The Point of Sale (POS) has evolved far beyond simple card reading: it now serves as a crucial technology hub for the omnichannel experience. Providing a custom POS system enables real-time coordination of payment, inventory, CRM, and marketing, while ensuring optimized usability for every staff member.

Opting for a solution built from scratch rather than an off-the-shelf package ensures seamless integration with the existing ecosystem (ERP/CRM, e-commerce, etc.) and equips the retailer for future business challenges. This article outlines the strategic advantages of a custom POS, its hardware and software architecture, key features, and selection criteria for 2025.

The POS: The Nerve Center of the Customer Experience

Every transaction at checkout is an opportunity to strengthen the customer relationship. A fast, intuitive POS prevents abandonment and boosts brand image. By placing the POS at the heart of the omnichannel journey, retailers turn each sale into a loyalty and upsell lever.

POS Centrality in the Customer Journey

The POS is no longer just a payment terminal—it’s a critical data node. By integrating CRM and loyalty-program APIs, it captures customer profiles and preferences throughout the shopping process.

Each session login becomes an occasion to display personalized offers or instantly credit loyalty points. This continuity of service enhances experience consistency, whether in-store or online.

From a business standpoint, this data capture simplifies analysis of buying behaviors and identification of cross-sell opportunities. It provides marketing teams with real-time dashboards without manual entries or batch processing.

Performance and Usability: Business Stakes

At a retail outlet, latency can mean a customer abandoning their cart or long queues that damage brand perception.

Tailored ergonomics adapt the interface to user roles—cashier, store manager, or inventory manager—reducing input errors and training time. This ease of use lowers support tickets and maintenance costs.

Moreover, customization extends to internal workflows: direct integration of specific processes (returns management, split payments, manager approvals) without workarounds or complex overlays. This ensures reliability and operational consistency.

Case Study: Deployment in a Retail Chain

A sporting goods chain replaced its legacy POS with a custom-developed solution. Transaction times dropped by an average of 40%, eliminating queues during peak periods.

The project highlighted the value of a contextual interface. Cashiers now access customer history and local inventory with a single click, boosting add-on sales by 12%.

This success demonstrates that a smooth, business-focused POS directly impacts customer perception and sales, while providing a scalable platform for future omnichannel features.

From Hardware to Software: A Comprehensive Ecosystem

The modern POS architecture combines EMV/NFC terminals, mobile devices, and cloud-based back-office. Each component communicates via secured APIs. PCI-DSS compliance, end-to-end encryption, and an offline-first approach ensure reliability and security.

Interoperability with ERP, CRM, and Inventory

The POS becomes a connected hub, synchronizing stock data, online orders, and invoicing in real time. RESTful or event-driven APIs facilitate this bidirectional communication without batch processes.

Thanks to a modular architecture, each module (payment, inventory, reporting) can be updated or replaced independently without disrupting the entire system. This minimizes vendor lock-in and encourages adoption of open-source, composable architectures.

Data sent to the ERP automatically feeds the supply chain, triggering replenishments and threshold alerts to prevent stockouts. The ERP, in turn, enriches customer profiles and manages marketing automations directly from the POS interface.

Security, Compliance, and Modern Payments

Regulatory requirements (PCI-DSS, Check 21, SOX) impact every component of the system. A custom POS natively includes tokenization and end-to-end encryption, mitigating fraud risks.

EMV/NFC terminals and mobile payments (Apple Pay, Google Pay) coexist under a unified secure protocol. Sensitive data flows are isolated in a dedicated, audited, and certified module.

When a payment method becomes obsolete or a new standard emerges, simply replace the relevant component without altering the rest of the application. This flexibility drastically reduces compliance costs and timelines.

Example of a Connected Hub Integration

A multiservice network implemented a custom POS interfaced with its ERP and CRM. Stocks are updated in real time, payments digitized, and financial reports consolidated automatically each evening.

This case shows that careful integration minimizes manual entries and errors while providing accurate performance tracking by site. Back-office automation freed up 20% of administrative teams’ time.

It also demonstrates the advantage of context-driven development without vendor lock-in: each technical or business evolution can be deployed without renegotiating a standard contract.

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Key Features of a Modern POS

A custom POS integrates inventory management, multiple payment methods, loyalty programs, and advanced reporting. It becomes the single source of truth for both in-store and digital commerce. Automation, real-time analytics, and granular access controls optimize profitability and reduce operational risks.

Inventory Management and E-commerce Synchronization

The inventory module connects to multiple sales channels, ensuring a consolidated view of stock levels. Stockouts are anticipated via configurable thresholds, and online orders automatically trigger replenishments.

In offline scenarios, the offline-first architecture maintains sales continuity, synchronizing instantly once back online. Transactions are temporarily cached in a secure buffer and validated afterward.

This consistency between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores enhances customer satisfaction and prevents overselling. Logistics teams benefit from a unified dashboard to prioritize shipments and handle returns.

Payment Experience and Loyalty Programs

Beyond payment processing, the custom POS handles split payments, instant refunds, and gift cards. Each scenario is coded according to the retailer’s business rules, with no compromise.

Loyalty points accumulate and redeem at checkout, fully integrated with multichannel marketing campaigns. Targeted offers can be pushed in real time on the customer display or through a connected mobile app.

Personalization extends to dynamic promotion displays based on purchase history. This seamless experience creates engagement and strengthens purchase intent.

Reporting, Access, and Business Analytics

Reporting relies on an internal data warehouse or cloud service, offering performance metrics by employee, site, and product segment. Access rights are configurable and auditable, ensuring confidentiality of HR and financial data.

Interactive dashboards quickly reveal sales trends, cash discrepancies, and stock variances. SQL queries or REST APIs provide custom exports for finance and marketing teams.

A quick-service restaurant chain deployed this module to track hourly revenue and streamline staffing. Analysis uncovered a link between peak sales and staffing levels, leading to an 8% margin improvement.

Custom POS vs. Off-the-Shelf: Which Approach to Choose?

A fully integrated custom solution ensures total coherence between hardware and software, delivering optimal reliability and performance. A semi-integrated approach allows targeted add-ons to an existing platform, minimizing initial costs and time-to-market.

Fully Integrated: Total Performance and Coherence

In a fully integrated approach, every component—payment terminal, cashier tablet, local server, and cloud services—is designed and optimized to work in synergy. Code is developed to business specifications, with no superfluous layers.

This deep integration minimizes failure risks during updates and maximizes transaction speed. It also simplifies security audits, as the entire software and hardware chain is under unified control.

For multisite retailers, this option offers predictable maintenance and consistent performance even during high-traffic periods, without dependence on proprietary third-party solutions with opaque update cycles.

Semi-Integrated: Modularity and Rapid Deployment

The semi-integrated approach entails adopting a proven standard base, then adding business-specific modules (mobile payments, advanced inventory management, analytics). It reduces initial development costs and accelerates deployment.

This model suits projects with standard requirements for most use cases but needing a few unique functionalities. Modules can be developed in open source and replaced or extended at any time.

However, fragility risks arise during updates of the core platform. Rigorous version management and automated testing are essential to ensure stability and avoid dependency conflicts.

Key Criteria for a 2025-Aligned Choice

Decision makers favor ease of use to limit training and support, seamless integration with ERP/CRM and marketing, and logistics automation. These requirements point toward modular, open-source architectures.

PCI-DSS compliance and offline-first resilience are non-negotiable. The system’s ability to evolve via APIs and integrate analytics and AI tools is also a longevity criterion.

24/7 responsive support, clear documentation, and a controlled migration plan complete the comparison between fully integrated and semi-integrated options.

Turn Your Point of Sale into an Omnichannel Performance Engine

A custom POS is no longer just an electronic cash register: it’s the cornerstone of omnichannel, unifying customer data, inventory, and payments. Its modular, open-source design ensures scalability, security, and independence from proprietary vendors. Automation, real-time reporting, and API integration make it a business intelligence engine.

Whether opting for a fully integrated or semi-integrated solution, the key is alignment with business processes and the organization’s digital roadmap. Our experts are ready to assess your situation, define a tailored architecture, and guide you from audit to production, ensuring ROI and long-term performance.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Optimizing automated ordering systems has become a key priority for restaurant chains aiming to boost their margins while delivering a seamless experience to their customers.

Effectively integrating a cloud-based point-of-sale system (POS) with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, orchestrating in-restaurant, delivery, and click-and-collect channels, and enhancing the user experience through QR codes, kiosks, and mobile apps are all levers to reduce errors and waiting times. In a data-driven environment, heatmaps, basket analysis, and cohort studies enable precise operational control. This article outlines a comprehensive journey—from the reference architecture to the minimum viable product (MVP) roadmap, including ROI calculation and risk identification.

Efficient Automated Ordering Architecture

A well-designed reference architecture ensures consistency between the POS, ERP, and sales channels. It lays the foundation for a scalable, modular, and secure ecosystem.

POS/ERP Integration: Streamlining Order Flow

The integration between the point-of-sale system and the ERP is the system’s core. It synchronizes inventory, pricing, and promotions in real time between the checkout and central management. This linkage minimizes inventory discrepancies and prevents unexpected stockouts, which can lead to lost revenue and customer frustration.

