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A strategic approach to modernizing code At e-Core, we often partner with organizations whose software technically “works” in production, but just barely. Over time, shifting teams, competing priorities, and tight deadlines lead to codebases that are fragile, expensive to maintain, and risky to enhance. In this context, software refactoring becomes more than a technical task. It’s a business strategy that preserves continuity while unlocking future growth. Defining refactoring: Evolution without disruption Software refactoring is the disciplined restructuring of existing code, improving readability, modularity, and performance, without altering its external behavior. Unlike a full rewrite, refactoring delivers incremental value by: Accelerating feature delivery through cleaner, more modular code. Reducing operational risk by eliminating brittleness and regressions. Lowering total cost of ownership by making enhancements less labor-intensive. Why refactoring matters for business  Healthy codebases have a direct business impact: Faster Time-to-Market: Modular components support parallel development and faster releases. Greater resilience: Decoupled services isolate failures and simplify maintenance. Easier onboarding: Clear architecture and design patterns help new developers ramp up quickly. Sustainable cost savings: Less firefighting, fewer regressions, and lower maintenance overhead. What may look like a simple “cleanup” is often the first step toward digital reinvention. Refactoring techniques In enterprise environments built on Java, C#, or Python, we apply proven object-oriented refactoring techniques to increase cohesion and extensibility: Class decoupling: Split monolithic classes into focused, single-responsibility components. SOLID principles: Apply interface segregation and dependency inversion to stabilize architecture. Composition over inheritance: Build flexible, interchangeable structures. Testability enhancements : Isolate side effects and inject dependencies for better test coverage. These techniques form the foundation of our incremental software refactoring roadmaps. Beyond OO: Choosing the right tools for each paradigm Modern languages blend programming paradigms. We help clients apply the right tools to the right problems: Functional patterns in Python to create concise, side-effect-free data pipelines. Kotlin/Scala hybrids that combine OO structure with expressive functional constructs. C# LINQ and Async for declarative data queries and scalable concurrency. This multi-paradigm approach ensures that systems remain robust, flexible, and expressive. A refactoring story: From debt to differentiation Case Study: Regional logistics provider

In recent years, artificial intelligence has shifted from a futuristic promise to an essential ally in the day-to-day work of development teams. AI for developers, such as code assistants, automated bug analysis, and intelligent test generation, are transforming the way we write software. Reducing repetitive tasks, accelerating delivery, and freeing developers to focus on what really matters, using technology to solve business problems. According to the report The Economic Potential of Generative AI by McKinsey (2023) by McKinsey (2023) , the use of generative AI in software development can reduce time spent on activities like coding, reviewing, and debugging by up to 45%. That’s a significant productivity leap, especially in roles like software engineering, where those tasks take up a large part of the daily routine.  PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) also highlights a notable trend: industries with higher AI exposure have seen productivity growth nearly five times greater.

In daily software development, tests are an essential part of the process. By ensuring code coverage, we can mitigate issues, ultimately improving the quality of our code . In this scenario, Testcontainers presents itself as a valuable framework for integration testing, helping developers manage dependencies and create more reliable, reproducible test environments. In this article, we’ll explore how testcontainers can be applied to real-world scenarios to improve the effectiveness of integration tests. 

Java is mainly an object-oriented programming language. Since its introduction in the 1990s, this paradigm has been used and is still the most popular flavor of coding Java applications. Programming paradigms, like trends, evolve. Functional programming adoption with languages like Scala and Clojure happens in different industries, with the Nubank team’s use of Clojure being a tangible example. Incorporating these functional programming concepts into our codebases promotes significant benefits. These include enhanced readability and easier reasoning about code, more testable components, and better separation of concerns. At e-Core , we serve diverse customers across various projects, many of which utilize Java in different contexts. We strongly encourage exploring and implementing the concepts presented in this article within these varied scenarios. Doing so can substantially improve the quality of our project codebases, ultimately delivering superior results to our customers. This approach not only elevates our work’s technical excellence but also aligns with our commitment to providing innovative and efficient solutions tailored to each client’s unique needs. It also increases our team’s Java knowledge and functional programming toolset, which can be used in different languages as well. Let’s examine how Java has implemented some of the spices from functional programming and how we can prepare our own recipes using them. We’ll also briefly cover the fundamental concepts of functional programming from a high-level view. What are the functional programming concepts? Functional programming stands in 3 major pillars: Purity of functions and elimination of side-effects. Immutability Declarative programming style Let’s quickly go through each concept. Purity of functions and elimination of side effects We have all seen code and functions that depend on state or have unwanted side effects. Let’s take this simple example: 

