In an increasingly digital world, businesses have to offer customers cross-channels and responsive digital experiences to survive. However, traditional front-end to back-end system integrations present several limitations such as: slow access to updated data, lack of 24/7 access to information, high legacy system computational costs, complexities in managing and integrating data from different sources, and the risk of overloading back-end systems with continual queries. 

In order to provide their clients with the experience and real-time 24/7 availability they require on digital channels, businesses have developed APIs and integration middleware that are designed to maintain independence between front-ends and back-end legacy systems. This approach also continues to put significant pressure on the latter, exacerbating the struggle of legacy systems to operate at the required speed and performance.

Nevertheless, back-end legacy systems typically are critical to running core operations and cannot risk being overloaded with data to process at all hours of the day. It is therefore paramount to ensure that unexpected peaks in demand do not put systems at risk. 

In order to tackle this issue, Fincons Group drew on its experience as system integrator to design a new data architecture framework, the Fast Data Lake, that enables businesses to develop the best possible technological solutions to meet customer expectations while reducing investments by safeguarding legacy back-end systems.  

Thanks to this innovative approach to architectural design, APIs are able to read data drawn from a single repository known as a data lake, rather than calling up data from legacy systems directly. This data lake is continuously updated in near real-time by the legacy systems via a unique and highly engineered process based on the concept of data streaming, and offers a platform in which to redirect data from other sources.

Traditional data management platforms tend to update data in the data warehouse with a batch approach every 24 hours, which requires hundreds of extractions and ETL procedures. In contrast, Fast Data Lake offers near real-time, up-to-date data that can be quickly accessed 24/7. This is possible because the Fast Data Lake enables dedicated data structures based on every use case that needs to be implemented.

By merging both historical and new data into a single data hub, the Fast Data Lake provides intermediation between APIs and the back-end, acting as an inquiry decoupler between the front-end and back-end to ensure that even peak-time data volumes can be handled safely.  

Fincons Fast Data Lake has become the leading data lake solution with its integration of highly customized components and select first-in-class market technologies including Datastax Enterprise, the active-everywhere, distributed hybrid cloud database built on Apache CassandraⓇ. 

Cassandra is a free and open-source NoSQL database management system designed to handle large amounts of data while providing high availability with no single point of failure. The Fincons Fast Data Lake leverages Datastax’s potential for transferring, storing and accessing data, while avoiding cloud providers lock-in thanks to the portability DataStax provides.  

Reducing the complexity of API service layers through system integration, Fincons Data Lake can help businesses respond to customer needs without jeopardizing the performance and operability of their legacy back-end systems, at competitive prices.

Learn more about how you can develop modern data platforms for your business with Fincons Group and Datastax here.