On the technical side, a REST API or an open-source event bus facilitates information exchange without overcomplicating the architecture. Domain-specific microservices (inventory, billing, reporting) ensure smooth scalability and limit the impact of updates.

In a real-world example, a mid-sized Swiss restaurant chain connected its cloud POS to an open-source ERP package. This eliminated 15% of stock variances, reduced data-entry errors, and removed manual reentries. The integration demonstrated that a modular, asynchronous design can handle several hundred simultaneous orders without a hitch.

Multichannel Orchestration: In-Restaurant, Delivery, and Click-and-Collect

Orchestrating different sales channels provides a unified view of the customer journey. Dine-in, delivery, and click-and-collect requests pass through a central orchestration platform, which prioritizes processing according to the defined service level agreement (SLA).

This orchestration layer manages the distribution of tickets among kitchens, delivery teams, and pickup kiosks. Configurable workflows ensure each order follows the proper steps, with automated notifications and real-time tracking from placement through to delivery or pickup.

A Swiss quick-service restaurant implemented an open-source orchestrator connected to its ordering kiosks and in-house delivery fleet. The result: a 20% reduction in preparation time and consistent service times across all channels and times of day.

Omnichannel UX: Kiosks, QR Codes, and Mobile Apps

Enhancing the user experience requires deploying diverse yet coherent touchpoints. In-restaurant kiosks, table QR codes, and mobile apps must share the same product catalog, pricing configuration, and intuitive interfaces.

For instance, a touchscreen kiosk can offer contextual upsell recommendations based on the customer’s order history or order time. A QR code enables two-click ordering with no app download required, while a mobile app can provide loyalty benefits and personalized notifications.

A Swiss restaurant concept tested a mobile app synchronized with its kiosks and table QR codes. This unified UX led to a 30% increase in the digital average order value and a 25% higher customer satisfaction rate, demonstrating the value of a seamless omnichannel experience.

MVP Roadmap for Iterative Deployment

Defining a clear minimum viable product (MVP) enables a quick launch of core functionality and gradual system enhancement. A structured roadmap ensures alignment between business and technical teams.

Defining the Functional Scope

The MVP must cover essential features: order placement, POS/ERP integration, basic reporting, and inventory control. Prioritize modules that deliver rapid benefits while keeping future developments in mind.

An iterative approach with two- to four-week sprints helps identify friction points quickly and adjust the scope. Each iteration delivers a usable version tested under real conditions at one or two pilot sites.

By segmenting requirements, you can roll out click-and-collect first, then in-restaurant kiosks, and finally the mobile app. This ordered sequence facilitates operational team adoption and mitigates project risks.

Modular, Open-Source Technology Choices

Opting for proven open-source components (backend framework, workflow engine, database) ensures flexibility and independence. Modules can be swapped or extended without rewriting the entire platform.

Hexagonal or microservices architectures support decoupling the solution into autonomous components. Each component adheres to a clear interface and communicates through documented APIs, guaranteeing scalability and maintainability.

A Swiss restaurant chain chose an open-source workflow engine framework and an SQL database deployed behind an HAProxy cluster. This setup handled peak demand during a local event without requiring an architectural overhaul, demonstrating the robustness of a modular solution.

Project Governance and Data-Driven Management

Agile governance brings IT, business stakeholders, and operations together for rapid decision-making. Weekly steering committees monitor progress, obstacles, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Data-driven management from the MVP stage involves collecting metrics on order times, errors, preparation and delivery times, and customer feedback. These KPIs feed a dashboard accessible to all project stakeholders.

With this approach, a Swiss chain refined its roadmap based on field feedback, prioritizing UX optimizations in the mobile app and kitchen workflow fixes. Data-driven management halved the kitchen error rate during the pilot phase.

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Measuring ROI and Managing Risks

ROI evaluation relies on precise financial and operational metrics. Anticipating and mitigating risks (vendor lock-in, security, technical debt) protects the investment.

Tracking Key Business Metrics

ROI is measured through customer wait time, order error rate, digital average order value, and order processing cost. It’s essential to compare these KPIs before and after deployment.

Also track additional revenue generated by digital channels and customer retention rates. These metrics guide investment decisions in advanced UX features or operational optimizations.

A Swiss hospitality group recorded a 12% reduction in operational costs related to data-entry errors and an 18% increase in mobile app sales. These results formed the basis for rolling out the system across all subsidiaries.

Mitigating Vendor Lock-In and Technical Debt

Vendor lock-in occurs when proprietary components become central to the architecture. Choosing interoperable solutions based on open standards is crucial.

Technical debt emerges quickly if ERP or workflow engine versions aren’t maintained. To avoid it, embed a continuous update plan and an automated CI/CD pipeline from the MVP stage.

In one Swiss example, a heavily customized proprietary ERP created a difficult-to-escape lock. The project team planned a gradual migration of critical modules to open-source microservices, minimizing the risk of service interruption.

Security, GDPR, and Swiss FADP Compliance

Handling customer data and financial transactions must comply with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). This requires consent mechanisms, data anonymization, and encryption of sensitive information.

Security audits, penetration testing, and strong authentication modules ensure system resilience. Access traceability and controlled log retention are both legal and operational obligations.

A multi-site Swiss restaurant integrated a GDPR/FADP-compliant consent management module and implemented AES-256 encryption for transactions. An external audit validated compliance and highlighted the robustness of the security measures.

Continuous Improvement Through Data Analysis

Heatmap analysis, basket behavior, and cohort studies guide product iterations. A scalable architecture supports growth and future development.

Leveraging Heatmaps and Basket Behavior

Heatmaps on kiosks and mobile apps reveal areas of interest and friction points in the ordering journey. They enable interface reorganization, streamlined flows, and higher conversion rates.

Basket analysis identifies the most profitable product combinations and those that need promotion. These insights inform marketing campaigns and contextual suggestions during order placement.

A Swiss brand observed via heatmaps that 40% of users navigated to the dessert menu only after confirming their beverage. By moving the dessert module earlier in the flow, they increased upsell rates by 15% within the first two weeks of adjustment.

Segmentation and Cohort Studies for Customer Loyalty

Cohort analysis segments customers by order frequency, average basket size, and preferred channel. Each segment receives personalized offers, optimizing engagement and repeat business.

Tracking cohorts over time measures the impact of promotional actions and UX improvements. These indicators are then integrated into the roadmap to prioritize the most impactful enhancements.

A restaurant concept implemented cohorts based on monthly visits. It tailored push notifications to the customer lifecycle, reducing churn by 8% over six months and strengthening loyalty among high-value segments.

Iterating and Scaling Based on Field Feedback

Continuous deployment via a CI/CD pipeline allows frequent, secure updates. Each new release includes bug fixes, UX optimizations, and additional features.

The microservices architecture’s scalability and automatic load balancing ensure service availability during peak periods. Staging environments mirror production for realistic testing before each release.

A Swiss chain launched a “canary” environment to deploy new features to a small percentage of users. This pre-production phase caught critical bugs without impacting the majority of customers.

Turn Your Ordering System into a Growth Driver

Designing a high-performance automated ordering system relies on a modular architecture, a balanced MVP roadmap, rigorous ROI management, and proactive risk mitigation. Leveraging data from heatmaps, baskets, and cohorts creates a virtuous cycle of continuous optimization and customer loyalty.

Facing the unique challenges of your restaurant chain, our experts support you in defining the architecture, selecting open-source technologies, ensuring GDPR/FADP compliance, and rolling out an iterative deployment. Every project is approached with a contextual, ROI-driven mindset for lasting, secure results.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In an environment where attracting and retaining technical talent has become a strategic challenge, hiring a React developer requires a precise understanding of this framework’s specifics, its ecosystem, and the expected skills. IT decision-makers and executives must assess both technical expertise, interpersonal qualities, and the engagement model that best suits their budgetary and time constraints.

This operational guide explains why React is a safe choice, details the skill framework to prioritize, highlights the key soft skills, and proposes a methodology to choose between in-house hiring, freelancing, or agency support—while providing an overview of salary ranges in Switzerland.

Why React Is a Safe Bet

React benefits from a mature ecosystem supported by a large open-source community. Its modular approach and ability to adapt to mobile needs via React Native ensure a fast and consistent implementation.

Open-Source Ecosystem and Active Community

React is backed by a broad community of contributors and companies that regularly release compatible libraries and optimized plugins. This dynamic environment gives access to proven solutions for form handling, global state management, and animations—significantly reducing development time.

Each React update is accompanied by detailed release notes and migration guides, minimizing regression risks with every major version. Forums and knowledge-sharing platforms provide continuous support to quickly resolve production issues.

Choosing React also guarantees long-term technological stability: numerous open-source projects, contributions from major enterprises, and comprehensive official documentation ensure a secure, future-proof investment.

Rendering Performance and Modularity

Thanks to its Virtual DOM, React optimizes UI updates by only manipulating nodes that actually changed, greatly improving application responsiveness.

The composition of reusable components promotes a modular architecture, simplifying maintenance and evolution of the codebase. Each feature can be isolated in an independent module, tested separately, and deployed without impacting the rest of the application.

This architectural granularity helps control overall performance, enables dynamic module loading, and reduces initial bundle size—critical for users with limited bandwidth.