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is one of the most well-known modern philosophies for achieving a high level of excellence in software development . Like any solid philosophy, however, TDD is sometimes misunderstood and misapplied, making it challenging to implement in certain environments. The discussion about the importance of testing in systems development is nearly as old as programming itself. In the second chapter of The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks Jr. suggested, back in 1975, that half of the time spent on a task should be dedicated to testing. When the testing phase isn’t planned, developers often spend even more time on it unintentionally. In the late 1990s, Kent Beck and others created the concept shown below: 

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The holiday season is fast approaching. For industries such as retail and e-commerce , this means a large increase in website traffic, sales, and profits and is often hugely anticipated, both by customers and businesses alike. While this increase in transactions brings clear benefits, it also adds risk. This is a time of high stress for both systems and teams, and systems that usually perform well may suddenly encounter issues and bottlenecks when traffic exceeds normal volumes. While performance problems are always an issue to look out for, these challenges can have a much greater impact on your business during such a representative period. A small percentage increase in cart abandonment rate might not sound as concerning, but if we’re looking at a vastly increased number of potential customers, it escalates rapidly. In fact, cart abandonment rates peak in December when Black Friday and holiday sales lure impulsive shoppers. The challenge intensifies when platforms hinder the user experience. Recent research shows that 39% of U.S. online shoppers abandoned an order in the past quarter, citing reasons such as a “too long or complicated checkout process” (22%) and “website errors or crashes” (17%). Being prepared for the holiday season will enable you and your business to benefit the most from this period, and mitigate the risk of outages, downtimes, or degraded performance of your services . This article highlights actionable insights that you can leverage today to ensure your business is as prepared as it can be to face the challenges and opportunities that come with the increase in website traffic during holiday season. Note that even if you have these measures already in place, this is a wonderful opportunity to review some of these configurations and ensure that they are still appropriate for the upcoming period. Remember: expect the best but prepare for the worst! 1. Review the auto-scaling for your applications Auto-scaling is a feature of cloud computing that enables systems to be scaled up or down automatically based on predetermined situations such as the amount of traffic or resource utilization levels. This is effective both for increasing the performance during high traffic and reducing that capacity whenever there is not enough demand to justify the amount of resources. While auto-scaling is available regardless of which cloud your applications are running on, it is key to review the configurations for your systems to ensure that they can handle the increased traffic. Cloud native applications are often able to benefit even further from this capability. A finely tuned system, with adequate policies and thresholds in place, is effective in avoiding bottlenecks and unnecessary costs. 2. Run load and stress tests prior to predictable traffic peaks Load and stress tests allow businesses to understand how their e-commerce systems and applications behave when subjected to peaks in demand. This helps in identifying not only how well a system performs under stress, but also where and how they break down. Running these tests with predicted traffic or historical data for similar periods helps teams identify potential issues or bottlenecks before the season begins. This enables businesses to prepare by adjusting infrastructure to strengthen vulnerable areas and prevent real incidents. Tests such as these should be run regularly, though the exact frequency depends on factors like how often changes are made to the systems, the pace of demand growth, and the size and scope of changes implemented. However, regardless of frequency, it’s always wise to schedule specific test runs before predictable traffic peaks, like Black Friday or Christmas, even if only a month or a few weeks in advance. >> You may also like: How caching solutions can solve the performance x accuracy dilemma 3. Ensure disaster recovery plans are in place and updated Disaster recovery is the process of identifying what can fail in an e-commerce system and implementing measures to either safeguard it from failing entirely or to enable it to recover from critical failures and resume its operations . This often goes hand in hand with load and stress tests, as the testing provides the knowledge of which components can fail and the impact of their failure on the overall system. Leveraging resources such as coverage by multiple regions and availability zones, as well as redundancy, can allow systems to display continuous availability even as components fail individually. When preparing for a traffic peak or a surge in demand, in which each minute of downtime could have a severe impact on sales or customer satisfaction, disaster recovery strategies can be altered ahead of time to increase resilience and minimize potential downtime. 