Integration Architecture

Integration Architecture is a major part of every company's IT landscape, that simplifies the integration of numerous IT components and enables you to trace data flows between applications. Architecture changes with the advances in cross-platform utility and other development paradigms for new kinds of digital operations.

In some senses, integration is about "breaking down silos" and helping different software programs to communicate. Embedding an application in a greater context can require specialized tools, such as application programming interfaces (APIs), made specifically for the purpose of allowing this kind of integration.

There are several well documented patterns for integration, however which one needs or should be used will depend on what your needs are and on your maturity of existing integrations.

Given the significance and complexity of Integration, a well-disciplined, experienced, value-driven integration architecture is crucial. Integration architecture provides the blueprint for integration solution from enterprise, solution, and design perspective to guide and govern the design and development.

Integration architecture is essential so that:

Systems can become de-coupled from each other
There is a way to allow for interoperability between systems
Complexity of the overall system is reduced
Productivity is increased when adding new features to an overall solution.

What are some of the technologies that we use?

We utilize a number of cloud based technologies to help us do this including:

Azure Logic Apps for a low code approach to integration with high visibility allowing for workflows to to be created to connect hundreds of services in the cloud and on premsis
Azure Function Apps for simplification of complex orchestration problems with event driven compute or for API access to the data
Azure API Management for securely publishing to both internal and external developers when connecting to back end systems
Azure Service Bus for highly secure messaging workflows
Azure Event Grids for simplification of event based application development
Fivetran for simplification of data extraction and data loading of data
Snowflake for data integration and exchange

Data Engineers have a strong background in designing, developing and maintaining integration solutions to help reduce the complexity between systems and to ensure that data ends up where it needs to be, data payloads are changed from "system centric" to "business centric", integrated and severed from the appropriate place.