«Enterprise Resource Planning – ERP» are platforms that are essential nowadays and SAP is probably the most known and widely used of them.
Such systems not only have to be well integrated into your own IT landscape, but often also have dependencies on external partner companies and their systems, which is why a distinction is made between
Internal Interfaces
Employees, departments, business areas, etc.
External Interfaces
Partner companies, suppliers, customers, etc.
Interface type problems
In our experience, both interface types actually face the same issues:
MIDDLEWARE VARIANTS
Since not all peripheral systems are state-of-the-art, diverse types of middleware (message queuing, Kafka, OData, REST, web services, SOAP and many more) have to be bridged and securely integrated in the company's internal IT landscape.
SECURITY
Linking in third-party systems implies a high level of security, which renders the integration of external interfaces and other critical elements a none too easy task.
DIVERSE DATA FORMATS
Data can be transmitted in a wide variety of formats such as XML, JSON, YAML, CSV, RDF, etc. up to binary or proprietary structures. These formats often have to be converted (e.g. from XML to JSON) and incorporated in extensive ERP systems based on the «Extract-Transform-Load – ETL» principle.
MONITORING
Last but not least, such links often have to be available 24/7 and therefore require sophisticated failover mechanisms for monitoring. A blocked interface may quickly cause thousands or millions of transactions to jam up or be lost, thus causing considerable financial losses.
Bridging systems
We are specialized in the construction of such highly available systems, which we call «bridges». Our bridges integrate seamlessly in a heterogeneous landscape and also offer the necessary flexibility of a generic link-up based on the following concepts:
- Linking in various types of middleware and support of any data format.
- Integration of standardized authentication and authorization concepts
- Adaptability through a flexible «Query-View-Transform» concept.
- Life cycle management of interfaces.