31 → 54Story points per sprint after team expansion (nearly 2× velocity)
800+Users migrated into the centralized user management system
95%+Accuracy in license usage tracking after centralization
THE SHORT STORY
VNR Verlag für die Deutsche Wirtschaft AG is a family-owned specialist publishing group based in Bonn, Germany, and one of the largest special-interest publishers in the country. To drive its digital transformation, VNR operates Platform X GmbH & Co. KG, which provides end-to-end marketing, fulfillment, and technology solutions including user & license management, ePaper and content apps, paywalls, and e-learning / LMS products for internal brands and external partners.
- CLIENT
- VNR Verlag / Platform X
- INDUSTRY
- Technology
- DURATION
- Ongoing multi-year engagement across multiple initiatives
- THE TEAM
- 2x Senior Software Engineers
01 / VNR Verlag / Platform X
The challenge.
- Integrating legacy systems with a modern platform without disrupting existing workflows.
- Managing tenant-specific domains where domain settings had been hardcoded, making scaling difficult.
- Enabling secure microservice-to-microservice permissions within a modular architecture.
- Implementing Single Sign-On (SSO) across multiple products, domains, and tenants, while maintaining security and compliance.
02 / VNR Verlag / Platform X
Our approach.
- Designed integration strategies that preserved legacy business logic while building modern user experiences on top.
- Implemented dynamic domain configuration, storing domain settings per tenant in the platform rather than code.
- Built a robust permission system for microservices, enabling safe authentication and authorization between services.
- Collaborated with VNR to introduce a centralized SSO solution (Entra ID) across websites, content apps, and learning platforms.
03 / VNR Verlag / Platform X
What we built.
- A microservices-based, API-first architecture with multi-tenancy, asynchronous processing via SNS/SQS, and shared services for core functions.
- Angular micro frontends for user-facing products and widgets, supporting multi-language and low-code integrations.
- Laravel-based APIs for user, license, and content management backed by MySQL.
- AWS-hosted infrastructure with CloudFormation IaC, CI/CD pipelines, CloudWatch, S3, IAM, and Secrets Manager.
04 / VNR Verlag / Platform X
The impact.
- Team velocity nearly doubled from 31 to 54 story points per sprint after Softup engineers joined.
- Implemented SSO with Entra ID, reducing login-related support tickets by ~30%.
- Migrated 800+ users from an external system into Platform X’s centralized user management with zero data loss.
- Centralized license management, eliminating 100% of conflicting updates across 2+ microservices and improving license usage accuracy to >95%, while migrating 1000+ license records.
- Rolled out per-user language settings across 3+ platforms in 5+ languages, improving employee onboarding and experience for thousands of users.
BEHIND THE BUILD
The technology.
- Angular
- Micro frontends
- Laravel
- MySQL
- AWS Cloudformation
- AWS Cloudwatch
- AWS SNS
- AWS SQS
- AWS S3
- AWS IAM
- AWS Secrets Manager
- Entra ID SSO
NEXT STORY / Topixs