USA54: Why an Energy Trading Desk Confused Data Bus Integration with Enterprise Architecture Coherence

Sunil Dutt Jha
Aug 4
1 min read

Overview:

This case is part of a 100-diagnostic series revealing how US energy companies have mislabeled technical integration projects as “Enterprise Architecture progress.”

In energy trading, a recurring pattern is treating the deployment of an enterprise service bus (ESB) or data bus as proof of architectural coherence.

Trade capture, pricing, and risk systems were connected for faster data flow; latency was reduced, and reporting improved — yet the enterprise structure linking trading strategy, compliance, settlements, and operations was never modeled.

P1–P6 Insight Preview:

P1 (Strategy): Integration was justified as enabling faster trading, but there was no link to governance structures for market compliance or enterprise-wide risk appetite.

P2 (Process): Core trading workflows were partially streamlined, but downstream processes like settlements and margin calls remained siloed.

P3 (System): ESB connected systems technically, but behavior models for exception handling and market events were absent.

P4 (Component): Pricing engines, risk calculators, and trade capture modules still used separate logic for similar scenarios.

P5 (Implementation): Integration projects were delivered in sprints, but backlog prioritization was driven by short-term desk needs, not enterprise cohesion.

P6 (Operations): Business ops could execute trades faster, but tech ops faced constant maintenance to reconcile mismatched data definitions; compliance checks were still manual in many cases.

Role Disconnects:

CEO: “We’ve integrated our trading systems” — but we haven’t integrated our trading enterprise.
CIO: “Our ESB connects every desk” — yet downstream failures still halt settlements.
Sales Head (Trading & Origination): “Traders have faster access to data” — but errors propagate just as fast.
Chief EA: “We built technical bridges without designing the roads they connect”
Head of Trading Operations: “The data bus speeds delivery — but I still have to manually validate key figures before settlement.”