Zero-Copy Integration: Architecture for the Fragmented Enterprise

Every enterprise is paying an Integration Tax — the compounding cost, risk, and compliance burden of managing unnecessary data copies across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises estates. This book shows you how to stop paying it. Zero-Copy Integration: Architecture for the Fragmented Enterprise is a comprehensive guide for senior technology leaders and principal architects who are responsible for the strategic direction of enterprise data and integration architecture. It argues that the dominant copy-first integration model is now failing simultaneously on economic, regulatory, operational, and strategic grounds — and provides the architectural framework, design patterns, and organisational disciplines to replace it. What you will find in this book: - The business case for Zero-Copy transformation, with quantitative frameworks for egress cost reduction (95–99% in real-world deployments) and attack surface elimination - A three-plane architectural framework — the Data Plane (federation and virtualisation), the Application Integration Plane (API-first, contract-driven design), and the Event Plane (CDC and event streaming) — governed by a unified Control Plane - Six reference blueprints for sovereign data fabric, multi-cloud event mesh, legacy/mainframe API façade, federated ML, SaaS integration, and sovereign BC/DR topology - A four-stage maturity model across technology, governance, operating model, and economic dimensions — the diagnostic framework every transformation programme needs - A sovereign operating model built on domain ownership, policy-as-code governance, and the chargeback economics that create Zero-Copy behaviour at scale - Coverage of the global regulatory landscape — GDPR, DORA, the EU AI Act, India's DPDP Act, China's PIPL, and the US state privacy framework — and what each demands of your architecture - The emerging technologies that will extend the architecture: enterprise AI and RAG, confidential computing, and the post-quantum cryptography migration that must begin today - Honest case studies from European banking, NHS healthcare, and global manufacturing — including the challenges, not just the outcomes Written by a senior technical architect with direct experience across financial services, healthcare, public sector, and manufacturing in European and global jurisdictions, this book addresses the practitioner who needs to design, implement, and govern a Zero-Copy architecture in the real conditions of the fragmented enterprise — not in a reference implementation on a single cloud. Whether you are a CIO building the board-level investment case, a lead architect designing the sovereign zone topology, or a platform engineer implementing the integration fabric governance model, this book provides the principles, the patterns, and the operational disciplines to build it. --- Key topics: enterprise integration architecture · data sovereignty · cloud egress cost reduction · API design · event streaming · Apache Kafka · Apache Iceberg · federated analytics · zero trust security · digital transformation · IBM watsonx · Red Hat OpenShift · enterprise AI governance