From Aurora to Ruby: Lessons Learned in Frontend Modernization

From Legacy to Modern Commerce

Aurora has served as the foundation of many HCL Commerce implementations for years. It provided a stable and consistent experience, but as digital channels evolved, its limitations became increasingly visible. Businesses today require rapid iteration, healthy Google web vitals, headless integration, and flexible user experiences.

The shift toward modern frameworks like Ruby is not merely a technical upgrade. It’s a strategic step toward agility, maintainability, and introduces a new collaboration between frontend and backend teams.

Why Modernization Matters

Aging storefronts often become a bottleneck for innovation. Marketing teams want faster updates, UX designers push for experimentation, and developers are stuck managing legacy JSP templates and merge conflicts.

Modernization solves these issues at the root:

• Component-driven architecture: Ruby introduces a modular approach that’s easier to maintain and scale.

• Alignment with HCL Commerce 9.1: The platform’s microservice-based backend aligns naturally with a modern, containerized frontend.

• Cleaner separation of concerns: Frontend developers can focus on presentation, while backend teams handle business logic independently.

The outcome? Faster time-to-market, improved stability, and a foundation ready for headless or composable transitions in the future.

Lessons from the Field

Modernization projects are rarely just “lift and shift.” Over multiple migrations, a few consistent lessons have emerged:

1. Keep functional parity before redesigning

Rebuilding the entire user interface in one go may sound tempting, but it’s often a trap. Start with parity — making sure everything the customer can do in Aurora works equally well in Ruby. Once that baseline is stable, incremental improvements can follow safely.

2. Cache smartly, not excessively

Ruby offers better control over caching layers. The key is to cache the right fragments and/or api’s behind these: pricing, stock, or recommendations may require real-time updates, while category structures or product tiles can often be cached longer.

3. Reuse what adds value

Modernization doesn’t mean discarding everything. Integrations like search, or personalization engines can often remain in place with minimal refactoring. The focus should be on replacing what slows down the business — not everything that’s simply “old.” For example the modernized built-in CMS of HCL commerce (page composer) works perfectly well with the Ruby headless frontend.

Results in Practice

A well-executed migration to Ruby yields both visible and behind-the-scenes benefits:

• Faster release cycles — CI/CD pipelines can deploy the storefront independently from backend updates.

• Simplified upgrades — no more merge-heavy theme maintenance.

• Optimized collaboration — frontend and backend teams work in parallel, each using their preferred frameworks.

• Performance gains — Ruby’s lightweight component structure, when combined with caching and CDN optimization, significantly reduces load times.

Most importantly, teams gain confidence in evolving their storefront without fear of regression or instability.

Conclusion

Frontend modernization isn’t about technology alone. It’s about creating an environment where teams can move faster, deploy safely, and respond to business needs with less friction.

If your storefront still relies on Aurora, the question isn’t if modernization will happen — but when and how.

Curious what modernization could mean for your storefront? Let’s explore the right approach for your platform.