Mobile Reuse with React Native

React Native uses the same component paradigm as React while generating native interfaces on iOS and Android. This hybrid approach allows simultaneous development of web and mobile apps from a single codebase. For a comparison of mobile development frameworks.

Sharing business logic and libraries across platforms accelerates time-to-market and cuts maintenance costs by avoiding duplicate work. Updates can be deployed in sync, ensuring consistency and quality across the entire digital ecosystem.

For example, an e-commerce SME chose React for its customer portal and React Native for its internal mobile app. This strategy reduced development time by 30% and demonstrated React’s ability to streamline resources while delivering a cohesive user experience.

Key Competencies Required for a React Developer

Hiring a high-performing React profile requires verifying their mastery of the framework core and modern languages. You must also assess their ability to manage application state, configure routing, and integrate testing and optimization tools.

Mastery of Core React and JavaScript/TypeScript

A strong React developer understands functional and class component creation and lifecycle, as well as using hooks (useState, useEffect) to manage side effects and local state.

Deep knowledge of JavaScript ES6+ (promises, async/await, modules) is essential to write modern, maintainable, and performant code. Adopting TypeScript enhances robustness by introducing static typing, making code navigation and refactoring safer.

A technical assessment should include tasks like building dynamic dashboards, creating reusable components, and implementing type definitions to ensure code quality.

State Management and Routing

Proficiency with state management libraries such as Redux, MobX, or React’s Context API is crucial for organizing global state, sharing data between components, and ensuring application consistency.

An experienced developer knows how to configure React Router for nested routes, redirects, and route guards. They can optimize the architecture to minimize initial load and prefetch only necessary modules.

Evaluations should cover real-world scenarios: syncing state with a remote API, handling authentication, and implementing lazy loading to improve first-time user interaction.

Testing, Performance, and Tooling

Candidates must be able to write unit tests (Jest, React Testing Library) and integration tests to validate component interactions and prevent functional regressions.

They should also recommend optimizations such as component memoization (React.memo), list virtualization (react-window), or bundle analysis (webpack-bundle-analyzer) to reduce distributed file size.

A Swiss manufacturing SME hired a React specialist to bolster its team; after integrating a CI/CD pipeline with automated tests and performance monitoring, it saw a 40% reduction in production incidents—demonstrating the direct impact of quality assurance and monitoring on application reliability.

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Critical Soft Skills for a React Developer

Beyond technical expertise, a React project’s success depends on the developer’s ability to solve complex problems, communicate effectively, and adapt to a constantly evolving environment.

Problem-Solving and Analytical Mindset

A React developer must quickly identify the root cause of a bug, analyze logs, and reproduce the scenario locally or in staging to understand its origin.

They implement robust debugging strategies, use profiling tools, and propose durable fixes, avoiding quick patches that could increase technical debt.

Their analytical approach leads them to document findings and share insights with the team to optimize processes and prevent recurrence of similar issues.

Communication and Collaboration

In an Agile setting, the React developer participates in Scrum ceremonies, discusses user stories, and clarifies requirements with Product Owners and UX designers to align the product with business objectives.

They produce technical design documents, join code reviews, and support new team members by providing guidelines and well-commented code.

This cross-functional collaboration strengthens team cohesion and ensures that deployments align technical vision with functional expectations.

Adaptability and Continuous Learning

The JavaScript ecosystem evolves rapidly: a strong React profile stays informed about framework updates, new best practices, and emerging libraries to evaluate them against project needs.

They proactively follow blogs, attend meetups, and contribute to open-source projects—enriching their own expertise and that of the team.

For instance, a developer at a healthcare startup proposed migrating to React Concurrent Mode to improve interface responsiveness, showcasing their commitment to best practices and technological advancement.

Choosing the Right Hiring Model for Your Needs

The choice between in-house hiring, freelancing, or agency support depends on budget, time-to-market, project complexity, and growth prospects. Each option has advantages and limitations that should be weighed carefully.

In-House Hiring for Long-Term Support

Hiring a React developer on a permanent contract ensures long-term availability, progressive upskilling, and better cultural integration.

This model suits organizations planning multiple digital initiatives over time and looking to capitalize on internal ecosystem knowledge.

In Switzerland, the annual gross salary for an experienced React developer usually ranges from 110,000 to 140,000 CHF, depending on experience and location.

Freelance and External Resources

Engaging a freelancer or remote resource offers great flexibility, rapid ramp-up, and project-based commitment without the constraints of a standard recruitment process.

This mode is ideal for temporary needs, peak workloads, or highly specialized expertise that’s difficult to source locally.

The average daily rate for a freelance React developer in Switzerland is between 900 and 1,200 CHF, depending on expertise level and mission duration.

Specialized Agency for Turnkey Management

Working with a digital agency that provides architects, developers, and project managers covers the entire cycle: audit, design, development, and maintenance.

This solution is particularly relevant for complex projects requiring multidisciplinary coordination and quality assurance through proven processes.

It offers controlled Total Cost of Ownership thanks to clear pricing packages, responsiveness, and the ability to adjust resources as the project evolves.

Optimize Your React Developer Recruitment

React stands out as a strategic choice thanks to its rich ecosystem, performance, and mobile capabilities. Identifying key technical skills—core React, state management, testing, and performance—and assessing soft skills in problem-solving, communication, and adaptability are essential prerequisites.

Selecting the most suitable hiring model—whether in-house, freelance, or agency— ensures the right balance between timeline, quality, and total cost of ownership. Swiss salary ranges should be factored into your budget definition to secure your recruitment strategy.

Whether you’re in a ramp-up phase or scaling operations, our experts are available to advise and support you in selecting the best React profile tailored to your business needs and technical context.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

In many Swiss organizations, legacy software is viewed as an immutable asset: it “works,” it “runs,” so why invest? In reality, this inertia hides a gradual degradation of operational velocity and resilience, increasing onboarding times, complicating maintenance, and accumulating technical debt that’s difficult to curb.

Teams find themselves trapped in opaque code, dependent on a handful of experts and exposed to growing vulnerabilities. The issue isn’t just financial; it touches on innovation capacity, security, and competitiveness. It becomes essential to treat modernization not as a prohibitive cost, but as a strategic lever to restore agility and robustness.

Demystifying Legacy: When “It Still Runs” Equals a Roadblock

Leaving old software in place creates the illusion of immediate savings. This apparent stability hides an accumulation of invisible blockers that slow down every change.

Illusion of Continuity and Frozen Functionality

At first glance, a legacy system seems reliable because it has executed business processes for years without a major incident. This historical stability reinforces the belief that any intervention could create more problems than it solves.

Yet each new requirement or regulation forces you to dig into code that was often hastily rewritten without a long-term vision. Features are grafted on in an ad hoc manner, which severely limits the system’s adaptability.

Over time, teams spend more effort finding workarounds than developing true innovations. Inertia becomes a vicious cycle where every update brings unexpected hotfixes.

Accumulated Technical Debt and Unmaintainable Code

Legacy systems embody yesterday’s “quick wins”: modules added without refactoring, outdated dependencies left unpatched, and missing tests. Every compromise made under pressure shows up in the code’s complexity.

When components are neither tested nor documented, every change must be preceded by a laborious audit, multiplying delays and costs. Enhancements almost invariably risk causing regressions.

This spiral feeds technical debt, hindering digital transformation and increasing the effort needed to deliver new, market-relevant features.

Dependence on Internal Expertise and Knowledge Silos

An aging software estate often relies on the know-how of a few developers or administrators who understand the architecture end to end. Their departure can abruptly halt ongoing projects.

Knowledge transfer happens in dribs and drabs and is rarely formalized. Turnover, retirements, and internal mobility create gaps in documentation, making onboarding for newcomers interminable.

Without a shared vision and a foundation of best practices, every intervention risks worsening existing complexity rather than reducing it.

Example: A Swiss logistics services company maintained an in-house ERP for over ten years, supported by two key engineers. When one left, the other had to urgently document 200,000 lines of code, consuming three months of intensive work before even fixing the first bug. This cost the firm the equivalent of CHF 1.2 million in internal and external consultant fees, demonstrating that the “security” of the status quo can become a major liability.

The Hidden Impacts of Aging Applications

Beyond hosting and license costs, most legacy expenses hide in maintenance and recurring delays. These invisible burdens weigh heavily on overall company performance.

Innovation Throttling and Extended Delivery Times

Every request for change becomes a complex project: first, you must analyze the outdated code, document its interactions, and identify potential regression risks. This phase can account for up to 60 percent of total development time.

Teams lose responsiveness, ceding ground to more agile competitors who can launch new offerings or quickly improve the user experience.

Time-to-market stretches out, business opportunities are missed, and innovation stalls, harming competitiveness in fast-moving markets.

Exponential Maintenance Costs and Resource Drain

A monolithic, poorly documented codebase often requires multiple technical profiles (analysts, developers, testers) for the slightest fix. These teams are then diverted from high-value projects.

IT budgets are largely consumed by support tickets and debugging cycles, sometimes up to 80 percent of the total load. The remainder is insufficient to fund modernization or innovation efforts.

We frequently end up prioritizing urgent fixes over foundational projects, reinforcing the legacy vicious cycle.

Example: A Switzerland-based industrial machinery manufacturer allocated nearly 70 percent of its IT budget to corrective maintenance of its planning system. Teams reported five-month delays for new module deployments, delaying the market introduction of innovative products and limiting expected gains.

