Making a Connection: Modernising Legacy IT in the Connected Car Era

Every connected-vehicle programme eventually collides with the legacy IT estate that runs the rest of the business. Order systems, dealer platforms, warranty engines, and CRM stacks were never designed to absorb vehicle data at the volume and cadence the connected fleet produces.

This paper, written with Northern Lights, lays out the integration patterns that have actually worked: where to insert an event backbone, when to wrap rather than rewrite, how to structure data contracts between the vehicle platform and downstream systems, and where governance has to sit so that compliance and product velocity do not pull in opposite directions.

Case discussions cover the real friction points: identity, master data, latency budgets, and the operating model needed to keep modernisation work compounding rather than stalling.