Motivated by upcoming challenges in the solution design for future Geo-IT services, con terra requested consulting to identify, evaluate and prototype new architectural patterns. The trend of IT infrastructures moving towards Cloud concepts, such as Kubernetes, demands a shift in software systems and their architectures. This and related aspects were the main driver for the activities in a three-year research and development framework (RDFC).

In 2021, 52°North conducted two pilot projects. We developed architectural patterns and solutions to help con terra build cloud-native solutions and provide guidance for the further development of their technology stack.

The first pilot focused on lightweight server-side processing functionality backed by OpenAPI 3.0 definitions. A team consisting of both con terra and 52°North software developers and architects realized and evaluated different approaches. In particular, we compared an API-first approach using code stub generators with a code-first approach that derives the API definition from the component at runtime. The results led to recommendations on how to implement lightweight Microservices with modern programming languages, such as Python and TypeScript, utilizing geospatial capabilities from Esri ArcGIS and Safe Software FME.

In the second iteration, a team of 52°North and con terra software architects carried out a deeper analysis of Cloud technology. An extensive look into project solutions revealed basic patterns for con terra’s enterprise software stack that are relevant in customer environments that use Cloud technologies for deployment and monitoring. The project analysis was complemented by a state-of-the-art analysis of the current Cloud landscape, which will be integrated into the project development strategies by different teams at con terra.