Elan8 serves teams and organizations that need to govern microservice architecture at scale. Below are common contexts: problem, risk, how Elan8 helps, and outcome.
Scaling SaaS platforms
Problem: Product and platform grow; service count and dependencies multiply. Ownership boundaries and dependency graphs become unclear. New features add coupling that is only discovered in production.
Risk: Unplanned outages from hidden dependencies, slow onboarding, and difficulty enforcing boundaries between teams or domains.
How Elan8 solves: A single declarative architecture model and continuous validation. New services and dependencies must be declared; drift is detected. API impact analysis shows blast radius before release.
Outcome: Clear service topology, controlled coupling, and safe evolution as the platform scales.
Platform engineering teams
Problem: Platform teams provide Kubernetes, CI/CD, and observability. Application teams deploy services that drift from intended architecture: undeclared dependencies, accidental exposure, or violations of domain boundaries.
Risk: Platform cannot enforce structural standards. Compliance and security reviews are manual and reactive.
How Elan8 solves: Architecture Control Plane above the platform. Define intended topology and policies; validate every environment. Enforce in CI so non-compliant deployments are blocked.
Outcome: Governance as code. Structural standards are automated and continuously validated.
Regulated industries
Problem: Regulators and auditors require evidence of control over system boundaries, data flow, and change impact. Documentation is often outdated or manual.
Risk: Audit findings, remediation cost, and inability to prove that architecture is governed and drift is detected.
How Elan8 solves: Declarative model and continuous validation produce a clear, up-to-date view of service topology, dependencies, and exposure. Policy enforcement and drift reports provide auditable evidence.
Outcome: Demonstrable control over structure and change, with automated validation and reports.
API-heavy organizations
Problem: Many services expose and consume APIs. Contract changes break consumers. There is no automated link between API changes and service dependency graph.
Risk: Breaking changes in production, long feedback cycles to discover affected services, and fear of changing APIs.
How Elan8 solves: API impact analysis: when a contract changes, Elan8 identifies consumers, affected environments, and whether the change is breaking. Validation in CI blocks breaking releases.
Outcome: Safe API evolution with known blast radius and automated guardrails.
Large engineering organizations
Problem: Many teams, many services. No single source of truth for how the system is structured. Architecture decisions and boundaries are tribal knowledge; refactors are risky.
Risk: Duplication, unintended coupling, and long lead times to understand impact of change. New joiners struggle to see the big picture.
How Elan8 solves: Single declarative architecture model, continuously validated against deployment. Drift detection and governance policies keep structure visible and enforceable. Impact analysis supports safe refactoring.
Outcome: Shared understanding of topology and boundaries; safer, faster evolution at scale.