Integration is a hot topic nowadays. Just imagine: a world without streaming platforms, online shopping or digital identity. Hard to picture, right? Well, this would be our reality if integration would not exist. That’s why our integration architects Matthias & Gilles were happy to tell graduates all about their journey towards integration!

Over the past couple of years, we have witnessed the uprising of API Management. Many reference authorities were stating that API Management would become very important in an enterprise IT landscape and well… they were right!

Everyday, new content is published and new (disruptive) technologies come into the picture. It may even feel overwhelming, as it’s almost impossible to keep up with the latest trends just by yourself. However, staying up to speed is of vital importance to staying ahead in today’s competitive world. And that’s exactly the reason why knowledge sharing is so embedded not only in our vision, but in our entire community!

As with all trending architectures, companies are looking to leverage (specific) benefits before fully understanding the advantages and disadvantages of these solutions. Working with Microservices Architectures is no exception.

APIs. We all encounter them almost on a daily basis, either by designing, developing or consuming them. So most of us will have encountered at one point or another an API that does not behave as advertised, often leading to frustration. But how do we ensure delivery of a quality API? That’s where API testing comes into the picture.

Recently we did some research into the intricacies of communications in a microservice architecture, and we want to share our insights with you!

For those who cannot wait for our findings, we are strong believers that asynchronous communication is the way to go. The use of synchronous communication should be limited to only specific use cases. If you want to know how we reached this conclusion you will have to read through the entire blog. But be aware that getting this aspect right in your architecture is crucial as a microservice architecture heavily relies on communication between its components (microservices).

On September 23rd, our API expert Edwin Hurst (Archers) and Integration Lead Jolien Jans (Fednot), were guest speakers at the 14th lunch session of the API community. Since we’re very proud of our team member and partner, a short recap of the session is written below!

Do you think integrating a SaaS application is easier than integrating a packaged (on-premise) application? Whatever your answer might be, it is probably not a simple yes or no answer and every integration has its own challenges. In this blog, we take a bite out of the challenges of integrating SaaS applications. We’ll be looking at specific integration capabilities that these applications offer and how we can best manage these integrations.

After starting a technical career, many people naturally grow into a management position. But, what if you’re still intrigued by technical evolutions every day and you love working technically way too much to leave all of it behind? Right, you become a true expert in your field. And that is exactly the reason why Cindy - an experienced integration architect - joined Archers last year!

Over the last couple of years, we witnessed several evolutions in Service Architectures. API Management is on a steep rise, but also Event-Driven (Microservices) Architectures are ones to watch! All these different architectures have one thing in common; the need for a common language.

On March 18th, our very own API Security Expert Pieter Van de Broeck and Security Architect at Colruyt Tom Pieters were guest speakers at the 12th Lunch Session of the API Community. A brief summary!

In one of our previous blogs we talked about the importance of the Authentication & Authorisation pillars of our API Security Framework. Although authentication & authorisation play an important role in API security, there is more to consider when it comes to API security.

As APIs establish an important channel to your enterprise’s systems, data, and services. It's important to keep focus on API security to prevent business/reputation loss, competitor’s gains and so much more. There are numerous aspects that you must consider in securing your APIs.

We recently worked together with an organisation on their API Management Program. They already had a good track record with integration. This was mostly application to application work and some partner integrations as well. However, much of their effort had gone towards the technical aspects of integration, mostly vendor related. Things like architectural oversight and guidance or design patterns were not part of their approach.

Our debate on choreography vs. orchestration isn’t one to be had at concert halls or ballet recitals. It’s one architects and developers started having in front of whiteboards, when distributed event-driven systems first started appearing.

API Portal plays a key role in the success of companies like Google and Facebook. In this blog we will go overwhat an API Portal encompasses and what advantages it brings to the table to empower your API landscape.

Organizations strive to create qualitative and easily consumable APIs. Defining an API Design approach is one of the key steps to accomplish this. Reference Authorities tend to position their API Design approach as being the one to use. However, do we really believe that there is a "one size fits all" approach?