Security Vulnerabilities and Compliance Challenges

Unpatched dependencies accumulate vulnerabilities. Without automated testing and patch management, each new release exposes the system to critical attacks (XSS, SQL injection, remote code execution…).

In an increasingly strict regulatory context (GDPR, ISO 27001, fintech directives…), any unaddressed flaw can lead to heavy fines and irreversible reputational damage.

Legacy complexity often makes effective security audits impossible, isolating the company and weakening it against growing cyberthreats.

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Progressive Modernization: From Analysis to Modular Redesign

Mitigating risks requires an iterative approach: diagnose, stabilize, and break the monolith into independent modules. This strategy ensures continuity while regaining control of the software estate.

Targeted Analysis and Diagnosis

The first step is to map the application landscape: inventory critical modules, dependencies, and measure risk exposure. A quick audit reveals priority technical debt areas. Consult our data governance guide to structure this phase.

This phase doesn’t aim to document everything immediately but to establish a scoring based on business impact and technical criticality. It focuses efforts on components that pose the greatest barriers to innovation.

The diagnosis also provides a clear roadmap with milestones and success indicators tailored to each project phase.

Stabilization and Quick Wins

Before any overhaul, it’s essential to establish a stable technical foundation: fix critical vulnerabilities, update major dependencies, and implement automated tests. Setting up a CI/CD pipeline ensures deployment quality and reliability.

These improvements deliver quick wins: fewer incidents, more reliable deployments, and reduced downtime. They build confidence among teams and stakeholders.

The CI/CD pipeline also guarantees that every future change meets a defined quality standard, limiting regressions and streamlining development cycles.

Modular Redesign and Independent Services

Gradually splitting the monolith into microservices vs modular monolith allows each component to be deployed and evolved independently. Each service then has its own codebase and dedicated tests. Learn how to choose between microservices vs modular monolith for your information system.

This granularity limits update impact, simplifies version management, and accelerates time-to-market. Teams can work in parallel on distinct functional domains.

Ultimately, the ecosystem becomes more resilient: an incident in one module no longer affects the entire platform, enhancing service continuity and operational security.

Anticipating the Future: ROI, AI, and Organizational Resilience

Modernizing a legacy system generates tangible gains: lower total cost of ownership (TCO), faster releases, reduced risks, and new data and AI use cases. It becomes a high-value investment.

Reducing Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

By eliminating maintenance, support, and infrastructure overages, TCO contracts significantly. The share of IT budget devoted to corrective maintenance can drop from 70 percent to less than 30 percent. The savings can be reallocated to innovative projects, boosting competitiveness and reducing reliance on external funding.

Accelerating Time-to-Market and Enhanced Agility

A modular architecture and mature CI/CD enable continuous delivery of features without disrupting the system. Development cycles shrink from quarters to weeks or days.

Preparing for AI Integration and Data Utilization

A modern, well-structured, and documented codebase facilitates API exposure and data flow between systems. AI projects can then rely on robust, reliable, and secure pipelines.

Data consolidation and automated ingestion pipelines are greatly simplified by a modular architecture. The data lake becomes a concrete lever for advanced analytics.

Predictive capabilities and machine learning algorithms benefit from the flexibility of the new ecosystem, accelerating value creation without compromising the existing system.

Turning Your Legacy into a Competitive Advantage

Maintaining the status quo with legacy software is a false economy: technical debt, code opacity, and reliance on a few experts erode performance. Conversely, a progressive modernization—conducted in phases of analysis, stabilization, and modular partitioning—restores agility, secures operations, and frees up resources for innovation.

Return on investment is measured in reduced maintenance costs, accelerated delivery, and openness to data and AI applications. Each modernized module becomes a foundation for new, high-value features.

CIOs, CEOs, and business leaders gain visibility over their software estate and regain control of their digital roadmap. Our Edana experts are ready to support you in building a contextualized, progressive, and sustainable transformation, based on open source, modularity, and security.

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In an environment where speed to market and application reliability are critical, end-to-end test automation becomes a strategic lever. With Cypress, every code change can be continuously validated and deployed with increased confidence. By combining Cypress with CI/CD pipelines and Docker containers, IT teams shift from reactive quality to a preventive culture, where every commit is tested, validated, and delivered in an environment identical to production.

Integrating Cypress into Your CI/CD Pipelines

Cypress integrates natively with your CI/CD pipelines to automate every testing step upon commit. This integration ensures reliable, reproducible deployments while reducing validation times.

Systematic Automation on Every Commit

Configuring Cypress in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins triggers your test suite automatically after each push. Results are immediately reported to development teams, providing rapid feedback on potential regressions.

This approach fosters a continuous feedback loop: any detected issue is resolved before other changes accumulate. It thus promotes ongoing software quality rather than concentrating test efforts at the end of a sprint.

By standardizing automation, you minimize human errors from manual testing and ensure consistent coverage. Teams gain peace of mind and can focus on innovation rather than manual verification.

Reproducible Environments with Docker

By packaging Cypress and its dependencies in a Docker image, you get a strictly identical test environment for each run. You can precisely define the versions of Node.js, the operating system, and browsers.

This reproducibility eliminates the “it works on my machine” issue and guarantees consistent test execution, whether run locally, on a CI runner, or in a Kubernetes cluster.

Docker containers also simplify scaling your pipelines: simply launch multiple instances in parallel to drastically cut execution times.

Orchestration with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins

Mainstream CI/CD tools’ support for Cypress lets you define complete YAML workflows. You can chain installation, linting, test execution, and reporting within a single pipeline.

Caching dependencies reduces build times, and Cypress plugins simplify publishing test reports and screenshots on failures.

For example, a Swiss e-commerce company cut its test cycles by 50% by orchestrating Cypress under GitLab CI and Docker. This optimization demonstrated that environment consistency and test suite parallelization significantly accelerate deployments.

Best Practices for Structuring and Customizing Your Cypress Tests

Adopting a clear structure and tailored commands improves your tests’ maintainability. Rigorous fixtures management and network stubbing strengthen reliability and speed of executions.

Organizing Test Suites and Cases

Structuring your tests in coherent folders (by feature, microservice, or business module) makes them easier to discover and maintain. Each file should describe a specific business scenario.

Limiting test suite size prevents excessive runtimes and quickly identifies regression sources. You can group critical tests in high-priority pipelines.

Explicit naming conventions for files and tests ensure better collaboration among developers, QA engineers, and product owners, and speed up test code reviews.

Custom Commands and Reusability

Cypress lets you create custom commands to factor recurring actions (authentication, navigation, form input). These helpers simplify scenarios and reduce duplication.

By placing these commands in the support folder, you centralize common logic and facilitate changes. Any update to a business routine then propagates in just one place.

This reuse improves test readability and reduces long-term maintenance costs. It naturally fits into a modular, context-based testing approach.

Data Management and Network Stubbing

Using fixtures allows you to simulate API responses deterministically, ensuring predictable and fast scenarios. Tests no longer depend on the real state of servers or databases.

Network stubbing makes it possible to validate complex business flows (payment, authentication, etc.) without deploying a full environment. Tests become more reliable and less sensitive to external instability.

Combining fixtures and stubbing accelerates test execution and tightly isolates each use case, which eases failure diagnosis and builds confidence in your automated suite.

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Parallel Execution and Cross-Browser Compatibility for Enhanced Robustness

Parallel execution taps into CI resources to drastically reduce validation time. Leveraging BrowserStack extends coverage across browsers and versions, ensuring a consistent user experience.

Time Reduction Through Parallel Execution

Cypress supports automatically splitting tests across multiple threads, fully utilizing CI runners. Time savings on large suites can exceed 60%, depending on volume.

This parallelization maintains deployment frequency even as test scenarios increase. Pipelines stay smooth and avoid end-of-sprint catch-ups.

Optimizing execution times also frees resources for other CI/CD tasks, such as progressive deployments or automated security scans.

Cross-Browser Coverage with BrowserStack

Multi-browser compatibility is often a blind spot in end-to-end testing. Integrating BrowserStack into your pipelines lets you run the same Cypress tests on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.

This way, you quickly identify rendering or behavior differences, ensuring a consistent user experience for all customers, regardless of their technical choices.

A SaaS vendor strengthened its cross-browser compatibility via BrowserStack, showing that behavioral discrepancies accounted for less than 2% of test cases. This approach reduced production incidents and reassured users about service quality.

Integrating Test Reports

Cypress-generated reports (JSON, HTML) can be centralized and analyzed through dashboards. You can track coverage trends and quickly spot unstable areas of your application.

Automating report delivery to stakeholders (IT management, business teams, QA) increases transparency and aligns everyone on delivery performance.

This continuous visibility improves decision-making and fosters a shared quality culture, where every issue is tracked and resolved promptly.

Case Studies and Strategic Benefits

Real-world project feedback demonstrates Cypress’s impact on team productivity and software quality. This proactive QA approach becomes a strategic lever to control technical debt.

Building Trust at Business and Technical Levels

End-to-end automation with Cypress provides a comprehensive view of application behavior and reduces friction between teams. Business analysts see their use cases validated automatically, and developers receive immediate feedback.

This transparency builds trust in every deployment, lessening the fear of regressions and encouraging a bolder iterative approach.

