What is a Hub-and-Spoke Integration?

Without a hub, connecting N systems point-to-point requires roughly N² integrations — every new system added means building a fresh connection to every existing one. The hub-and-spoke pattern collapses this: each spoke builds exactly one connection, to the hub, and the hub handles routing, translation, and orchestration of data between spokes. This is the architecture behind most iPaaS (integration platform as a service) products and enterprise service buses. The trade-off is that the hub becomes a single point of coordination and potential failure — if it goes down, every integration it mediates is affected — and it can introduce latency versus a direct connection. In exchange, it centralizes authentication, transformation logic, monitoring, and error handling in one place, which is far easier to maintain and audit than a tangle of bespoke point-to-point integrations scattered across a codebase.