Most data infrastructure consulting engagements fail at the integration layer, not the architecture diagram. A platform that looks right on a whiteboard still has to talk to your CRM, your billing system, and whatever
data integration and ETL pipelines already move data between them, without breaking anything currently in production.
We start integration mapping in week one, not after the architecture is finalized, because the connectors you already depend on often reveal constraints the diagram can't show. Catching those constraints early is what keeps a migration moving instead of creating costly rework later.