On the technical side, the technical debt induced by late-detected issues decreases, as tests run from development onwards and cover all critical flows.

Accelerating Delivery Cycles and Reducing Production Bugs

With Cypress, teams align their test rhythm with sprint pace. Each increment is continuously validated, significantly reducing the risk of pre-production bugs.

A Swiss fintech observed a 30% decrease in production incidents and a 40% faster delivery cycle after adopting end-to-end Cypress testing. Validation processes became more streamlined and repeatable.

Fixes occur faster, and production environments gain greater stability, boosting end-user satisfaction and partner confidence.

Controlling Technical Debt with Preventive Testing

Incorporating Cypress tests from the first lines of code turns QA into a permanent guardrail against regression accumulation. New features are designed and deployed without hidden debt.

Automated tests serve as living documentation of application behavior, easing new team members’ onboarding and future refactoring.

This preventive discipline enhances the robustness of your ecosystem, lowers maintenance costs, and ensures a rapid, worry-free time to market.

Transform Your Software Quality into a Performance Driver

By embedding Cypress at the heart of your CI/CD pipelines, you establish a continuous, preventive quality culture. Clear test structures, custom commands, network stubbing, and parallel execution with BrowserStack become the pillars of a scalable QA strategy.

Feedback from our Swiss projects shows that this approach significantly reduces test cycles, strengthens cross-browser reliability, and decreases technical debt. Your teams gain efficiency and confidence, and your releases become faster and safer.

Our Edana experts are here to design and deploy a tailored automated testing strategy, aligned with your business challenges and technological context.

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Managing technical debt and eliminating anti-patterns ensures the sustainability of applications and the smoothness of development cycles. When technical debt is visible, quantifiable, and planned, it becomes a time-to-market lever, while anti-patterns represent structural risks with zero tolerance.

To establish effective code governance, this article proposes an operational framework based on five complementary pillars. Each pillar aims to maintain code that is scalable, secure, and modular in order to preserve software value and guarantee sustained velocity. Mid-sized to large Swiss companies will find a clear methodology here that can be adapted to their context.

Standards and Anti-Anti-Pattern Checklist

Defining and enforcing clear standards limits the spread of anti-patterns. A dedicated checklist facilitates early detection of deviations and strengthens code maintainability.

SOLID Principles

The SOLID principles provide a foundation for structuring code and ensuring its scalability. By adhering to single responsibility and open/closed principles, you avoid creating unwieldy entities that are difficult to maintain.

Systematic application of these rules reduces coupling and makes unit testing easier. Developers can then refactor with confidence by following our guide to refactoring software code, without fearing major collateral impacts on other components.

Module Boundaries

Defining clear boundaries for each module ensures a decoupled and understandable architecture. By concentrating business responsibilities into dedicated modules, you avoid implicit dependencies between critical functions.

Proper module granularity also allows each part to be deployed and tested independently, as explained in how to structure a high-performing software development team. This isolation reduces regression risk and accelerates release cycles.

Duplication Rules

Code duplication leads to errors and inconsistencies. Implementing a strict “no copy-paste” rule and documenting legitimate use cases prevents the same business logic from being scattered across multiple locations.

Example: A Swiss logistics company discovered that several services were using different implementations to calculate rates. After an audit, standardizing via an internal library reduced calculation-related incidents by 70%, demonstrating the direct impact of duplication rules on system reliability.

Code Reviews and CI/CD Quality Gates

Systematic code reviews and well-configured quality gates establish a quality barrier at every commit. Continuous integration with complexity, coverage, and lint criteria prevents the introduction of anti-patterns.

Mandatory Code Reviews

Requiring a code review for every pull request ensures that at least two developers validate consistency and compliance with standards. This process promotes the sharing of best practices within the team.

Reviews also help catch SOLID violations, oversized classes, or nested logic early. They contribute to maintaining a healthy codebase and facilitate the onboarding of new team members.

Configured Quality Gates

Configuring quality gates in the CI/CD pipeline automatically rejects any code that fails to meet defined thresholds, following recommended agile best practices.

For example, you can block a deployment if the test coverage falls below 80% or if cyclomatic complexity exceeds a set limit.

CI/CD Automation

Automating builds, tests, and static analysis with tools like GitLab CI or Jenkins ensures continuous validation of each change. This standardized workflow reduces manual errors and speeds up production releases by helping you manage technical debt to secure your company’s future.

Example: In a Swiss industrial SME, implementing a GitLab CI pipeline including linting, unit tests, and churn analysis reduced the number of feedback loops for corrections by 40%, demonstrating the effectiveness of rigorous automation.

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Code Observability and Executive KPIs

Implementing observability tools like SonarQube or CodeScene provides quantitative visibility into quality and debt. Well-chosen executive KPIs enable targeted remediation actions.

Technical Debt per Line of Code

The debt-to-LOC ratio highlights accumulated liabilities and helps prioritize modules for refactoring. A maximum threshold can trigger an automatic cleanup plan.

By tracking this KPI, IT leadership gains a clear and objective measure. They can then allocate resources preventively rather than reactively, optimizing overall time to market.

Cyclomatic Complexity

Cyclomatic complexity measures the number of execution paths in a function. The higher this number, the more costly testing and understanding the code become.

An example from a Swiss financial institution illustrates this: a key component had an average cyclomatic complexity of 25, well above best practices. After restructuring and modularization, this KPI dropped below 10, demonstrating a significant improvement in maintainability.

Remediation Cost and Mean Time to Repair

Tracking average remediation cost and mean time to repair per ticket measures the financial and operational impact of technical debt. These indicators help convince decision-makers to invest in refactoring.

By comparing these KPIs before and after interventions, you can quantify performance gains and reduced service interruptions. This data-driven approach strengthens the credibility of code governance efforts.

Time-Boxed Refactoring and Evolutive Architecture

Allocating 10–15% of each sprint’s capacity to refactoring prevents technical debt from becoming a barrier to delivering new features. A modular architecture and a RACI process stop anti-patterns as soon as they are detected.

Time-Boxed Refactoring Sprints

Including dedicated code cleanup slots in every sprint ensures that technical debt does not obstruct new feature delivery. This cadence embeds refactoring into innovation.

This discipline comes with clear objectives: reduce complexity in certain modules, improve test coverage, or simplify overloaded classes. The result is more robust code and sustained velocity.

Pragmatic Modularization

Adopting a module-based architecture—or pragmatically using micro-frontends and microservices—limits the impact of changes. Each team can evolve within its scope without disrupting the entire system.

This modularity, favoring open source and decoupling, also eases scalability and integration of third-party components. It prevents the Big Ball of Mud effect and architecture freeze risks.

Anti-Anti-Pattern RACI Process

Establishing a clear RACI for every code deliverable and review stage eliminates responsibility gaps. When an anti-pattern is detected, the module owner is notified and must decide on a corrective action.

This discipline ensures decisions are not left hanging and non-compliant practices are corrected immediately. It fosters a culture of shared responsibility and rigorous anomaly tracking.

Turn Your Technical Debt into a Competitive Advantage

A code governance approach based on strict standards, systematic reviews, quantitative observability, refactoring rituals, and evolutive architecture lets you control technical debt while eradicating anti-patterns. The proposed framework delivers sustained velocity, reduced mean time to repair, optimized total cost of ownership, and lowered project risk.

Our experts are ready to understand your business challenges and adapt this framework to your specific context. We support you in implementing CI/CD pipelines, configuring quality gates, defining KPIs, and organizing refactoring rituals to turn your debt into a true performance lever.

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In an environment where each application operates as an autonomous island, IT teams spend up to a quarter of their day reconciling data across systems. This application “patchwork” hampers innovation, generates errors, and undermines responsiveness to strategic challenges.

IT systems integration is not limited to a one-off project but is an essential capability for aligning data, processes, and partners. By adopting a unified platform based on APIs, middleware, webhooks, or EDI, organizations gain productivity, strengthen compliance, and accelerate their time-to-value.

Impact of Disconnected Systems

Disconnected systems significantly impair operational performance. Integration debt results in almost 25% of time lost to manual tasks and increased risk of errors.

Time Loss and Proliferation of Manual Tasks

Each data transfer between two unconnected applications often requires manual intervention, whether exporting and formatting files or re-entering key information into another system. This duplication of effort drains internal resources and diverts IT teams from higher-value tasks such as innovation or proactive maintenance.

In a growth context, this overload increases exponentially: the more applications there are, the greater the integration workload, making any evolution laborious. The feedback loop slows down, and the company loses agility in meeting business needs and regulatory requirements. By avoiding the IT patchwork and adopting a unified architecture, you improve responsiveness.

Result: longer processing times, diminished user experience, and increased vulnerability to incidents, as each manual connection poses a risk of error or omission.

Data Quality Compromised by Silos

Application silos undermine information consistency. When finance, warehouse logistics, and customer relations rely on separate repositories, version and format discrepancies multiply, undermining the reliability of reports and dashboards. Discover our best practices for data cleaning to ensure your processes are reliable.

For example, a mid-sized Swiss banking institution observed discrepancies in monthly revenue figures of several tenths of a percent between its CRM and ERP. These variances required additional checks, slowing down the closing process and delaying strategic decision-making. This case demonstrates the direct impact of a lack of integration on the reliability of key metrics.

