Integration architecture
Pattern selection across API, event, file and batch, with the trade-offs and delivery guarantees stated explicitly.
Service 06
Systems Integration & Data Engineering
Integration designed as a system, with contracts, idempotency and reconciliation, so the data arriving downstream can actually be relied on.
Overview
Boring, by design.
Integrations are usually built in a hurry and inherited forever. Designed properly, they become the most boring part of the estate. That is the goal.
Solvidian designs and builds the integration layer between systems: the interfaces, the transformation logic, the delivery guarantees and the reconciliation that proves both sides agree.
We treat every interface as a contract with a defined schema, versioning policy and failure behaviour. Point-to-point connections built ad hoc are what turn an estate into something nobody dares change; a documented integration layer is what keeps it modifiable.
Scope
What's included
Scope is agreed in writing before an engagement starts. These are the components we most often build it from.
API design & governance
Resource modelling, versioning policy, error semantics, authentication and the standards that keep interfaces consistent.
Event & messaging design
Topic and schema design, ordering and idempotency guarantees, dead-letter handling and replay strategy.
Data pipelines
Ingestion, transformation and load design with lineage, schema evolution and data-quality checks built in from the start.
Reconciliation & observability
Controls that prove source and target agree, plus the metrics, traces and alerts that make failures visible immediately.
Legacy interface modernisation
Replacing brittle file drops and direct database reads with documented, monitored, versioned interfaces.
Deliverables
What you receive.
Tangible artefacts you own outright, in editable formats, with no dependency on us to read or maintain them.
- Integration architecture and pattern catalogue
- Interface catalogue with schemas and contracts
- API specifications and versioning policy
- Data pipeline designs with lineage documentation
- Reconciliation controls and monitoring design
- Migration plan from legacy interfaces
Approach
How we run it.
Four stages, with a decision point at the end of each. You can stop after any of them.
01
Map
Every existing interface catalogued: what moves, how often, who owns it and what breaks when it stops.
02
Contract
Schemas, delivery guarantees and error semantics agreed between the owning teams and written down.
03
Build
Interfaces implemented against the contract, with idempotency and replay proven in test before release.
04
Prove
Reconciliation and monitoring in place so agreement between systems is demonstrated continuously, not assumed.
What changes
What you should expect to be true afterwards.
If these are not true at handover, the engagement has not finished.
- A catalogue of interfaces with named owners
- Failures that surface in minutes instead of at month-end
- Systems that can be replaced without unpicking the estate
- Downstream data that reconciles to source on demand
Questions
Common questions
Often not. For a modest number of interfaces, well-designed direct integrations with proper contracts and monitoring are simpler and cheaper to run than a platform nobody has time to administer. We size the solution to the estate.
Yes. That is a large part of this work: wrapping file drops, database reads and fixed-format exports in a documented, monitored interface so the systems around them can be modernised independently.
Related
Other service lines
IT Strategy & Consulting
Independent advice on where your technology should go next, plus a costed, sequenced plan for getting there.
Network Design & Consultancy
Network architecture, segmentation and performance engineering: designed on paper, validated in test, documented for the people who run it.
Systems & Communications Software Design
Design of software that runs on and around computer systems and communication equipment: device interfaces, control planes and the platforms that manage them.
Next step
Bring us the symptom. We will help you name the problem.
A short scoping call costs nothing and usually saves a great deal of specification work later.
At a glance
What a first conversation covers
- What is actually happening, in your words
- Which discipline the problem belongs to
- Whether we are the right firm for it
- Rough shape, effort and sequence if we are
Free, no obligation. Reply within one business day.