows into new markets.
The Outcome
VPAR now runs on a modern, cloud-native platform instead of a single legacy application. It is faster for golfers and clubs, scales smoothly on busy tournament days, and costs 40% less to run. With new features shipping faster, subscriptions have grown steadily. VPAR also has a long-term engineering partner that works as part of its own team.
Services
Technologies
“The engineers provided by Software Yard were exactly what was required for our project and a good deal cheaper than other vendors we worked with, without compromising on quality. Very happy and will work with Software Yard again”