How Freenow closed the innovation gap with Atlassian Cloud
Freenow by Lyft is Europe’s leading multi-mobility platform, operating in nine countries and more than 180 cities. From a single app, millions of passengers can book taxis, private-hire vehicles, car-sharing services, rental cars, e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds, and even public transport. Headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, and led by CEO Thomas Zimmermann, Freenow became part of the Lyft family in July 2025. Together, the two companies are shaping a connected global mobility network designed to make urban transportation safe, sustainable, and accessible for everyone.
Stable but stagnant – the hidden cost of staying on-premise for Freenow
For many years Freenow relied on self-hosted Jira and Confluence Data Center instances to support every part of the organization, from Finance to Engineering. The internal teams took pride in maintaining these systems and ensuring their reliability. Yet as Atlassian continued to release new cloud-first features—particularly the emerging capabilities of Atlassian Intelligence powered by artificial intelligence—the gap between the on-premise setup and the cloud offering steadily widened.
Although there were no major outages or pain points, keeping the service available demanded constant monitoring and dedicated resources. Those efforts diverted attention from more strategic initiatives. More importantly, remaining on Data Center meant employees could not access the newest features that were transforming how modern teams collaborate. Leadership recognized that to stay innovative and competitive, Freenow needed to modernize its toolset and give every team direct access to Atlassian’s latest advancements.
The collaborative path to a risk-free migration
Freenow chose Eficode as its migration partner after meeting with several Atlassian experts. The decision was based not only on Eficode’s deep technical knowledge but also on the personal relationship and trust built during early conversations. Together, the two companies developed a meticulous plan for moving Jira and Confluence from the Data Center environment to Atlassian Cloud.
The project began with extensive preparation. Eficode guided Freenow through stakeholder involvement across departments such as Information Security and Data Protection, ensuring that every compliance requirement was addressed from the outset. Regular weekly calls and ongoing coaching kept the project on track, while thorough testing of projects, workflows, and third-party integrations revealed potential pitfalls before they could become issues.
“The success of our migration project was largely due to the planning and ongoing collaboration with Eficode. Their dedicated support, from weekly calls to thorough knowledge sharing, proved invaluable and made the transition smooth and efficient.” – Kevin Schulze, IT Manager at Freenow
When the final migration took place, Eficode remained closely involved, providing a dedicated “hyper-care” period to resolve any unexpected challenges. Thanks to this collaborative approach, the transition was smooth and largely invisible to end users, allowing Freenow employees to continue their daily work with minimal disruption.
How the cloud capabilities elevate Freenow’s daily work
Since moving to Atlassian Cloud, Freenow has begun to experience a new pace of innovation. Teams now use Atlassian Intelligence to summarize requests and enhance tickets, cutting down on manual effort and enabling faster responses. Cloud-native automation makes it simple for employees to create their own workflows, reducing repetitive tasks and allowing staff to focus on higher-value projects. Communication has improved as well, with a seamless Slack integration that lets teams manage Jira issues without switching between applications.
Confluence Cloud has proven particularly transformative. Its modern editor and cleaner interface encourage the creation of well-designed pages, while new whiteboard features are gradually replacing tools such as Miro and Notion. This consolidation is already helping Freenow reduce third-party costs and bring more of its knowledge base into a single, easily searchable location. The company has also discovered additional advantages after the move, including Jira Service Management forms that collect complete request data upfront and automated archiving in Confluence to keep content relevant without manual oversight.
“With Atlassian Cloud, we save significant time thanks to AI. It quickly summarizes requests and improves tickets, allowing our teams to spend less time on manual work and more time solving real problems.” – Kevin Schulze, IT Manager at Freenow
Beyond migration: Freenow’s ongoing journey of growth and automation
Although the migration is complete, Freenow views the transition as the beginning of an ongoing shift in how its teams work. Employees are steadily adopting AI and automation from the bottom up, and leadership expects these trends to continue as the cloud platform evolves. By removing the burden of server maintenance and opening the door to continuous innovation, the partnership with Eficode has positioned Freenow to support rapid growth while reducing operational overhead for years to come.
