For many years, our organisation Geotest AG relied on FeldApp, a custom-built field data collection tool that emerged as a modern digital solution when mobile GIS options were limited. Over time, however, maintaining and extending this homegrown application became increasingly demanding. With frequent updates, limited staff, and growing amounts of data and expectations, our in‑house capabilities reached their limits.
We decided to rethink our strategy and evaluated modern solutions with a clear focus: sustainability, interoperability, and full control over our data. Open source emerged as the strongest foundation. Among several candidates, QField stood out thanks to its seamless integration with QGIS, its customizability and an active community including opengis.ch as a local partner and supporter.
This led to the development of GI-ANT, our new field data ecosystem built around opensource components. GI-ANT combines:
• QField for mobile data collection
• A QFieldCloud instance, hosted by opengis.ch, to ensure data sovereignty
• A PostgreSQL/PostGIS backend
• Custom QGIS plugins based on qfieldcloud-sdk for project creation, cloud synchronization and export
• A WebGIS solution (currently under evaluation and development) to provide browser‑based access also for external customers
The migration from FeldApp to GI-ANT required reengineering workflows, automating maintenance processes, and aligning data models with modern standards. This has produced a powerful, scalable system that lowers maintenance demands while providing users with efficient, QGIS native tools. In doing this we can now concentrate our efforts on increasing functionality, capability and support for our users.
Our presentation highlights the strategic reasoning, migration experience, and lessons learned while transitioning from a homegrown solution to an open, future-proof architecture.