Sync Hub

The Sync Hub is a managed event distribution platform that enables real-time data synchronization across all your banking systems, going beyond traditional synchronous APIs to support complex integration patterns.

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Why Sync Hub?

Modern banking systems face critical data orchestration challenges that synchronous APIs alone cannot solve:

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Key Pain Points Solved

Data orchestration complexity: Managing data flow between multiple systems with different timing, formats, and requirements creates exponential integration complexity. Each new system connection multiplies the coordination challenges. Multi-system distribution: Distributing the same data event to multiple consuming systems with different needs means building separate integrations for each consumer. This creates maintenance nightmares when event formats change. Real-time synchronization: Keeping all systems updated immediately when data changes in any source system requires complex webhook handling, polling mechanisms, or custom event streaming infrastructure. Data quality and consistency: Ensuring data accuracy, validation, and enrichment across all integration points demands coordinated validation logic, transformation rules, and error handling that’s duplicated across every integration.

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How Sync Hub Works

Sync Hub operates as a managed event distribution platform where you build connectors that publish and consume events:

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Why Managed Infrastructure Matters

Building and operating event distribution infrastructure is significantly more complex than it appears. Sync Hub eliminates months of engineering work by handling the operational complexity so you can focus on banking logic.

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What You Don’t Have to Build

Event broker operations are fully managed: high-availability message broker clusters with multi-zone deployment, automatic failover, capacity planning and scaling, version upgrades, and performance tuning. This eliminates 6-12 months of infrastructure engineering and ongoing operational overhead. Security and compliance are built-in: tenant isolation and data segregation, encryption in transit and at rest, access control and authentication, audit logging, and compliance reporting. See Platform Security for comprehensive security architecture including namespace-based tenant isolation. Reliability engineering is handled: guaranteed message delivery, dead letter queue handling, retry logic with exponential backoff, circuit breakers, fault tolerance, and message ordering guarantees. This eliminates complex distributed systems engineering to ensure no events are lost. Operational resilience is guaranteed: Tier-based uptime SLA (99.5-99.9% based on your Grand Central service tier) with monitoring, disaster recovery and backup, performance monitoring and alerting, incident response and remediation, and capacity management. See High Availability & DR for RTO/RPO commitments and multi-region architecture.

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Banking-Specific Complexity

Beyond general event streaming infrastructure, banking integrations require specialized capabilities. Multi-pattern support: Banking vendors use diverse integration patterns—webhooks, event streams, batch files, and API enrichment—often simultaneously for a single vendor. Payment processors like Alacriti send real-time webhook notifications, daily settlement files via SFTP, and transaction lifecycle events through Kafka. Sync Hub provides unified handling of all these patterns without requiring separate infrastructure for each. Schema evolution and versioning: Banking systems evolve over time with schema changes, new fields, and deprecated attributes. Sync Hub manages schema versioning and backward compatibility automatically, preventing integration breakage when systems are updated. This eliminates manual schema migration coordination across multiple consuming systems whenever a vendor updates their data format. Compliance and audit requirements: Banking regulations require complete audit trails, data retention policies, and compliance reporting for all data movement. Sync Hub provides built-in compliance capabilities including complete event lineage tracking, retention policy enforcement, audit log generation, and compliance report automation. Consumer lifecycle management: Real-world banking environments have dozens of consuming systems with different scaling requirements, failure modes, and processing speeds. Sync Hub manages per-consumer delivery guarantees, back pressure, and error handling independently, eliminating the need to build custom consumer group management, offset tracking, and per-consumer retry logic for each integration.

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Engineering Time Investment

Building equivalent event distribution infrastructure requires significant engineering investment: Total DIY Investment: 6-12 months initial development + ongoing operational overhead With Sync Hub: Focus immediately on banking integration logic

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Sync Hub vs. Synchronous APIs

Understanding when to use Sync Hub versus traditional synchronous API integrations:

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Sync Hub vs. DIY Event Streaming

Many teams consider building custom event infrastructure using message brokers like Kafka or RabbitMQ. Understanding the true scope of this undertaking is critical for making informed architecture decisions.

