Less Is More: Utilizing Ballerina to Architect a Cloud Data Platform

At its core, the challenge of managing Human Resources data is an integration challenge: estimates range from 2-3 HR systems in use at a typical SMB, up to a few dozen systems implemented amongst enterprise HR departments, and these systems seldom integrate seamlessly between themselves. Providing a multi-tenant, cloud-native solution to integrate these hundreds of HR-related systems, normalize their disparate data models and then render that consolidated information for stakeholder decision making has been a substantial undertaking, but one significantly eased by leveraging Ballerina. In this session, we’ll cover:
The overall software architecture for VHR’s Cloud Data Platform
Critical decision points leading to adoption of Ballerina for the CDP
Ballerina’s role in multiple evolutionary steps to the current architecture
Roadmap for the CDP architecture and plans for Ballerina
WSO2’s partnership in bringing continual success for the CD

1. Less is More: Utilizing
Ballerina to Architect a
Cloud Data Platform
Integrating disparate HR systems is a crucial challenge that enterprises face.
VHR's Cloud Data Platform, powered by Ballerina, provides a multi-tenant,
cloud-native solution to normalize data and deliver consolidated insights to
stakeholders.
Bennett Reddin
Founder/CTO
VisualizeHR

2. Journey to an HR Cloud Data
Platform
•Background in architecture, development, and deployment of
Enterprise Resource Planning Systems
•ERP data sets and functionality should be fertile ground to enable
strategic planning with people data at the core
•Integration became the clear obstacle to achieving a consolidated
dataset from which to drive strategic decisions

•Integration is largely a solved problem now
•Industry, both application vendors and software vendors, have learned
from the past
•SMB and ERP products are not released without some approachable API
•The pivot is back to data acquisition, harmonization, and rendering

3. Generalized Functional Architecture
AWS Cloud
Client Tenants
Vendors (Partner
or obo Clients)
Amazon Simple Queue
Service (Amazon SQS)
Amazon EventBridge
Amazon API
Gateway
Amazon Aurora
AWS Transfer Family
AWS Transfer Family
AWS QuickSight
Client Tenants
Vendors (Partner
or obo Clients)
Client Tenants
AWS Amplify
Highly normalized,
date-effective HR
RDBMS

4. Programming Language
Contenders
Rich History with
Java
•Developed ERP HR and
Payroll systems in Java
•Multiple projects for
Connectors and
Mediators in Enterprise
Integrator
Challenges with
Java
•Versions
•Security updates
•Libraries
•Did I mention
Versions?
Attraction of
Ballerina
•“Batteries Included”
•Networking Strength
•Code to Cloud
•Available Modules

5. Architecture – Generation 1
AWS Cloud
Client Tenants
Client Tenants
Amazon Aurora
Highly normalized,
date-effective HR
RDBMS
EC2 Instance
3 Years of Architectural Evolution in 2 Minutes

6. Architecture – Generation 2 (Code to Cloud)
AWS Cloud
Client Tenant
Client Tenants
Highly normalized,
date-effective HR
RDBMS
Amazon Aurora
3 Years of Architectural Evolution in 2 Minutes

7. Generalized Functional Architecture
AWS Cloud
Client Tenants
Vendors (Partner
or obo Clients)
Amazon Simple Queue
Service (Amazon SQS)
Amazon EventBridge
Amazon API
Gateway
Amazon Aurora
AWS Transfer Family
AWS Transfer Family
AWS QuickSight
Client Tenants
Vendors (Partner
or obo Clients)
Client Tenants
AWS Amplify
Highly normalized,
date-effective HR
RDBMS
3 Years of Architectural Evolution in 2 Minutes
Ballerina Modules:
•AWS SQS
•AWS SES
•AWS S3
•Postgres (Aurora)
•SQL

8. Ballerina's Role in the
CDP
1 Integration
Ballerina's native integration capabilities seamlessly connect diverse
HR systems, simplifying the data ingestion process.
2 Transformation
Ballerina's powerful data transformation features normalize the
disparate data models, preparing the data for analysis.
3 Orchestration
Amazon Web Service’s event-driven infrastructure, coupled with
Ballerina’s serverless deployment orchestrates the entire data
integration and processing pipeline.

9. Next Evolutionary Steps with
Ballerina
HR System Integration Maturity
MapUsing Ballerina’s Architecture View, we are rendering an image of
various HR systems in use within a client’s ecology, how connected
those are, and what gaps need work. This utilizes the Ballerina ChatGPT
connector to facilitate stakeholder interviews.
Amazon Bedrock
ConnectorAWS Bedrock is used in conjunction with our Aurora Postgres database
to provide data for visualization in AWS QuickSight.
Retrieval Augmented Generation
Connector
With the vector database extension available in AWS Aurora Postgres,
Ballerina will be used to generate vectors from digitized content,
allowing Bedrock to perform predictive analysis for HR stakeholders.

10. WSO2's Partnership in the CDP's
Success
Fanatical
Support
From Discord to
StackOverflow,
assistance has
always been timely
and educational –
tremendous value
in just browsing
Discord.
Continuous
Education
Webinars and
Meetups and
Zooms occur on a
continual basis,
allowing expertise
to be passed on to
the community.
Top-down
Engagement
Not just shout-outs
to the Maryam’s
and Sameera’s who
constantly support
& educate, but also
the CEO jumping in
to facilitate
success.
Innovation
(nearly) On
Demand
Before developing
anything new,
connectors,
functionality, etc.
it might be found
already completed
on Ballerina
Central

11. Conclusion



And



Questions?