Deployment Requirements

• Do you require data integration to run entirely on-premises?
• What is driving the on-premises requirement? (security, compliance, policy)
• Are there any data residency or sovereignty requirements?
• Is cloud connectivity permitted for any use cases?

Current Integration State

• What data integration or ETL tools do you use today?
• Are you replacing an existing tool? Which one?
• What are the main pain points with your current approach?
• How many integrations/data flows do you manage currently?
• Who builds and maintains integrations today?

Technical Environment

• What server operating systems are in your environment?
• What is your virtualization environment?
• Do you have container infrastructure?
• What are your primary data sources? (Databases, ERP, mainframe, files, APIs)
• What database platforms do you need to connect to?
• Do you have mainframe or AS/400 systems to integrate?
• What are your primary data targets? (Data warehouse, data lake, reporting)

Volume & Performance

• What is the volume of data to be processed? (rows/day, GB/day)
• What are your largest tables or files?
• What is the acceptable processing window for batch jobs?
• Do you have real-time or near-real-time requirements?
• Are there SLAs for data freshness?

Processing Patterns

• What integration patterns do you need? (Batch ETL, CDC, Full refresh, Incremental loads)
• What types of transformations are required? (Data type conversion, lookups, aggregation, validation)
• Do you need to join data from multiple sources?
• Are there data quality rules that must be enforced?

Development & Operations

• Who will develop integrations? (IT, data engineering, business analysts)
• Is a no-code/low-code approach important?
• How are integration jobs scheduled today?
• What monitoring and alerting requirements do you have?
• How many environments do you need? (dev, test, prod)

Security & Compliance

• What security requirements apply to data in motion?
• What authentication mechanisms are required?
• What compliance frameworks apply? (SOX, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR)
• What audit trail requirements exist for data lineage?

Success Criteria

• What are the top 3-5 integration use cases to address first?
• How will you measure success? (Development time, data quality, performance)
• What ROI would justify this investment?
• What is the timeline for implementation?