In the long run, these discrepancies can trigger costly corrective actions and in-depth audits to address erroneous or incomplete reports.

Business Silos and Limited Replicability

When each department builds its own solutions without a global vision, the result is an ecosystem where reuse is almost impossible. Cross-departmental processes run into technical and functional incompatibilities, forcing ad hoc workarounds.

This leads to increased technical debt: the more you overload an existing infrastructure, the more complex it becomes to evolve it. Teams end up dreading any new integration, preferring isolated solutions that are quick to deploy.

This phenomenon blocks the organization’s scalability, especially during mergers or integrations of new partners, where the absence of a standardized platform requires custom development for each new connection.

Benefits of Coherent Integration

Coherent integration creates a tangible competitive advantage. Business benefits are measured in productivity, compliance, and return on investment.

Increased Productivity and Team Empowerment

By automating data flows between CRM, ERP, and business platforms, operational teams free up several days of work each month. Recurring processes run without intervention, allowing staff to focus on analysis and optimization.

The cumulative effect is rapid: reducing manual tasks limits errors and speeds up the processing cycle for orders, invoicing, and regulatory reports. The result is improved satisfaction among internal and external stakeholders.

Beyond efficiency, this automation reduces user frustration and enhances IT tool adoption, as the business experience becomes smoother and more intuitive.

Enhanced Compliance and Simplified Auditing

A unified platform facilitates full traceability of transactions and data changes, meeting compliance requirements in finance, healthcare, or industrial sectors. Centralized and standardized logs ensure fast and accurate auditing, reducing the risk of penalties due to discrepancies or missing documents.

Automatic linking between documents, processes, and entities also ensures data consistency during internal and external audits. Reconciliation reports and regulatory dashboards are available in real time, without manual re-entry or consolidation.

This transparency builds trust with authorities and partners while reducing audit costs, which often run into tens of thousands of francs.

Time-to-Value and Increased Agility

By industrializing integration via real-time APIs or a data bus, new services can be deployed in weeks rather than months. This allows the company to quickly offer differentiating features and respond to evolving markets without rebuilding its entire system.

The modular architecture enables isolated testing and launching of MVPs, then connecting them to the global platform without disruption. This continuous delivery cycle maximizes the impact of innovations and minimizes regression risks.

Speed to market enhances competitive advantage, especially in high-tech sectors where customer adoption depends on offer responsiveness.

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Approaches to a Unified Platform

Four complementary approaches to building a unified platform. APIs, middleware, webhooks, and EDI address distinct but converging needs.

Real-Time APIs for Seamless Interoperability

REST or GraphQL APIs expose business services in a standardized way, allowing internal and external applications to immediately access status data, ongoing transactions, and shared repositories. This real-time mode ensures instant consistency and bidirectional integration. To learn more, see our REST API guide.

Thanks to public or private APIs, Dev teams optimize component reuse, avoid reverse-engineering, and can finely measure performance and usage via monitoring tools. Interface contracts encourage a collaborative workflow between integrators and business teams.

This use of APIs strengthens the business user experience by providing dynamic dashboards and instant updates without waiting for manual synchronization.

Middleware to Orchestrate a Heterogeneous Ecosystem

In a legacy or multi-vendor environment, middleware serves as an abstraction layer. It unifies protocols, transforms formats, and orchestrates business processes through configurable workflows. This solution reduces vendor lock-in and eases scaling with a modular architecture.

For example, a Swiss industrial group used middleware to connect multiple regional ERPs, MES modules, and a CRM. This centralized integration platform demonstrated that you can modernize a legacy system without replacing existing components, ensuring scalability and compliance with ISO standards. This example illustrates how middleware accelerates application landscape modernization without interrupting operations.

Decoupling systems also simplifies maintenance: updating one component does not directly impact the entire ecosystem.

Event-Driven Webhooks for an Event-Driven Ecosystem

Webhooks enable notifications to be triggered on every critical event (order creation, stock update, case closure). These asynchronous callbacks ensure lightweight, event-oriented communication without continuously polling APIs.

Event streams are particularly suitable for serverless or microservices architectures, where each service reacts in real time to notifications. This approach reduces latency and server footprint while maintaining a high level of functional consistency.

Teams can thus build automated workflows, such as instant invoice dispatch when a payment is confirmed, improving user experience and accelerating the financial cycle.

EDI for Secure, Standardized Exchanges

In regulated sectors (finance, healthcare, large-scale distribution), EDI remains the standard for exchanging structured documents according to international standards (EDIFACT, ANSI X12). It ensures traceability, non-repudiation, and encryption of sensitive information.

EDI connectivity integrates into the architecture via specialized adapters that automatically convert incoming and outgoing documents into formats that can be consumed by the ERP. This automation reduces format errors and ensures compliance with legal and industry requirements.

With EDI, trusted partners can confidently share invoices, purchase orders, or regulatory reports without resorting to manual processes or insecure emails.

Architecture Governance for Integration

Architecture governance and pitfalls to avoid to sustain integration. A clear strategy, defined standards, and living documentation ensure robustness.

Avoid Monoliths and Ensure Format Consistency

Accumulating features in a single system hinders scalability and complicates updates. A monolith quickly becomes a major point of failure and a bottleneck for the entire platform.

It is crucial to standardize data formats, use common schemas (JSON Schema, OpenAPI), and define naming conventions. Without these rules, each interface develops its own dictionary, leading to incompatibilities and exchange rejections.

A Swiss healthcare company had centralized all its workflows in a single application. The teams were unable to deploy a patch without interrupting the entire service, causing several hours of downtime. This case demonstrates the need to decouple modules and standardize formats from the start.

Single Ownership and Living Documentation

To ensure maintainability, each interface must have a clearly identified owner responsible for data governance and the evolution of the API contract or exchange schema.

Documentation should be automatically generated from code (Swagger, AsyncAPI) and updated with each release. A centralized developer portal allows teams to access specifications, payload examples, and migration guides.

This process ensures smooth adoption of new standards and minimizes surprises during integration redesigns or expansions.

Security, Compliance, and Automated Testing

System integration involves the exchange of sensitive data: strong authentication (OAuth 2.0, JWT), TLS encryption, and granular access control are essential. Every entry point must be validated and monitored.

Automated tests (contract testing, end-to-end) should verify that each update respects API contracts and introduces no regressions. CI/CD pipelines incorporate vulnerability scans, schema audits, and performance tests to secure deployment.

Compliance with standards (GDPR, ISO 27001) requires rigorous log and access tracking, as well as periodic reporting to demonstrate architecture robustness and exchange traceability.

Transform IT Integration into a Competitive Advantage

An integration strategy cannot be improvised: it relies on clear governance, standardized interfaces, and living documentation. By combining real-time APIs, middleware orchestrating legacy systems, event-driven webhooks, and EDI for regulated sectors, you build an ecosystem platform capable of supporting growth and compliance.

Our experts in modular architecture, data integration, and legacy modernization are at your disposal to assess your situation, define an integration roadmap, and ensure a fast, sustainable ROI.

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Within web applications, ensuring that only authorized users can access certain parts of your interface has become essential for both security and user experience. React Router, the standard routing library, does not natively include a mechanism to control route access based on authentication. Leveraging Guarded Routes allows you to combine state management, conditional redirection, and front-end best practices to separate your public and protected areas.

This article walks you through setting up your own Guarded Routes in React step by step, using real-world organizational examples to master rights separation and streamline navigation.

Understanding Guarded Routes in React

Guarded Routes are components that decide in real time whether a user can access a given route. They intercept navigation and redirect to a login page or a public area when an authentication condition is not met.

Concept and Benefits of Guarded Routes

At their core, Guarded Routes behave like standard React Router Route components but include a condition that evaluates the user’s authentication state. If the condition is true, the target component renders; otherwise, an alternative action is triggered (redirection or error message).

This technique prevents duplicating access-control logic in every sensitive component of your application. By centralizing verification, you simplify maintenance and reduce the risk of missing a protection check.

From a user experience standpoint, Guarded Routes guide unauthenticated users through a smooth login flow while preserving navigation context (requested page, URL parameters, etc.). This enhances coherence and satisfaction, as the transition between public and private spaces remains seamless.

Navigation Flow and Access Control

Access control occurs before rendering the target component. In practice, you wrap your Route with a function or component that checks the authentication state stored in a context or store.

If the user is authenticated, the Guarded Route returns the original component; otherwise, it issues a Redirect or uses React Router’s navigate() function to send the user to the login page (for more details, see our article on OAuth 2.0).

You can also add logic to remember the requested URL so that, after authentication, users are automatically redirected to their originally intended page. This step improves personalization and maintains a sense of navigational freedom.

Use Case Example: Public vs. Private Separation

A financial services firm built a client dashboard where certain reporting pages were reserved for internal staff. Before implementing Guarded Routes, simply tweaking the URL allowed unauthorized access to these reports. By creating a PrivateRoute component that checked for a valid token in React context, the firm successfully blocked unauthenticated access.

This setup not only strengthened information security but also simplified onboarding: new staff members were redirected directly to a password-reset page if they had never activated their accounts.

The example demonstrates that a modular Guarded Routes implementation ensures consistency across all workflows and drastically reduces the risk of sensitive data leaks.