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What DIY Event Streaming Actually Requires

Core infrastructure demands 20+ components. Message broker cluster (Kafka/RabbitMQ), Zookeeper, load balancers, storage with backup. Producer and consumer frameworks, schema registry, dead letter queues, retry logic. Monitoring, log aggregation, metrics dashboards, distributed tracing, incident management. Authentication, authorization, encryption, tenant isolation, audit logging, compliance reporting. Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD pipelines, auto-scaling, disaster recovery, multi-region deployment. Security and operations aren’t optional. Every component needs hardening. Every failure mode needs handling. Every metric needs monitoring. Every incident needs response procedures. Banking-specific requirements multiply the complexity. Webhook management means secure endpoints, signature validation, rate limiting, DDoS protection. File processing means SFTP servers, format parsers (CSV, XML, fixed-width), batch orchestration, error handling, large file streaming. Event enrichment means cache layers, API integration frameworks, performance optimization. Multi-consumer patterns mean per-consumer guarantees, offset tracking, back pressure handling, consumer-specific transformations. Compliance means event lineage, retention policies, regulatory reports, audit trails, data residency. Daily operations grind never stops. Monitor health, respond to alerts, investigate lag, manage dead letters, review audit logs. Then weekly: capacity planning, performance tuning, security patches, backup verification, documentation updates. Monthly: version upgrades, disaster recovery drills, compliance reports, cost optimization, technical debt. Staffing is the hidden killer. 1-2 FTE for operations, on-call rotation for 24/7 support, subject matter experts for escalations, dedicated security review, ongoing vendor coordination. You need distributed systems expertise, message broker administration, Kubernetes operations, banking domain knowledge, security and compliance understanding. Hidden costs add up fast. 6-12 months initial development. Ongoing feature work, bug fixes, documentation, training. 24/7 operations team, incident response, performance tuning, security management, compliance audits. Engineering time not spent on banking features. Delayed integrations. Slower vendor responses. Limited capacity for new use cases. Technical debt accumulation. Event loss risks. Security vulnerabilities. Compliance violations and fines. System outages. Integration failures affecting customers.

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Sync Hub Approach

Instead of building and maintaining this complex infrastructure, Sync Hub provides: Included Out-of-the-Box:

• Managed event infrastructure with tier-based SLA (99.5-99.9%)
• Banking-specific integration patterns (webhooks, files, streams, enrichment)
• Multi-consumer distribution with guaranteed delivery
• Complete security, compliance, and audit capabilities
• Operational monitoring, alerting, and support
• Disaster recovery and high availability
• Continuous updates and improvements

You Focus On:

• Banking business logic and rules
• Vendor-specific data transformation
• Consumer application requirements
• Customer experience

Result: Weeks to production instead of months, with enterprise-grade reliability and ongoing operational support included.

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Core Capabilities

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Key Benefits

Real-time synchronization: Immediate data consistency across all systems with event-driven architecture and push-based delivery. No more polling or batch synchronization delays. Reduced integration complexity: Single publish point with automatic distribution to multiple consumers eliminates point-to-point integrations. Add new consumers without modifying producers. Scalable architecture: Handle high-volume event processing with auto-scaling and distributed processing capabilities. From hundreds to millions of events per day without infrastructure changes. Decoupled systems: Loose coupling between producers and consumers enables independent system evolution and maintenance. Upgrade one system without affecting others. Operational resilience: Built-in retry logic, dead letter handling, and guaranteed delivery ensure reliable event processing. No events lost due to transient failures. Managed infrastructure: Focus on business logic while Grand Central handles infrastructure, scaling, monitoring, and operations. No message broker expertise required.

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Platform Inclusion

Sync Hub is included with both Grand Central offerings, providing managed event distribution for your integrations at no additional per-message cost.

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What’s Included

Core platform capabilities are always included: managed event infrastructure with tier-based SLA (99.5-99.9% based on your Grand Central service tier), all integration patterns (webhooks, streams, files, enrichment), multi-consumer distribution, guaranteed message delivery, dead letter queue handling, security and compliance features, monitoring and alerting, and disaster recovery with high availability. No hidden costs: Sync Hub is included with the Grand Central platform. No per-message charges, no per-consumer fees, no egress charges for event distribution. Operational support, platform updates, and improvements are all included.

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Choosing Your Implementation

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Learn More

Integration Patterns - Explore the five core integration patterns and when to use each one. Use Cases - See real-world examples of Sync Hub in action across banking scenarios. Platform Overview - Return to the complete Grand Central platform overview.