October 2026

Behind the scenes at Witco: how and why we rebuilt our back end For several months, our teams have been working on a project you haven't seen on screen, and that is exactly the sign it was done well. Witco has completely rebuilt its back end, the technical foundation the entire platform runs on. This kind of work is invisible by nature: no new feature, no visual redesign. Yet it is one of the most significant milestones in our product history. The project took up a large share of our engineering capacity. Over the past few months, it may have slowed our delivery pace and some of the more visible updates. We made that choice on purpose, because it was necessary. You'll feel the benefits over the long term: a more reliable platform, and faster delivery of the improvements that matter to you. What exactly is the back end? On a platform like Witco, the visible part is what your teams use every day: the app, the screens, the features. The back end works behind the scenes. As the platform's invisible conductor, it handles every interaction with the data behind the platform and the mobile apps: storage, security, connections and service orchestration. That makes it a critical component, because it is where the platform's most important challenges come together: Data security: the back end is the nerve center that must be protected to keep the information you trust us with confidential. Reliability: it ensures data integrity and makes sure that every booking and every piece of occupancy data is always accurate, consistent and never lost. Availability and service continuity: when traffic spikes, it absorbs the load without faltering. Interoperability: the back end orchestrates the hundreds of integrations that connect Witco to IoT devices and the tools you use every day. Ability to move fast: a modern foundation lets us ship new features quickly without weakening what already exists. Why this migration, and why now? Witco turns ten this year. The platform now supports 550 client organizations in 40 countries, some with as many as 50,000 users. Our ecosystem has also grown significantly, with more than 150 integrations with IoT devices and third-party platforms. This success has a direct consequence: the architecture designed ten years ago, well suited to how the platform was used back then, was gradually reaching its limits. Volumes have grown by orders of magnitude, use cases have diversified, and technology has moved on. Requirements for robustness, availability and security have also risen sharply, in line with the standards of our ISO 27001 certification. Continuing to extend a foundation built for a different context eventually produces effects familiar to any SaaS product: changes that cost more to ship, longer testing cycles, and more caution around every major change. Rebuilding that foundation was the only way to move faster and with more confidence. It also sets us up for what's coming next, starting with the expansion of our AI features, which need new entry points and a redesigned data flow. How we ran the project Rebuilding a back end without interrupting service is a bit like changing an airplane's engine mid-flight. You have to build an entirely new technical foundation (modern, tested and secure) while keeping service running for hundreds of organizations with very different setups. The project ran for eighteen months alongside our regular product work. We took a deliberately gradual, structured approach: design, development, testing and hardening, with constant attention to quality and to switching over without disruption. The same principle guided our testing, a phase that was essential to de-risk a migration of this scale. Our QA team ran two months of tests. They started on a development environment, to iterate and adjust quickly, then moved to a pre-production environment with infrastructure identical to production, to validate everything end to end. Next, we put the new foundation through its paces on our demo platform, hosted on our production infrastructure. Finally, after deployment, our teams stayed on call all weekend to test client platforms. The production deployment (the "Go Live") took place on June 13, a weekend chosen to minimize any impact on your usage. The real load test came on Monday morning, when all Witco users logged in. Even with thorough preparation, that is the moment when API latency and performance truly get measured. The few adjustments needed were handled quickly (enhanced monitoring, capacity tuning), and all platforms were fully operational before the end of the morning. What's next? To make this transition as safe as possible, the old and new back ends are running side by side for now. Existing integrations stay connected to the legacy foundation until they are gradually migrated. The platform's modules, such as our booking system, will also be migrated gradually, bringing a modernized user experience along the way. We can't wait to share the new user journeys we're working on with you very soon. If you have any questions, your dedicated CSM is here to help. FAQ Is the migration complete for all clients? Yes, the back-end migration is now complete. We remain in a period of enhanced monitoring to confirm long-term stability and quickly catch any side effects. What does this migration change for our users day to day? The main change is "under the hood": a sturdier, more reliable platform that lets us ship improvements faster and handle heavier loads better. Day to day, the experience stays the same, with less risk of instability during peak usage. Do administrators or users need to take any action? No, in most cases no action is required. If your organization needs to take a specific action (for example, on authentication), your Witco team will contact you directly. I've noticed unusual behavior since the migration. What should I do first? First, check whether the issue can be reproduced (on web and/or mobile), then try the basics: restart the app, log out and log back in. If the problem persists, contact support or your CSM and include: your platform URL, your device type, the app version, the approximate time of the issue and, if possible, a screenshot. The mobile app doesn't seem to be up to date (especially on iOS). What should I do? On some iOS devices, updates may not install automatically. If that happens, open the App Store, search for "Witco" and update the app manually. If the issue persists after updating, contact support. Are our integrations (SSO, access control, third-party tools, etc.) affected? The migration was designed to minimize the impact on your usage. That said, some integrations may be monitored and adjusted gradually. If you notice abnormal behavior on a specific integration, report it to support or your CSM, naming the integration and describing the context.