Background

Every department in the company was responsible for their own applications.  A centralized IT department supported their individual projects.  There was no standard for sharing data between systems or departments.  Interface requirements were handled on a case by case basis.

Problem

The Project Management department generated project numbers and managed budgets that all other departmental activity was to associate with for planning purposes.  Two departments required an automated interface to the project management system to update their project number lists daily.

Solution

Though this requirement only involved three systems across three departments, we were aware that the organization has not standardized the sharing of data between systems or departments.  Therefore we selected this new requirement to design and implement a standard information exchange architecture that would create a hub through which departments could share specific data sets with authorized users of other departments.

A robust security model will prevent unauthorized access to data, and an insulation layer will detect structural design changes to source systems that have not been reported to those responsible for the information exchange hub, preventing unforeseen exchange failures.

Benefits

Standardized Information Exchange Architecture

Elimination of Redundant System to System Interfaces

Improved Data Quality Controls