Micro service architectures come with many new challenges. In this article, we zoom into the challenge of data islands/consistency. You will learn why this problem arises and what it is. We go deeper into what Event Sourcing and CQRS are and how they might solve this problem, if applied correctly.

As I have always been interested in microservices, I was happy to join the microservices team within Archers. A proof of concept, exploring some of microservices’ key concepts, was already well underway. However, a solution to trace calls through the architecture in order to facilitate easier troubleshooting and system debugging was not yet present. In this blog article we introduce Elastic Stack as a solution to face these challenges.

In order to get you on track and ensure a game-changing success story, our integration architects Matthias and Thomas shared their expertise during an Online Lunch Meetup of the API Community Belgium.They take you with them in their API expertise and formulate an answer to the overarching question: how to define your step-by-step approach for your API journey? Hands-on insights and a real-life example are provided by Colruyt, sharing the past, present and future of their API Journey.

Many organizations have been looking at SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) in the past to tackle and govern their integration challenges. One of the key aspects within a SOA landscape is the layering and classification of services. At Achers, we have seen many organizations each having their own way to classify their services. Some of them are based on the service layers defined by Thomas Erl, others are based upon a more technical approach like the service categorization defined by Oracle (Process, Activity, Data, Utility services).

We often get the question how to increase an organization's API maturity. Not an easy job as you need to change the daily behavior of people. It is not just a matter of training: you need to make people aware and convince them of the new way of working and thinking. So, you need some change management techniques to increase your maturity. In this blog we will explain how your maturity can grow step-by-step. This approach is formalized in our API maturity model.

Before you consider your options in choosing the right database, you should at least know what your options are. In this blog we'll explain you four types of different database and how they can be used in your organization.

For those of you who’ve read Quinten’s previous blogpost about Microservices, know that we already decided on Cassandra as the primary persistence layer of our Microservices architecture. “I do not regret that decision, but I have to admit that I made it without fully understanding the consequences”, Quinten explains.

APIs establish an important channel to your enterprise’s systems, data, and services. It's important to keep focus on API security to prevent business/reputation loss, competitor’s gains and so much more. There are numerous aspects that you must consider in securing your APIs. Have you been thinking about a security approach for your APIs?

We are connected to the world and each other like never before. Due to instant connectivity, the world is at our feet. APIs are at ​the heart of this ever-growing connectivity​. Without even knowing it, we ​interact​​ with many APIs on a daily basis​. Hence, APIs play an important role in business environments.

After several years of experience as an integration specialist, Pieter has chased his dream of becoming an integration architect. However, this dream was not the only one he cherished. Pieter had a great passion for entrepreneurship; A dream he also could turn into reality when he started to work for Archers.

This short article aims to provide an insight into the role and the added value of a gateway component when introduced into the landscape of an organization exposing API's.

A redesign of an existing large application always causes a big impact on an organization. In this blog, we talk about the efforts to introduce the evolution, taken into account the sensitive nature and the dependencies all around the enterprise.

Since you got to know Archers better and learned about the (non-) legacy systems, the time has come to talk about the 8 different architecture principles for non-legacy systems.

At Archers, we tackle challenges that different organizations are facing, such as budget constraints, outdated technologies and limited integration possibilities.

In this blog, we will cover each pillar and demonstrate their relevance to the success of the API program.

“Seniors and juniors will always help you out and nobody should be afraid to ask questions. The more you work in team, the more progress you’ll make!”

"Every week, we get the opportunity to share ideas, bring up issues and discuss potential solutions with the team." Michel talks about being an enterprise architect and it does not only revolve around integration but also around service design, technical topics, service-development and much more!

There’s something satisfying and fascinating about leaning back in your chair and looking back at the blueprint, the architecture of a fully distributed system you’ve brought to life. Let's find out what Quinten has to say about Microservices and the future of IT.

With the advent of API Gateway solutions to the Enterprise Integration World, Integration Architects have a new solution option for solving integration issues. But how should we position this solution. We already have Enterprise Service Busses, B2B Gateways, so where do these API Gateways fit into the picture?

Run-time analytics for your distributed IT environment using the elastic stack.