SAKTI TD — Strategic Command Center
How we integrated 20-30 internal systems into one dashboard that defence agency commanders trust for strategic decisions. An 8-month story about authentication, cache strategy, and why Excel still survives in government to this day.
How Commanders Make Decisions
Imagine you are a defence agency commander and you need to answer one question: how many personnel in formation A are in training status this week. To get that answer in the legacy setup, you log into HRMIS, export to Excel. Then log into EMESYS to check formation equipment status. Then log into ADIMS to cross-check ICT assets. Then compile everything in your own Excel. By the time you finish, your data is 3 days outdated. That is why most strategic decisions in government depend on weekly reports, not real-time visibility. Not because commanders are lazy. Because their tools allow nothing else.
“Enterprise integration in government is not a technical problem. Each system has a team that owns it, has budget, has politics. Our tech solves the rest, but only after the human alignment is settled. If you try to integrate before stakeholders agree, you are building for a warehouse, not for users.”
Insight from the discovery phase
The Approach We Chose
Not rocket science, but execution is everything. Three major decisions:
Discovery first, code later
First 8 weeks we audited every internal system. Not just asking what API is available. We documented authentication protocols, database schemas, data formats, and most importantly the politics between teams that own these systems. Because every system has an owner, and no team gives up their credentials without understanding what happens to their data.
SSO as foundation
Before aggregating any data, we built SSO middleware using SAML and OAuth2. Without SSO, no integration scales. Each system has different login flow, but officers cannot log in 20 times daily. SSO completed in 6 weeks. That was the riskiest part because if it failed, the whole integration project would fail.
Cache is the secret weapon
An executive dashboard that loads in 3 seconds is a dashboard that officers stop using by the second week. We built cache layer with Redis to pre-compute common aggregations. Refresh rates chosen based on freshness needs: command-level views every 30 seconds, operational drill-downs every 5 minutes. Compromise between real-time and performance.
Before vs After
Before SAKTI
- Officers manually logging into separate systems
- Weekly Excel compilation for reporting
- Outdated data by the time it reached decision-makers
After SAKTI
- Single Sign-On, login once
- Real-time aggregation from all systems
- Decision-makers have instant visibility
- Geographic intelligence + drill-down
Architecture Overview
Foundation is Laravel 12 backend with Sanctum-based SSO middleware. SAML 2.0 for inbound authentication from internal systems, OAuth 2.0 for outbound delegation. Each internal system has an adapter translating their format to unified schema. Data flows asynchronously via queue jobs so one slow system does not bottleneck the dashboard. Redis cache for pre-computed aggregations. Vue 3 with Inertia frontend with per-command filtering. Geographic visualization layer using formation location data. All deployed in Docker with strict network isolation for government compliance.
Tech Stack
What Was Achieved
Measured Impact
Three main stakeholders, three different ways this system changed how they work.
Commanders / Decision Makers
- Real-time visibility across the internal ecosystem
- Per-command filters for focused views
- Geographic intelligence for operational planning
- Decisions based on live data, not weekly summaries
Operations Officers
- Stop manual data compilation, save hours weekly
- Single login for access to all systems
- Automatic audit trail for every query
Strategic Lessons
- →Thorough discovery in the first month saves 3 to 4 months of rework mid-project. I have never regretted time spent on discovery, but always regretted time wasted from skipping it.
- →Authentication is a political problem, not a technical one. If you want SSO that works, you need trust between teams that own different systems, not just the right SAML library.
- →Cache strategy is the difference between a dashboard that works and a dashboard that gets abandoned. Decision-makers have no time for loading spinners.
Are your organization's internal systems disconnected?
I can share the approach from this project. 30-minute discovery call. No hard sell, just experience from a similar project.
