API Services & Systems Integration

Problem

How integration debt accumulates

What it costs: slow releases, silent data drift, failures found by customers, and one person whose departure would be an incident.

Each integration is reasonable on its own. The CRM needs order data, so a nightly job pushes it. Finance needs invoices, so a script pulls them. A partner needs inventory, so someone opens an endpoint.

Three years later there are forty of these. No two authenticate the same way. Half have no monitoring. Failures are discovered when a customer calls. And changing any system means auditing every connection to it — which is why nobody changes anything.

What we do

Integration architecture

Map what exists, define the boundaries that should exist, and sequence the move. Point-to-point where volume is low and the contract is stable; an event backbone where many systems care about the same change; an API gateway where access needs governance.

API design and development

REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and event streams. Versioned so a change doesn't break a consumer. Documented so a partner integrates without a call. Rate-limited and authenticated so one client can't degrade the platform.

Enterprise system integration

SAP, Oracle, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, NetSuite, Workday, ServiceNow, HubSpot, and the industry-specific systems that came with an acquisition.

Event-driven architecture

Kafka, RabbitMQ, or cloud-native messaging where systems should react to change rather than poll for it. Includes the parts people skip: idempotency, ordering, replay, and dead-letter handling.

Legacy and file-based integration

SOAP, EDI, SFTP, fixed-width files, and mainframe interfaces. Unglamorous, still running most of the economy, and often the actual blocker on a modernization program.

Partner and public APIs

Where your API is a product: developer documentation, sandbox environments, key management, usage analytics, and versioning policy.

Monitoring

Every integration instrumented for success rate, latency, and volume anomaly. Alerts go to an on-call human, not to an unread mailbox.

Integration Technology

Technology stack

A practical integration stack built around proven protocols, messaging systems, gateways, authentication standards, and tools that connect your systems reliably.

Protocols: REST

GraphQL

gRPC

SOAP

WebSockets

webhooks

EDI
Messaging: Kafka

RabbitMQ

AWS SQS/SNS/EventBridge

Azure Service Bus

Google Pub/Sub
Gateways: Kong

AWS API Gateway

Azure API Management

Apigee
iPaaS: MuleSoft

Boomi

Workato

Zapier

Make

n8n

Where a platform beats custom code.
Auth: OAuth 2.0

OIDC

SAML

mTLS

API keys with rotation
Docs: OpenAPI

AsyncAPI

Postman

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

iPaaS when the connectors exist, the volume is moderate, and your team will maintain it in a low-code tool. Custom when volume is high, latency matters, the transformation is complex, or the license cost outgrows the engineering cost. We model both — the answer usually depends on your five-year volume, not today's.

Usually. Database-level integration, file exchange, screen automation, or a wrapper service in front of the legacy system. We prefer a wrapper because it gives you a boundary you can later replace what's behind.

Dual-run. New path runs alongside the old, output is compared, and traffic shifts by percentage once the data agrees. The old path stays live until it's provably unnecessary.

Either team. It's documented and monitored to be handed over, and we operate it under a managed agreement where you'd rather not.

Start with an integration audit

Two weeks. Every integration mapped, risk-ranked, and sequenced — with the ones most likely to fail flagged first.

Book a Technical Discovery Call See Our Work

How integration debt accumulates