Maintaining technological currency is one of the primary goals for eComp. Staying current with the latest frameworks and tooling ensures the platform remains secure, performant, and positioned to take advantage of new capabilities as they become available. This release brings three significant updates: a full upgrade to Visual Studio 2026 and .NET 10, a migration of backend processing to Minimal APIs, and a new deployment option using Azure Container Apps.
Visual Studio 2026 and .NET 10
eComp has been upgraded to Visual Studio 2026 targeting .NET 10. This is a Long Term Support (LTS) release from Microsoft, which means it will receive security patches and stability updates for three years. Building on an LTS release provides a stable foundation for production deployments while giving the team confidence that the underlying framework will be actively maintained and supported throughout its lifecycle.
.NET 10 delivers meaningful improvements across the board. Performance enhancements in the runtime, garbage collector, and JIT compiler translate directly into faster request processing and lower memory consumption for eComp's microservices. The updated libraries bring improved support for cloud-native patterns including better OpenTelemetry integration for observability, enhanced container support, and refinements to the dependency injection and configuration systems that eComp relies on throughout its architecture.
From a development perspective, the move to Visual Studio 2026 improves the day-to-day experience for the team with better tooling for diagnostics, profiling, and container-based debugging. These upgrades reduce friction during development and make it easier to identify and resolve issues before they reach production.
Minimal APIs for Backend Processing
The backend processing layer has been migrated from the traditional controller-based approach to Minimal APIs. This is a shift in how eComp's API endpoints are defined and executed, moving from the convention-heavy MVC controller pattern to a streamlined, code-first model that reduces ceremony and improves throughput.
Minimal APIs eliminate much of the middleware pipeline overhead that comes with the full MVC framework. For eComp's microservices, which handle high volumes of compensation transactions, this translates into measurable performance gains. Each API endpoint is defined with less boilerplate, the request pipeline is leaner, and the reduced abstraction layers mean fewer allocations per request. In a system processing millions of transactions, those per-request savings compound into significant overall improvements.
Beyond raw performance, Minimal APIs offer greater flexibility in how endpoints are structured. The microservices can define their routes and handlers in a more explicit and readable manner, making the codebase easier to navigate and maintain. The pattern aligns well with eComp's existing architecture where each microservice has a focused responsibility and a small surface area of endpoints. Minimal APIs complement that design by keeping the endpoint definitions concise and co-located with the logic they serve.
The migration was also an opportunity to review and consolidate endpoint patterns across the microservices, ensuring consistency in how requests are validated, how errors are returned, and how responses are structured. The result is a backend layer that is faster, more uniform, and easier to extend as new services are added.
Azure Container Apps - A New Deployment Option
eComp has traditionally been deployed on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), which provides the full power and flexibility of Kubernetes orchestration for containerized workloads. AKS remains the recommended deployment option for production environments handling high transaction volumes, where fine-grained control over scaling, networking, and resource allocation is essential.
This release introduces Azure Container Apps as an additional deployment target. Azure Container Apps is a serverless hosting service for containerized applications and microservices. It abstracts away the underlying infrastructure management, allowing containers to be deployed and scaled without the operational overhead of managing a Kubernetes cluster directly.
The Container Apps option is particularly well-suited for testing environments, development workflows, and lower-volume deployments where cost efficiency is a priority. Without the need to provision and maintain dedicated node pools, the hosting costs are significantly reduced for environments that do not require sustained high throughput. Scaling is handled automatically based on demand, and when there is no traffic, resources scale to zero, meaning you only pay for what you use.
For organizations evaluating eComp or running pilot programs, Azure Container Apps provides a lower barrier to entry. A fully functional eComp environment can be stood up quickly without the Kubernetes expertise typically required for AKS configuration. This makes it practical to spin up isolated environments for testing, demonstrations, or training purposes without incurring the infrastructure costs of a full AKS deployment.
It is worth noting that full-scale volume testing will need to be completed to understand how Azure Container Apps behaves under production-level transaction loads. The serverless scaling model introduces different characteristics than the dedicated compute nodes in AKS, and thorough benchmarking will determine whether Container Apps can serve as a viable production alternative for high-volume environments or whether it is best positioned as a complement to AKS for lighter workloads.
Looking Ahead
These updates reflect eComp's ongoing commitment to staying current with the platforms and services it depends on. A modern framework foundation ensures the application can continue to evolve, adopt new capabilities as they mature, and provide the performance and reliability that insurance compensation operations demand. Future updates will continue this pattern of incremental modernization, keeping eComp aligned with the direction of the .NET ecosystem and Azure cloud services.
By Steve McCrea · March 7, 2026