The Technical Foundation: How Profound API and Profound AI Eliminate Data Silos
The reality facing IT leaders today: Your critical IBM i systems are running strong, but finding skilled RPG and COBOL developers is getting harder every year.
Data Silos: When Your IBM i Data is Trapped Inside
Your IBM i applications contain the most critical data in your organization: customer records built over decades, financial transactions with complete audit trails, inventory levels updated in real-time, and business processes refined through years of operations. Yet this valuable data remains locked away.
Profound API’s Integration breaks down these barriers by transforming your IBM i applications into data-sharing powerhouses:
Advanced REST API Generation
- Low-Code API Development: Profound API provides an intuitive visual interface and database table wizard that enables rapid REST API creation from your DB2 tables, RPG programs, and stored procedures with minimal coding required
- Real-Time Synchronization: APIs provide live access to your data, so, when inventory changes in your IBM i ERP, external systems see updates instantly
- Granular Access Control: Define exactly which data fields each API consumer can access, ensuring security while enabling integration
Enterprise-Grade Performance & Security
- Connection Pooling: Reuse database connections efficiently to handle thousands of concurrent API requests without impacting core system performance
- Intelligent Caching: Frequently requested data is cached strategically to reduce database load while ensuring data freshness
- Built-in Authentication: OAuth 2.0, JWT tokens, and API key management ensure only authorized systems access your data
- Audit & Compliance: Complete logging of all API access for regulatory compliance and security monitoring
Real-World Data Liberation Examples
- E-commerce Integration: Your web store checks real-time inventory levels from IBM i before confirming orders
- Mobile Applications: Field service technicians access customer history and parts availability from their smartphones
- Business Intelligence: Modern analytics platforms pull live data for executive dashboards and predictive modeling
- Partner Integration: Suppliers and customers access relevant data through secure APIs without VPN complexity
Data Silos: When your IBM i Applications Can't Talk to Other Systems
Your IBM i applications need data from the modern world: credit scores from bureaus, shipping rates from carriers, product information from suppliers, market data from financial services, and customer interactions from CRM systems. Without this external data, your core business processes operate with incomplete information.
Profound API’s Integration eliminates these silos by making your IBM i applications data consumers:
Comprehensive External Connectivity
- Cloud Database Access: Direct connections to AWS RDS, Azure SQL Database, Google Cloud SQL, and Oracle Cloud from within your RPG and COBOL programs
- SaaS API Integration: Native consumption of Salesforce, Microsoft 365, ServiceNow, Shopify, and hundreds of other cloud services
- RESTful Service Consumption: Call any REST API from your IBM i applications with automatic JSON parsing and error handling
Intelligent Data Processing
- Automatic Data Transformation: Convert between different data formats, date formats, and encoding schemes transparently
- Error Recovery: Built-in retry logic and failover mechanisms ensure reliable data flows even when external systems are temporarily unavailable
- Data Validation: Verify external data quality and completeness before incorporating into your business processes
Business Process Enhancement
- Order Processing: Validate shipping addresses with Google Maps API and get real-time shipping rates from FedEx/UPS APIs
- Credit Decisions: Pull credit scores and financial data directly into your loan approval processes
- Inventory Management: Sync product catalogs and pricing with supplier databases automatically
Intelligence Silos: When Data Insights Are Scattered Across Systems
Having access to data isn’t enough, you need intelligence. Traditional approaches require expensive data warehouses, complex ETL processes, and separate analytics platforms that create their own silos. Meanwhile, your competitors are making faster, smarter decisions using AI-powered insights.
Profound AI eliminates intelligence silos by bringing artificial intelligence directly to your IBM i environment:
Native AI Processing on IBM i: Run AI models directly against your DB2 data and combine insights from IBM i with external APIs and cloud databases without moving information between systems.
Advanced AI Capabilities: Enable natural language queries, AI-powered recommendations, pattern recognition, and automated insights that help business users make data-driven decisions without technical expertise.
Enterprise AI Integration: Deploy AI recommendations directly within your existing IBM i applications for real-time, intelligent decision-making at the moment of customer interaction or business transaction.
The Integrated Solution: Breaking Down All Silos Simultaneously
The true power emerges when Profound API and Profound AI work together to create a completely connected, intelligent data ecosystem:
- Unified Data Flow: Profound API makes your IBM i data accessible everywhere while bringing external data into your core processes. Profound AI then analyzes this complete data picture to generate insights impossible with isolated systems.
- Intelligent Automation: AI models trained on your comprehensive dataset can trigger API calls to external systems, such as automatically reordering inventory when AI predicts stockouts or updating customer records when AI identifies changes in buying patterns.
- Real-Time Decision Architecture: Business decisions are made using live IBM i data, current external information, and AI-powered predictions, all processed in real-time without data movement or integration delays.
This integrated approach transforms your IBM i applications from data silos into the intelligent heart of your digital enterprise, where every decision is informed by complete information and enhanced by artificial intelligence.
Break Down Data Silos and Expedite New Development
Why Choose Profound Logic?
Deep IBM i Expertise
Our team brings over 25 years of IBM i experience across industries. We understand your systems, your challenges, and your business requirements.
Immediate Availability
Stop waiting months to fill positions. Our certified IBM i professionals can start contributing to your projects within days, not quarters.
Flexible Engagement
Whether you need short-term project support or long-term strategic assistance, we scale our engagement to match your needs and budget.
Knowledge Transfer
We don't just complete projects – we work alongside your team, sharing knowledge and best practices that strengthen your internal capabilities.
Cost-Effective Solution
Access senior-level IBM i expertise without the overhead of full-time salaries, benefits, and recruitment costs.
Start Your Search For Legacy Talent Today
If you want to search for the best, most suitable talent for your business, or maintain the efficiency and competency of your legacy talent; consider our following solutions!
Profound AppEvo
If you want to transform your applications into fast, futurized versions for the current AI-powered landscape, Profound AppEvo may be the solution for you.
Profound AppEvo is an AI-fueled application transformation tool, which allows you to:
- Database Futurization Options
- Multiple UI paths
- Talent Risk Mitigation
- Skills Futurization
And more! All within our stress-tested methodology, built on several years of IBM i experience.
Profound AI
With limited legacy talent in your organization, repetitive tasks can hamper growth and development, costing you time and money. Profound Logic’s solution to AI, provides a break from that.
Reduce repetitive tasks with your own AI assistant, aligned to your business goals and needs. The level of control you’ll access will include:
- No-Code AI Development
- Seamless Data Integration
- Accelerated Decision Making with data-powered insights
- AI-driven customer behavior analysis…
…and more!
Profound API
The reduced size of your legacy talent team, or newly acquired talent with experience in newer languages, may need help with API development. Profound Logic can help with Profound API, a powerful API creation toolkit with low-code capabilities and native IBM i integration. You’ll have access to several benefits, including, but not limited to:
- Multi-Database Support
- Instant Documentation
- Visual tools and templates to ease API creation and management
- Zero middleware for IBM i integration
Learn more
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