From WordPress to a static site: how we moved this blog to Astro
This blog used to run on WordPress on a hand-built EC2 instance and an outdated MySQL database. It is now a static site built with Astro. Here is why we moved, what we found in the old blog, and how we made sure no content got lost.
Evolving Our Tech Landscape – ottonova Tech Radar Q3 2025 Update
At ottonova, we continuously evaluate our technology stack to ensure we’re using the best tools to deliver exceptional digital health experiences. Our quarterly Tech Radar update reflects our commitment to technological excellence and innovation. Here’s a summary of the key changes coming via our Q3 2025 Tech Radar update. Infrastructure Evolution Backstage has gained prominence…
How We Transformed Our Daily Meetings for the Better
Transform your meetings with ‘Walking the Board’ inspired by ‘Development That Pays.’ Discover how we made stand-ups more collaborative, efficient and focused on team success. Explore actionable insights to revitalize your daily meetings and enhance teamwork.
Migrating from Self-Managed RabbitMQ to Cloud-Native AWS Amazon MQ: A Technical Odyssey
In the ever-evolving world of cloud-native solutions, it can be a daunting task to maintain message brokers. For a while, our team was responsible for a self-managed RabbitMQ instance. While this worked well initially, we encountered challenges in terms of maintenance, version updates, and data recovery. This led us to explore Amazon MQ, a fully…
Introducing the ottonova Tech Radar
We always promoted openness when it came to our tech stack. The ottonova Tech Radar is the next step in that direction. What is the Tech Radar? The ottonova Tech Radar is a list of technologies. It’s defined by an assessment outcome, called ring assignment and has four rings with the following definitions: ADOPT – Technologies we…
4 rules for building successful cross-functional teams
ottonova has a long history of using cross-functional teams for Software Engineering. Very early on we tried to establish them to become more productive and product centred. It took us a few tries to get it right and oh boy, did we make a lot of mistakes along the way. I would like to share…
Recruiting Backend Engineers at ottonova
Here are some words about how the Backend Team goes about finding new team members. We want to do our part and share with the Community, as well as provide a bit more transparency into ottonova and how we are building state-of-the-art software that powers Germany’s first digital health insurance. This article covers what we…
CTF Writeup: Capture the TI-eRx
A few days back, the gematik – the organisation responsible for the secure network infrastructure (called telematic infrastructure or TI) of health actors – held their first CTF. The background of the CTF was the e-prescription which publicly insured people in Germany may now use to get their medicine without the need for a prescription…
How and why we updated RabbitMQ queues on production
In this article, I would like to share with you and the whole internet our experience of dealing with RabbitMQ Live updates. You will learn some details about our architecture and use cases. Let’s start from the simplest… Why do we need RabbitMQ in our business? Our Architecture As a health insurance company, our business…
Continuing our Hackathon tradition
At ottonova, we have taken the challenge of bringing a slowly moving and mostly antiquated business, the one of health insurance in Germany, into the 21st century. For over three years already we’ve been offering our customers not only competitive insurance tariffs, but also the digital products that go along with them. All this to…
