Integration Debt in Multi-Vendor Enterprise Estates: Accumulation Mechanisms and an Assessment Approach

Authors

  • Anil Chandra Rajendra Pallikonda Blue Ribbon Global Technologies Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.71426/

Keywords:

Integration debt, Technical debt, Enterprise integration, Legacy modernization, Software architecture

Abstract

Technical debt is well characterized within applica-
tion codebases, where it can be identified, attributed, and repaid
by a single owning team. Integration debt behaves differently. It
accumulates in the interfaces between systems, where no single
team holds authority, release schedules are independent, and
the participating systems are frequently governed by separate
commercial agreements. This paper argues that integration
debt constitutes a distinct category requiring separate treatment
rather than a special case of architectural technical debt. We
characterize four accumulation mechanisms observed in multi-
vendor enterprise estates: point-to-point proliferation under de-
livery pressure, semantic divergence across systems nominally
sharing a business object, orphaned interfaces surviving the
decommissioning of their consumers, and platform sprawl arising
from tool selection made per project rather than per scenario. For
each mechanism we identify the organizational conditions that
produce it and explain why refactoring strategies developed for
application code do not transfer. We then propose an assessment
approach built on four estate properties observable from arti-
facts organizations already hold: coupling breadth, specification
recoverability, consumer volatility, and semantic divergence. The
contribution is a vocabulary and an assessment instrument for
making integration debt visible before it becomes structural. The
approach is analytical rather than empirically validated, and we
specify the longitudinal data a validation study would require.

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Published

16-10-2025

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 2 (2025): Special Issue 1-2025

Section

Research Article

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How to Cite

[1]
A. C. R. Pallikonda, “Integration Debt in Multi-Vendor Enterprise Estates: Accumulation Mechanisms and an Assessment Approach”, Journal of Computing and Data Technology, vol. 1, no. 2, Oct. 2025, doi: 10.71426/.