IT complexity is one of the greatest challenges for today’s progressive enterprises. Companies often resort to point-to-point connectivity between systems in their growth stage, ultimately increasing IT complexity and reaching a point of critical mass. Too many IT engineers and resources are then required to solve spaghetti point-to-point connections and simplify this growing complexity in enterprise IT infrastructure. In order to build connections, IT teams are required to create custom codes and implement data mappings. That takes weeks or months of calendar time. Apart from time and effort, these processes are error-prone and incur huge deployment costs. The problem can be solved using a hub and spoke data architecture. Hub and spoke integration solutions can reduce the complexity of data integration and help businesses deliver value.

This blog post illustrates how the hub and spoke data model can help companies drive value without relying on point-to-point integration.

The solution lies with a Hub & Spoke architecture model which not only reduces IT complexity but also drives down cost and risk. Hub and spoke integration is simpler because only a single hub system facilitates all communication to and from other systems such as ERP, POS, supplier chain ecosystem, and more. Hub and spoke integration offers several advantages over point-to-point integration. In a hub and spoke model, a central hub serves as the focal point for connecting various applications and systems, simplifying the overall architecture.

This centralized approach streamlines communication, making it easier to manage, scale, and maintain as new systems are added. It offers better scalability, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility, allowing organizations to adapt to changing needs efficiently. In contrast, point-to-point integration involves direct connections between individual systems, leading to a more complex and challenging architecture as the number of integrations grows. Hub and spoke integration stands out as a more organized and sustainable solution, particularly for organizations seeking streamlined, scalable, and maintainable integration frameworks.

What’s more, So, with a hub and spoke data infrastructure model in place, organizations need not propagate transactions through an exponential number of connections. Stress on the overall system diminishes and companies can maintain a consistent architecture that scales and performs.

What Are the Problems of Point-to-Point Integration?

To support their business, enterprises are amassing transcendent applications in their ecosystem. A greater volume of data is generated when enterprises share data with external business partners. The data is stored in a variety of industry and proprietary formats. Things get difficult when certain applications require feeds from other processes and technologies. The proliferation results in a complex IT architecture that is difficult to maintain.

The popular term coined to define this problem is ‘Islands of Automation’ where infrastructure silos prevent people, processes, and technologies to work in tandem.

Enterprises use independent solutions and homegrown approaches to integrate independent projects. In most cases, the approach is point-to-point connectivity. Though the point-to-point approach can easily handle smaller number connections, it proves fatal when the number increases beyond a point. It leads to fragile architecture that’s difficult to manage and maintain.

Moreover, when developers change a piece of code, there’s a cascade of changes to other interfaces. This problem persists in enterprises with the most robust competency centers.

Hub and Spoke vs Point-to-Point – How Can Enterprises Solve the Unsolvable with Hub & Spoke Model?

The answer to increasing complexity in enterprise integration lies in a Hub & Spoke model. Enterprises (hubs) of all sizes can connect with their partners (spokes) and become easy to do business with. The Hub & Spoke architecture model delivers out-of-the-box capabilities to allow business users to create and manage integrations centrally in a whole new way.

Business users get the robust scalability to connect technologies and processes in enterprises without the need of writing a single line of code. At the same time, IT can realize improved productivity and cost savings as they are free to do more productive work while business users handle the operational load.

Adeptia Connect is based on a Hub & Spoke Model to address increasing complexity and pervasive integration needs.

Citizen Integration: The Hub & Spoke model of Adeptia Connect has been designed up from the ground to empower all business users to build workflows and deliver maximum value. The solution has been built primarily for non-technical business users, unlike other tools that require IT intervention & constant developer support. Self-service integration capabilities enable business users to self-manage connections with their customers and partners and onboard them faster by up to 80%, thereby ensuring a delightful customer experience and ultimately better returns.

Business User Portal: Our Hub & Spoke architecture model provides a data integration layer to allow users to share data with multiple trading partners. The users can validate & publish the data via a publication library and partner applications can subscribe to the published data in real-time. All this is done on a wizard for publication and subscription which eliminates the need for additional deployments, coding, and expensive rework. It also allows the decoupling of source and target applications to enable changes to the interface.

Shared Templates: Adeptia Connect allows users to publish connectivity profiles using shared templates. Pre-defined transaction templates have been customized for specific business information, i.e., invoices, orders, shipping information, etc., that partners want to send or receive. Entities can publish as many shared templates as it needs, bring data faster from partners, and accelerate time to revenue.

Monitoring Dashboard: The application owners can track the fulfillment status of publications from the monitoring dashboard and intuitive screens. It helps users in tracking the lineage of publications and discovering whether the subscribed systems have received data with integrity or not. This level of visibility is impossible to achieve with a point-to-point connectivity approach. Conducting impact analysis and eliminating multiple sources of truth becomes easy within a few clicks.

One-to-Many Approach: The Hub architecture of Adeptia Connect replaces point-to-point connectivity with a ‘One to Many approach.’ Users only need to create one shared template that can then be used for connecting with hundreds of partners simultaneously.

The Hub & Spoke Model of Adeptia Connect is a perfect solution to reduce IT complexity. One shared connection helps enterprises to connect with hundreds of partners. Instead of managing individual integrations, enterprises can manage a few shared connections. The self-service functionality helps enterprises become easier to work with, improve IT efficiency, and generate more ROI.

See how Adeptia Connect’s Hub and Spoke data architecture model can help you reduce IT complexity and improve ease of doing business.