Platform modernisation at mobile.de: The path to a cloud-native future

mobile.de is one of the leading online marketplaces for vehicles in Germany and Europe. With a wide range of dealer and consumer applications, as well as a highly distributed system landscape, the platform faces the ongoing challenge of modernising its technological infrastructure whilst ensuring scalability and stability.

Against the backdrop of growing demands for time-to-market, platform independence and international scalability, mobile.de decided, in collaboration with adesso, to extract central services from a monolithic platform structure and localise them more effectively.

The aim of the project was to gradually decentralise central platform services and bring them closer to the respective business domains. This gave rise to several challenges:

• Migration of dealer and consumer applications from a central platform to dedicated, vertical teams
• Implementation of a cloud-ready strategy, including modernisation of the tech stack
• Refactoring of existing applications to improve maintainability and scalability
• Establishment of a uniform, cross-team messaging and communication solution
• Ensuring data integrity during necessary migrations
• Localisation and further development of central authentication services

At the same time, the ongoing operation of the platform had to be guaranteed at all times.

adesso supported mobile.de in the step-by-step transformation of its system landscape towards a modern, service-oriented architecture.

The focus was on:

• Decoupling central services and establishing a multi-tenant-capable service architecture
• Migration and operation of the infrastructure in a scalable cloud environment (e.g. AWS/GCP)
• Development and refactoring of microservices based on Java (Spring Boot) using 12-factor principles
• Modernisation of existing services, including through the migration of Golang applications
• Design and implementation of a central messaging and eventing solution
• Introduction of clear architecture decisions (Architecture Decision Records) for the sustainable management of the system landscape

Close collaboration with the various specialist departments ensured that technical and business requirements were optimally aligned.

The project was implemented in close coordination with the relevant teams at mobile.de and followed an iterative, agile approach:

• Analysis of the existing system landscape and definition of a target architecture
• Gradual migration of services to the cloud alongside the modernisation of existing applications
• Close collaboration between mobile, platform, marketing, cloud and infrastructure teams
• Establishment of cross-functional governance for architecture and technology decisions
• Conducting workshops and targeted knowledge transfer to embed expertise within the company on a long-term basis

adesso took on both advisory and operational roles – from architecture and development through to the coordination of the stakeholders involved.

By localising key services, mobile.de was able to achieve significant progress in several areas:

• Increased platform autonomy through clear responsibilities within the business domains
• More stable and scalable infrastructure through migration to the cloud
• Improved code quality and maintainability through refactoring and modern architectural principles
• More efficient communication between systems through a central messaging solution
• Ensuring compliance and standards across the entire system landscape
• Accelerated development of new features through decoupled services and clearly defined interfaces

This has created a future-proof technological foundation that enables mobile.de to implement innovations more quickly and meet the growing demands of the market.