Customer Situation

A large media company was facing verytraditional enterprise integration challenges. The company had significantamounts of data, but access across the company was inconsistent. Data wasspread out and housed within new cloud-based solutions and older legacyapplications. 

The existing solution was a file-based ERPrelated function that was brittle, slow, expensive to scale, and not reusable.The complexity of the ineffective solution resulted in individual businessunits implementing their own integration processes and resulting in a datawarehouse becoming a high-traffic resource. 

In contrast to the existing situation, thecustomer wanted a future-proof integration solution that could scale quicklyand easily. Also, the solution needed to allow and support IT governance overone-off, shadow IT solutions. Focused on an event-driven design, the systemneeded to promote re-use in a pub-sub model, democratizing data availability byallowing business units ad-hoc discovery of objects via an API.

Solution Approach

Big Compass worked side-by-side with theclient to develop a design for an Enterprise Data Hub (EDH). The EDH wouldoffer a centralized, unified data source where diverse business units couldrapidly access the data needed for their specific functions. Through multiplephases, Big Compass provided an ESB architecture design, an API strategy, andinitial use cases. 

The ESB design included analysis and documentationfor the creation of a webMethods environment, including server infrastructure,networking dependencies, and software configuration requirements. 

The API strategy focused on the integrationwith existing API taxonomy and services. 

Additionally, Big Compass helped the clientwith documented coding standards and best practices so the client’s support anddevelopment teams could own the applications and processes after theengagement.

Results

Once completed, the client had an EnterpriseData Hub design that met the needs of reusability and scalability whilepromoting data transparency to the broader organization. The “shovel-ready”design not only enabled increased and continued IT governance but reduced ITinvolvement and lowered costs.