Companies are increasingly using specialized services that provide them with useful data or necessary process enhancements. Each of these services must be integrated into the company’s IT architecture in order to derive maximum benefit from the service provided.
The result: complex system architectures that do not provide the desired options in the core areas such as maintainability, flexibility, transparency and cost. With powerdata’s Integration Layer, companies have the answer to the problems in these core areas.
Challenge 1: Maintainability
Each system has its own data scheme, uses its own communication models and names. Especially in support and service, this causes headaches because there is no common thread running through the process. With the Integration Layer, the areas can be clearly separated and the customer’s processes can rely on standardized data models and names.
Challenge 2: Flexibility
Individual implementations do allow for a solution that is precisely tailored to the processes. However, as soon as another solution needs to be added or the system has to be replaced, all solutions often have to be rethought from start to finish. With the Integration Layer, one system can be replaced by another at any time and the only adjustment required is a review of the mapping of the data.
Challenge 3: Transparency
If connected systems do not have a unified data model, it is usually difficult to establish clean monitoring for the entire process chain. The Integration Layer provides support by transforming all process-relevant data to a uniform model. This enables end-to-end monitoring for all processes running via the Integration Layer.
Challenge 4: Cost
However, not everyone has in-house IT expertise, the budget, or the need for a corporate solution. The Integration Layer offers a cost-effective alternative that focuses on the most important areas of integration and, in addition to its price, convinces with its uncomplicated setup.
Simplifying the interaction of systems
With the Integration Layer product, Powerdata has set itself the goal of simplifying system integrations so that they are easily available to everyone. The Integration Layer is designed in a lean architecture that keeps complexity to a minimum. This allows customers to selectively choose the components they need without having to compromise on the performance of the integration.
To achieve this, powerdata’s Integration Layer focuses on three core competencies: standardization, configuration and scalability.
Expertise 1: Standardization
The Integration Layer uses our self-developed framework as basis, which reuses approved solutions and minimizes “custom code”. In addition, the Integration Layer offers out-of-the-box monitoring and logging, which works reliably across multiple integrations. The testing effort is minimized because the framework uses standard components that continuously prove their reliability in productive use.
There is also a transformation layer. This allows the validation and transformation of all data to ensure compatibility between systems. Whether formats need to be changed, data has to be enriched or sensitive customer data must be removed, all this and more can be easily mapped via the transformation layer. To ensure that all your connected systems are integrated easily, we use a unified powerdata data model. This allows us to create simple mappings to any third-party system (e.g. ERP, Salesforce, Frontend, etc…) and establish secure communication in the shortest time possible.
Another aspect that should not be underestimated: The more standardized the interface, the easier it is to update and change the system landscape in the future. This means that costs can be saved both in the short term and in the long term.
Expertise 2: Configuration
Standardization results in another advantage. A solution based on standardized components is so easy to configure that we can leave most of this to our customers themselves!
The integration layer is complemented by an interface that allows customers to make changes themselves. Whether this is a change in mapping, a transformation of data or even a completely new API endpoint: This enables customers to react to changes independently and without waiting times in a quick and uncomplicated manner. Of course, complex scenarios can arise here as well. Of course, we won’t leave you out in the cold in such cases and will provide support and advice wherever requested and necessary. Our goal is to help you reduce your change request budgets as much as possible. Along the way, we are at your side and help you to fully benefit from the potential of the Integration Layer.
Expertise 3: Scalability
We sincerely wish our customers the greatest success. To ensure that we do not become a bottleneck in this process, the Integration Layer is completely “serverless” and can scale along with our customers.
Our customers only pay for the workload that is actually generated. If a resource is not needed and is not running, no costs are charged. This reduces the entry barrier, which is often a problem with this type of solution, and the integration platform can grow together with your company or be integrated iteratively into the landscape.
To ensure that no transparency is lost with all the flexibility and that costs can be monitored, we plan a dashboard that shows the customer current and forecasted costs. This allows costs to be compared against budgets and to react at an early stage if the success should exceed the planned resources.
