Maksim Kogan

Product and platform architect writing about product-grade integration, architecture economics, and platform evolution.

qconn is my independent architecture practice and public body of work on product and platform architecture for connected, evolving systems.

I write for product and technology leaders responsible for platforms, ecosystems, and products that must connect with customers, partners, and legacy systems. The recurring problem is simple to state and difficult to solve: every new connection creates value, but it can also create another permanent variant, dependency, or operating burden.

Point of view

Integration is not only middleware or project delivery. It becomes a product and platform concern when it shapes customer onboarding, partner participation, compatibility, operability, and the cost of future change.

Over roughly twenty years, I have worked from both sides of the table. As an enterprise buyer and operator, I dealt with API governance, event-driven platforms, integration estates, and legacy modernization. On the vendor side, I saw how integration platforms are positioned, sold, selected, and adopted.

That experience gives me a bias toward honest answers. Sometimes the right answer is “buy the platform.” Sometimes it is “do not buy another platform before you understand your operating model.” Sometimes it is “assemble only the parts you can actually maintain.”

Areas of work

  • Product-grade integration: APIs, events, partner connectivity, extension points, compatibility, observability, and customer variation as product capabilities.
  • Architecture economics and ownership: buy, build, assemble, retain, or retire decisions grounded in lifecycle cost, option value, and operating constraints.
  • Evolutionary product and platform architecture: modernization, transition states, ecosystem boundaries, governance, and change without permanent complexity.
  • Governed agentic integration, an emerging area: building a body of work on identity, delegated authority, tool and data boundaries, approval, provenance, observability, revocation, and failure containment for AI agents.

qconn is authority-first, not product-first. I publish decision essays, public architecture decision records, executive briefs, and working proofs. The artifacts make the reasoning testable; they are not a supported software product.

If these are decisions you own, read and subscribe at qconn on Substack, or browse qconn on GitHub.