Implementing Authentication State Management

To make your Guarded Routes effective, you need a reliable global state indicating whether the user is authenticated. Various state-management options allow you to share this information between your routing components and pages.

Choosing a State-Management Solution

Depending on your application’s size and complexity, you can opt for React’s built-in Context API or a dedicated library like Redux or Zustand. The Context API is easy to set up and sufficient for an authentication flow without complex business logic.

Redux provides a predictable model with actions, reducers, and middleware, which simplifies debugging and tracing authentication events (login, logout, token refresh).

Lighter solutions like Zustand offer a minimalistic approach: a central store without boilerplate, ideal for projects where every kilobyte and dependency matters, in line with an open-source, modular strategy.

Storing and Persisting the User Token

Once the user is authenticated, you must store their token in a secure manner.

If persistence across page refreshes is required, using HttpOnly cookies provides better XSS protection, while localStorage can be considered with encryption mechanisms and a limited lifespan.

Regardless of your choice, implement a server-side refresh token to minimize risks associated with long-lived tokens, and clear all traces of the token upon logout to prevent exploitation after sign-out.

Context API Configuration Example

An SME in the e-learning sector chose the Context API for its internal portal. On each login, the AuthProvider component stored the token in its state and exposed a useAuth() hook to Guarded Routes.

When the user logged out, the provider reset the state to null and automatically redirected to the public homepage. This simple approach was sufficient to serve tens of thousands of students without adding third-party dependencies.

The case highlights that a lightweight, centrally managed state documented by React Context enables easy maintenance without compromising the application’s scalability.

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Dynamic Redirection and Route Wrapping

Beyond basic protection, your Guarded Routes should handle navigation dynamically for a seamless experience. Wrapping Route components lets you inject this logic without code duplication.

Wrapping a Route Component

Wrapping involves creating a Higher-Order Component (HOC) or functional component that takes a Route element as input and adds access-control logic. The wrapper encapsulates verification, redirection, and conditional rendering.

This method avoids modifying every Route definition in your main routing configuration. You simply use PrivateRoute in place of Route for all protected pages.

This approach decouples routing logic from authentication implementation, aligning with a modular, maintainable front-end architecture that supports open-source evolution.

Generating Real-Time Redirections

When an unauthenticated user attempts to access a private route, the Guarded Route can record the initial URL using React Router’s useLocation() hook. After login, redirecting to this URL restores the navigation context.

You can also handle more advanced scenarios like fine-grained permissions: for example, directing a user to a “403 Forbidden” page if they lack the required role, or presenting an additional verification flow.

By using navigate() inside a useEffect, redirections do not block initial rendering and remain compatible with search engines and accessibility tools, as they rely on virtual navigation.

Error Scenarios and Fallbacks

It’s important to anticipate authentication-related errors: expired token, connectivity issues, or server-side validation failures. Your Guarded Route should then provide a clear fallback.

For instance, you might display a loading screen during token verification, then switch to an error page or reconnection modal if needed. This level of granularity enhances application robustness.

In a hybrid architecture (existing modules plus from-scratch components), this fallback ensures service continuity even if some back-end services are temporarily unavailable.

Front-End Security Best Practices for Your Routes

Protecting your routes on the client side is part of a defense-in-depth strategy but does not replace back-end controls. It reduces the attack surface and ensures cohesive, encrypted navigation.

Minimizing Attack Surface with Code Splitting

Code splitting with React.lazy and Suspense loads only the bundles needed for each route. By compartmentalizing your code, you limit exposure of unused modules and reduce load times.

Less exposed code means fewer vectors for XSS attacks or malicious tampering. Additionally, smaller bundles improve performance, notably page load speed, and enhance resilience during network issues (loading speed).

This approach aligns with a modular, hybrid architecture where each component remains autonomous and can evolve without compromising the entire application.

Client-Side and Server-Side Validation

Even though Guarded Routes block navigation, every API call tied to a protected route must be validated server-side. Always verify token presence and validity along with associated permissions.

On the client side, a validation schema (for example using Yup or Zod) ensures that submitted data meets business constraints before triggering network requests.

This dual validation strengthens reliability and defends against injection attacks or request forgery, aligning your front and back ends under a consistent security policy.

Unit and E2E Tests for Assurance

Unit tests verify that your Guarded Routes behave as expected under defined scenarios (authenticated, unauthenticated, expired token). Jest and React Testing Library allow you to simulate navigation and assert redirections.

End-to-end tests (Cypress, Playwright) ensure the user journey—from login to private page access—remains intact despite changes. They also catch regressions in your authentication flow.

By pairing automated tests with CI/CD pipelines, you reinforce application quality and security with each deployment, reducing the risk of undetected vulnerabilities.

Audit Example and Hardening

A healthcare organization discovered vulnerabilities in its intranet portal where certain endpoints remained accessible despite restricted routing. After a front-end audit, we implemented targeted e2e tests for each Guarded Route and enhanced validation logic before every render.

The result was a 95% reduction in unauthorized access incidents noted during an internal audit after production deployment. This case shows that a well-tested front-end layer effectively complements back-end controls.

Secure Your React Routes for a Reliable User Experience

We’ve covered the principles of Guarded Routes, setting up authentication state, wrapping and dynamic redirection techniques, and front-end security best practices. You now have a clear roadmap to partition your public and private areas while preserving smooth navigation.

Our team of experts is ready to help you implement these mechanisms, tailor the solution to your business context, and ensure a scalable, secure, modular architecture.

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In just a few years, Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) has earned its stripes and is now stable and production-ready. With 7 billion smartphones projected by 2025, companies are looking to cut mobile development costs and complexity without sacrificing native performance. KMP offers a hybrid solution: a shared Kotlin codebase for business logic compiled natively on Android and iOS, while preserving each platform’s own UI. In this article, we review the main benefits of Kotlin Multiplatform, illustrated by concrete use cases, to show how this technology can transform your mobile strategy.

Sharing Business Logic for Faster Development

Reusing a single Kotlin codebase eliminates redundancy and accelerates development cycles. Compilation to JVM and LLVM ensures uncompromised native execution.

Reusing Business Logic

Kotlin Multiplatform centralizes all business logic in a shared module, avoiding duplication of algorithms or data handling for each platform. This reuse yields functional consistency and fewer bugs caused by code divergence.

In practice, the same synchronization or validation service can be written once and deployed to both Android and iOS, significantly reducing maintenance overhead. Fixes are applied in a single place before being rolled out to all users.

This approach also simplifies unit testing. The same test suites written in Kotlin run on the JVM and within an LLVM environment for iOS, ensuring the business logic behaves identically everywhere.

Cross-Compilation to JVM and LLVM

The core of a Multiplatform project relies on two backends: the JVM for Android and LLVM (via Kotlin/Native) for iOS. Kotlin/Native generates native machine code, fully leveraging LLVM compilation optimizations for each targeted architecture.

Thanks to this cross-compilation, there’s no extra interpreter or virtual machine on iOS: the Kotlin code is directly embedded in the app alongside Swift components. Performance and integration with native frameworks remain optimal.

Project configuration is handled with Gradle, using dedicated plugins to manage shared sources and native targets. This user-friendly structure simplifies the setup of a single CI/CD pipeline, reducing orchestration effort and minimizing configuration errors.

Practical Example in Finance

An asset management company adopted Kotlin Multiplatform to unify its mobile financial reporting tools. Before introducing KMP, two separate teams maintained distinct implementations of the same performance calculations.

Switching to a shared module, the team cut the average implementation time of a new calculation rule by 40%. Presentation discrepancies between Android and iOS disappeared, ensuring a consistent user experience.

This case demonstrates that centralizing business logic not only enhances the final product’s quality but also improves code governance and accelerates time-to-market.

Preserving Native Interfaces for an Optimal User Experience

Kotlin Multiplatform offers the flexibility to leverage Compose UI on Android and SwiftUI on iOS. Teams retain full control over the native interface while sharing the same logic layer.

Compose Multiplatform for Android and Desktop

Compose Multiplatform extends Kotlin’s declarative UI library to multiple targets, including Android and desktop, building on Compose for Android and Compose for Desktop. This convergence enables interface component reuse while preserving customization freedom.

Developers can define adaptive visual components that automatically adjust to different screen sizes, all while sharing the same code. The declarative syntax of Compose accelerates iterations and strengthens visual consistency across the application.

Architecturally, these components seamlessly connect to KMP modules, ensuring the business logic drives the views uniformly, regardless of the execution environment.

SwiftUI for Native Rendering on iOS

On iOS, SwiftUI remains the preferred framework for building modern, responsive interfaces. KMP interacts with SwiftUI through Kotlin/Native code bindings, exposing shared functions as Swift libraries.

This allows iOS designers and engineers to work in a familiar environment, leveraging the latest SwiftUI features without constraint, while benefiting from consistent logic with Android.

Integration is seamless: variables and data structures defined in Kotlin/Native map to Swift types, minimizing manual conversions and reducing the risk of errors when calling shared APIs.

Optimizing Cross-Team Collaboration

The clear separation between the logic layer and the presentation layer encourages team specialization. Kotlin developers handle algorithms and API communication, while UI specialists focus on interactions and visual design.