4. Monitoring and observability are your first line of defense Perhaps one of the most important methods for identifying outages and other disasters is through monitoring your applications and e-commerce infrastructure. Think of this as a huge network of sensors that report on how your entire environment is performing. Leveraging resources such as AWS CloudWatch and X-Ray enables your business to quickly identify performance issues and service degradation before it becomes an actual problem. Proactive alerts such as these are essential to ensuring your business can quickly respond to any potential situation before it becomes an incident. >> You may also like: Top rules to embrace DevOps practices 5. Avoid unexpected costs with cost management tools  One of the challenges of cloud environments is keeping track of all costs associated with the resources in use, especially when we’re talking about systems that scale up and down based on demand. If not managed properly, this can lead to surprise costs on billing. Therefore, it’s important to monitor resource usage and fine-tune it effectively to avoid resource wastage during high traffic . Cost management tools such as AWS Cost Explorer can be leveraged to provide valuable insights that will assist you in preparing ahead of time for such moments. >> You may also like: Cloud costs drop 35% with tagging strategy and resource optimization 6. Leverage dynamic load balancing to distribute traffic effectively Load balancing is the technology that allows multiple servers or resources to be used simultaneously for handling an increased demand, which becomes increasingly more complex as these servers scale up and down dynamically. Resources such as Elastic Load Balancers enable the automatic distribution of traffic across several servers and ensure that the extra traffic is managed effectively as applications scale to match the demand. 7. Rely on content delivery networks for static content Content Delivery Networks or CDN are tools such as Amazon CloudFront that distribute static content, such as images, globally. The CDN then ensures the content is accessible with reduced latency, as it provides multiple servers for distributing the data to your customers across the globe. Additionally, leveraging such tools enables you to relieve the stress on the origin servers for the content. >> More about CDNs: How Cilia successfully migrated 600M files in 8 days while ensuring uninterrupted system access 8. Prepare your e-commerce with security resources While security would merit an entire article by itself, in the context of this list, we recommend leveraging protections such as AWS Web Application Firewall (WAF) and AWS Shield. These tools can help you and your business mitigate DDoS attacks and other threats that tend to spike in periods of increased traffic and may have a huge impact on your system’s availability. Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks flood servers, blocking legitimate users from accessing a website or service. This outage stops your customers from making purchases or using your services. 9. Embrace tools that ensure high availability for your databases Leveraging services such as Amazon RDS and DynamoDB, which implement automatic replication, backups, and failover between availability zones can ensure that your services maintain uptime even if individual resources are having problems. 10. Purchase reserved instances ahead of time When predicting specific workloads, purchasing reserved instances ahead of time, as well as leveraging spot instances for non-critical workloads, allows you to benefit from cost savings during predicted traffic peaks. The most important thing to remember is that maintaining an efficient business in the digital space is often more of a matter of culture than it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. Following through the suggestions here might mitigate risks or identify potential issues before they impact your customers. However, to be truly prepared, teams must understand that efficiency requires constant care. Even if you have these measures already in place, this is a wonderful opportunity to review some of these configurations and ensure that they are still appropriate for the holiday season . Expect the best but prepare for the worst! Once your teams have this understanding of how to maintain a culture of excellence regarding your infrastructure, you’ll be truly prepared to face the challenges and opportunities that come with each new holiday season. Ensure your business is prepared and secure for the holiday season. Schedule a consultation now!

