Within modern enterprises, file-based batch processing has largely been replaced by Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), enabling systems to exchange information in near real time through event streams. However, this transformation has stopped at organisational boundaries. Business-to-business (B2B) asynchronous data exchange continues to rely on decades-old integration patterns, with SFTP-based file transfers, nightly batch jobs, and Managed File Transfer (MFT) platforms remaining the dominant mechanisms for sharing data between enterprises.

Although these methods reliably facilitated bulk data movement in the past, they struggle to meet today's integration requirements. Their batch-oriented nature introduces inherent latency, delays the propagation of business events, and concentrates processing into resource-intensive compute bursts. While some enterprises have adopted pull-based bulk REST APIs, this approach introduces its own set of challenges, including constant polling overhead, complex pagination, and increased system load. The optimal approach to B2B data sharing involves extending Event-Driven Architecture beyond organisational boundaries. This is, admittedly, an unconventional proposition: most enterprises deliberately avoid exposing internal brokers externally, even behind a gateway, given the risks of blast radius, backpressure propagation, and operational coupling to an external party's failure modes. This talk argues that with the right mediation layer and contract-first governance enabled by AsyncAPI , EDA can be extended across trust boundaries without inheriting these risks.

This Tech talk will provide a practical framework for tackling this problem with a focus on:

• Transition Challenges: Why moving to EDA is critical for B2B integrations, along with the infrastructure, security and governance challenges that come with it?
• Overcoming the Challenges: Practical approaches and strategies for addressing the infrastructure, security, governance, and operational challenges involved in transitioning to EDA for B2B integrations.
• Reference Architecture: How to use Proxies and Protocol Mediation gateways to safely ingest external payloads (Kafka , WebSockets , AMQP) into internal brokers while protecting network perimeters?
• AsyncAPI Governance: How AsyncAPI can serve as the "passport" (contract) for enforcing strict schema validation, version control, and channel boundaries?