This workflow minimizes merge conflicts and simplifies branch coordination. Each team contributes within a well-defined scope without stepping on each other’s toes.

A healthcare services provider tested this workflow by assigning one team to the shared API layer and two separate teams for Android and iOS. The result was faster update releases and a notable reduction in UI-related bug reports.

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A Mature Technology Adopted by Major Players

Kotlin Multiplatform benefits from JetBrains’ support and a vibrant open source ecosystem. Renowned references attest to its production robustness.

JetBrains Ecosystem and Support

JetBrains maintains the Kotlin compiler and provides Gradle and IntelliJ plugins dedicated to Multiplatform configuration. The language’s official support and frequent updates reassure about the project’s longevity.

Moreover, the open source community actively contributes to compatible third-party libraries, such as Ktor for networking or SQLDelight for persistence. This wealth of resources covers most technical needs without resorting to proprietary solutions.

Best practices and migration guides are regularly published by JetBrains and the community, easing adoption for teams new to the technology and ensuring a solid foundation for new projects.

Use Cases from Large Enterprises

Several international companies, including major streaming and finance players, have adopted Kotlin Multiplatform. They report significant reductions in maintenance efforts and more consistent functionality across platforms.

These organizations also highlight how easily they integrated new features thanks to KMP’s modularity and the decoupling of logic and interface.

The general feedback is unanimous: delivering a fully native end-to-end experience while benefiting from shared code efficiency boosts competitiveness against fully cross-platform frameworks.

Example from a Public Organization

A cantonal administration deployed a citizen consultation app for Android and iOS, leveraging Kotlin Multiplatform for data analysis and authentication. Previously, two external teams had developed separate versions, causing operational overhead and security inconsistencies.

By migrating to KMP, the administration consolidated authentication and encryption processes in a single core, enhancing compliance with GDPR-like regulations while reducing technical discrepancies.

This project shows that a public entity can improve responsiveness and control IT expenditure with a hybrid approach, without compromising the native experience for end users.

Pragmatic Migration Strategies and Scalability

Kotlin Multiplatform integrates gradually with existing architectures, minimizing risk. Coexistence with native code enables a measured scalability path.

Incremental Approach on Existing Projects

To avoid blocking ongoing deadlines, it’s possible to migrate one module at a time to KMP. Teams often start with the networking layer or data model management, then progressively extend the migration to other functional domains.

This incremental strategy delivers quick ROI since the first shared modules immediately benefit both platforms without waiting for a full rewrite.

The Agile methodology fits perfectly with this approach: each sprint can include one or two migration tasks, validated via advanced Agile methods and non-regression tests on each target.

Coexistence with Native Code

KMP does not eliminate the need for existing Java, Kotlin, or Swift code. On the contrary, it coexists within the same project through Gradle modules for Android and Swift packages for iOS.

Teams can continue using their proven libraries and frameworks while adding features developed in Kotlin Multiplatform. This mix ensures product stability and offers a gradual learning curve.

Once KMP skills are mastered, it’s easier to decide whether to extend this technology to other parts of the application without global architectural constraints.

Illustration in the Manufacturing Industry

An industrial group started by migrating its data synchronization module between the factory and its mobile monitoring app. This critical feature was developed in KMP and deployed to Android and iOS within a single sprint.

The migration reduced mobile engineers’ workload on synchronization by half, freeing resources to enhance real-time performance analysis features.

This proof-of-concept paved the way for gradually extending KMP to other modules, demonstrating rapid skill acquisition and tangible improvements in development timelines.

Kotlin Multiplatform: Toward a Unified, High-Performance Mobile Strategy

Kotlin Multiplatform enables sharing business logic between Android and iOS while maintaining native performance through LLVM and JVM compilation. Its open source ecosystem and JetBrains support ensure stability and rapid skill adoption.

Real-world examples show that an incremental migration, combined with modular architecture, improves time-to-market and reduces maintenance costs without sacrificing Compose UI or SwiftUI interfaces.

Our Edana experts support organizations in pragmatically implementing Kotlin Multiplatform, from auditing existing architectures to integrating shared modules, to build an agile and sustainable digital strategy.

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In an environment where over 70% of application vulnerabilities stem from memory bugs in C/C++, organizations are seeking a shift to secure their systems at the source. Introduced in 2015, Rust relies on a memory ownership model and strict typing that prevent vulnerable code from compiling. By eliminating the most frequent errors before runtime, it promises to significantly reduce associated risks and post-release patch costs.

This article details how Rust is establishing itself in critical sectors such as aerospace, healthcare, and automotive, and why its ecosystem is maturing into a strategic choice for cybersecurity and performance.

Security by Design with Rust

Rust enforces memory management rules at compile time to prevent critical errors. It provides strict typing that requires resolving access conflicts before code can even be executed.

The Memory Ownership Model

Rust’s ownership mechanism ensures that data is owned by only one variable at a time, eliminating risks of double free or memory leaks. This principle is based on a clearly defined borrowing and lifetime system.

Thanks to this approach, the compiler verifies that no variable remains referenced after being freed and that no unprotected concurrent access is possible. C/C++ code often needs external tools to detect such vulnerabilities. Discover our article on quality assurance and fundamental tests for ensuring software quality.

By enforcing these rules at compilation, Rust allows developers to focus on business logic without fearing errors related to manual memory management—a major advantage for the reliability of critical applications.

Strict Typing Control

Each variable and function is assigned an immutable type by default, which prevents dangerous implicit conversions. Developers must explicitly state their intent, enhancing code clarity and maintainability.

Rust’s static typing catches type mismatches between structures and functions at compile time, avoiding crashes and unexpected behavior in production.

By combining immutability and strict typing, Rust reduces attack surfaces, notably against vulnerabilities like overflows, underflows, or out-of-bounds access, typical in C/C++ environments.

Eliminating Vulnerabilities at Compile Time

Rust refuses to compile any code that could lead to illegal memory access or race conditions. Developers are therefore compelled to address these critical points before producing a binary.

This approach transforms the way software security is approached by fostering rigor from the very first line of code.

Adoption of Rust in Critical Sectors

Rust is gaining ground in aerospace, healthcare, and automotive industries for its security and performance guarantees. Pilot projects are already demonstrating its added value in zero-failure environments.

Manufacturing Industry

Development teams have integrated Rust into the low-level layer of an onboard navigation system. Simulations showed a 30% reduction in error detection time during simulated flights.

Financial Sector

An algorithmic trading solutions provider migrated a calculation module to Rust. Memory leak alerts dropped from several dozen per month to zero.

Healthcare and Medical Devices

A medical device manufacturer rewrote its network communication module in Rust. Network stress tests confirmed the absence of memory crashes under overload scenarios.

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Optimized Maintenance and Equivalent Performance

Rust significantly reduces post-release patches with its early vulnerability detection. Its compiled binaries are compact and deliver performance on par with C/C++.

Reduction in Post-Release Bug Rates

The ownership model and lack of a garbage collector prevent memory leaks and unexpected latency. Teams report fewer critical incidents in production.

Internal feedback shows a significant drop in memory leak alerts. For more, consult our long-term software maintenance guide.

Simplified Validation Cycles

Testing phases benefit from a more predictable and readable codebase. Testers can focus on business logic instead of random behaviors. Discover our article on test-driven development to deliver faster and better.

Near C/C++ Performance

Rust compiles to optimized machine code and incorporates zero-cost abstractions that do not impact performance. Benchmarks show latency comparable to C++.

An industrial equipment manufacturer developed a prototype system in Rust. The demonstrator achieved performance comparable to existing code while eliminating segmentation faults.

This equivalence allows critical modules to be gradually migrated to Rust without compromising performance SLAs.

Current Limitations and Future Outlook for Rust

Rust faces a shortage of experts and a certification process still maturing for certain regulated sectors. Its adoption should be evaluated against ROI based on use context.

Talent Shortage and Skill Development

The pool of Rust developers remains smaller than those for C++ or Java. IT departments must invest in internal training or recruit rare profiles.

However, the active community offers numerous open resources and online courses that accelerate skill acquisition.

Companies that anticipate this learning curve gain a competitive edge by securing their projects from the outset.

Certification in Regulated Environments

For sectors subject to standards like ISO 26262 or DO-178C, Rust’s certification framework is still under development. Certified static analysis tools and libraries are gradually emerging.

Regulatory authorities are beginning to evaluate Rust, but comprehensive compliance records remain scarce.

Collaboration with compliance experts is essential to integrate Rust into a safe and regulation-compliant certification cycle.

ROI and Contextual Choices

Return on investment depends on project profile and requirements for latency, memory, and security. In some cases, a less restrictive language may suffice if critical resources are limited.

The decision to adopt Rust must consider training effort, tool maturity, and system criticality level.

A contextual analysis determines whether Rust delivers sustainable maintenance savings or adds undue complexity.

Rust, a Turning Point for Safer and Sustainable Systems

Rust offers software security by design, eliminating memory errors at compile time, and ensures performance equivalent to C/C++. Its guarantees lower maintenance costs and simplify validation cycles while meeting critical sector demands.

Despite a still-growing community, an evolving certification process, and a learning curve, Rust emerges as a strategic evolution for building reliable and long-lasting applications.

Whether you plan to migrate critical modules or secure your new developments early on, our Edana experts are ready to assess your context and define the best approach.

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