Accurate and reliable data collection is crucial for businesses in retail and e-commerce. It enables organizations to make informed decisions and gain a competitive edge by leveraging insights to optimize operations and understand customer behavior. In today’s digital landscape, data-driven strategies have become indispensable for adjusting inventory levels, tailoring marketing efforts, and forecasting trends. Key areas for effective data collection Customer behavior lies at the heart of any successful retail or e-commerce strategy. Predictive models, built on data collection, allow companies to anticipate trends with accuracy. By understanding purchase patterns and preferences, businesses can not only optimize inventory but also refine marketing campaigns. This ensures they stay ahead of demand and cater to customer expectations in real time. Website interaction is another vital area. Tracking how customers navigate and interact with an e-commerce platform helps companies improve the user experience. It’s not just about gathering data, but about using that data to create a seamless shopping experience that keeps customers engaged and encourages conversions. Preparing to leverage data Before diving into advanced analytics, it’s essential to lay a strong foundation by understanding the unique aspects of the business. Each company is different, and the approach to data collection must be tailored. For instance, selling Christmas trees and selling cars involve entirely different retail practices. To effectively integrate data collection points and predict customer behavior, the nuances of each business must be recognized. At e-Core, we’ve seen this firsthand with clients where in-depth collaboration with business teams was key to success. This deeper understanding allows for fine-tuning caching solutions and enhancing performance, a crucial step in optimizing any data-driven product . Identifying key areas for data collection, such as customer interactions, purchase patterns, and website navigation, sets the stage for more sophisticated analytics. Case study: Improving performance through data At e-Core, we worked with a retail client to implement strategic data collection points aimed at improving overall performance. By gathering insights from customer behavior and refining caching solutions, we boosted the client’s website performance while enhancing data accuracy. You can learn more about this study here. The power of data analytics cannot be overstated. It transforms raw data into actionable insights, improving everything from supply chain management to marketing success. With the right tools in place, businesses can drive efficiency and profitability, positioning themselves for long-term success in an increasingly competitive landscape.

The challenge  A leading manufacturer faced significant challenges maintaining quality control throughout their production line. Poor issue control hindered process improvement and prevented productivity increases. The absence of a robust quality assurance system led to poor product quality, posing a risk to the brand’s reputation. Additionally, the manual registration of issues was prone to errors, making it difficult to identify and address process bottlenecks efficiently. The solution: digital inspection e-Core implemented a digital inspection solution to enhance quality control in the production line. This system was designed to log and analyze occurrences in real time, allowing quality control specialists to monitor and respond promptly. The digital platform recorded all relevant information and provided real time monitoring capabilities, enabling more effective responses to issues and facilitating productivity improvements. Results Improved Process Efficiency: The digital inspection solution significantly reduced errors and bottlenecks in the production line. Enhanced Product Quality: Improved quality control resulted in higher product quality, reducing the risk of damage to the brand’s reputation. Increased Productivity: The manufacturer experienced a notable increase in productivity due to more efficient issue tracking and resolution. Stronger Brand Reputation: Consistent product quality and reduced errors strengthened the brand’s reputation in the market.

The challenge A leading agricultural machinery manufacturer faced significant challenges with their product lead time forecasting capabilities . Dealers lacked visibility into upcoming shipments from the manufacturing plant, leading to uncertainty about delivery dates and timelines for receiving machinery products. This lack of information hindered dealers’ ability to plan and manage their inventories effectively, resulting in customer dissatisfaction and operational inefficiencies. The solution e-Core partnered with the manufacturer to develop a solution focused on improving product lead time visibility. The solution involved the integration of multiple applications that enhanced the manufacturer’s ability to forecast and communicate product lead times to their dealers. The solution allowed dealers to easily buy products, validate availability, and access special conditions during specific dates. This capability enabled the manufacturer to better plan production and billing cycles. Additionally, critical dealer information, such as parts and product stocks and financial details, was collected and integrated into the system. This data , transmitted directly from the Dealer Management System (DMS) or through specialized applications, provided real-time visibility into the manufacturing pipeline. By ensuring that dealers had access to accurate and timely information about product lead times, the manufacturer could enhance their dealers’ ability to plan and manage their inventories more effectively. Results  Improved Dealer Satisfaction: Enhanced visibility into product lead times led to better inventory management and reduced operational inefficiencies. Increased On-Time Deliveries: Dealers were able to plan more accurately, resulting in a higher rate of on-time deliveries. Reduced Inventory Holding Costs: Better forecasting and planning reduced the need for excess inventory, lowering holding costs. Improved Customer Satisfaction: Reliable delivery schedules and better communication improved overall customer satisfaction.