Electronic Commerce Infrastructure Refactoring

Post date: Oct 29, 2012 4:10:44 PM

Ok, so what does this mouth full mean? Refactoring is a fairly common idea from Software Engineering. It involves clearing up the code for an applications without changing the functionality. In the case of a network or E-commerce infrastructure this restructuring is done to improve network attributes such as availability, mean time to repair, and operational complexity. These are the same attributes that refactoring is meant to improve in software or applications.

This type of infrastructure refactoring as a necessary maintence process and helps combat the inevitable increase in complexity of networks. It also provides an oppurtunity to incorporate lessons learned from the operations of the network.

In most cases the ROI for a refactoring effort will come from operational and implementation efficiencies not from new projects or functionalities. However in some cases networks will become so "fragile" over time that without a refactoring they will not be able to support new applications or have the scope or speed of the network increased.