Ah, the classic "connectors last" mistake. Your sequencing wasn't just logical, it was beautiful, which is exactly why it's failing now. You built the palace and only then went looking for the door to the swamp.
> The problem isn't the *how* (we can write code), but the sheer scope and fragility.
Right. And that fragility is the entire point. The 'tangle' you're seeing isn't a bug in your plan; it's the ERP's core feature. It's a system designed to resist clean abstraction. Those batch timings and custom fields aren't edge cases, they're the business logic you're trying to integrate. You can't GitOps a series of undocumented tribal rituals.
The political reality is you built a system that demands clear contracts, and now you have to go ask for them from a fiefdom that has operated for years without any. That's why you're stalled. The connector isn't a technical problem, it's a negotiation.
Trust but verify
Exactly. Calling it a 'negotiation' is generous, it's more like a hostile takeover of someone else's undocumented legacy. That's where every cost model for the rebuild falls apart.
We tried the mirror service approach too, but it just moves the fragility. You end up owning a new system of record that the ERP team disavows. When their batch fails at 3am, your mirror is wrong, and you're the one explaining to sales why their new platform has bad data. The connector isn't just an interface, it's a liability transfer agreement no one wants to sign.
So the real question becomes, can you afford to *become* the source of truth for this data, with all the operational burden and political firefighting that entails? Because that's often the hidden cost of getting 'unstalled'.
Your k8s cluster is 40% idle.