The Most Expensive Connector Is the One You Build Twice
Modern Enterprise Architecture for Secure, Scalable, AI-Ready APS Integration
Autodesk DevCon 2026 📅 April 15–16, 2026 · 📍 Beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam · 🎤 Varun Bhartiya, (CEO, nCircle Tech), Mayank Mridul, (Senior Software Engineer at Autodesk)
The session is now available on demand. Watch Varun Bhartiya and Mayank Mridul walk through the complete 3-Pillar APS Integration Framework — with live architecture diagrams and a production demo of the DX Power BI Connector.
Session Highlights from Autodesk DevCon 2026
nCircle Tech joined the global Autodesk developer community in Amsterdam for Autodesk DevCon 2026 — two days of technical sessions, product deep-dives, and conversations shaping the future of APS, ACC, and AI-first platform development.
A standout moment was Session 1209, presented by Varun Bhartiya (nCircle Tech) and Mayank Mridul (Autodesk) on "The Most Expensive Connector: Modern Enterprise Architecture for Secure, Scalable, AI-Ready APS Integration."
The session sparked thoughtful conversations around integration complexity, architectural decision-making, and how the right platform choices can significantly impact long-term scalability and outcomes.
At nCircle Tech, these conversations reinforce what we see every day — when automation, integrations, and AI are applied thoughtfully, they can meaningfully improve decision-making and help teams scale engineering outcomes across AECO and manufacturing.
Key themes from the floor at DevCon 2026:
- AI-first thinking is becoming the norm — moving from pilots to real, production-ready adoption across platforms
- Strong emphasis on turning project data into actionable intelligence, not just dashboards
- Growing interest in platform-level patterns to help teams reduce noise and focus on what truly needs attention
- A shared recognition that enterprise architecture, APIs, and automation are foundational to building secure, scalable, and AI-ready ecosystems
What the Session Covered
The Problem Everyone in the Room Recognised
If your team builds integrations between Autodesk Platform Services (APS) and Power BI, Tableau, Salesforce, or a custom dashboard — you have almost certainly rebuilt one from scratch at least once.
New customer needs it with different permissions: rebuild. A new BI tool comes along: rebuild. The business wants AI-ready data pipelines: rebuild again.
This cycle has a name — the thick connector anti-pattern — and it costs enterprise development teams in three ways most never measure: the cost of rebuilding, the cost of fragility, and the cost of every AI use case they cannot deliver.
Varun and Mayank presented the architecture that ends this cycle permanently — drawn from a decade of enterprise APS delivery across 100+ clients in 20+ countries, battle-tested and in production today.
The 3-Pillar APS Integration Framework
Pillar 1 — The Thin Connector
Your connector has one job: call your backend REST API and apply light data shaping. That is all.
Not authentication. Not pagination. Not rate-limit handling. Not business logic. Those belong in the backend.
The before-and-after is stark. Before: 500+ lines of M script doing work it was never designed for. After: approximately 50 lines — fetch from one endpoint, shape for display. The same connector serves Power BI, Tableau, Salesforce, or an AI pipeline without a single line of change.
Your connector connects. It does not compute.
Pillar 2 — The Smart Backend
The backend does all the heavy lifting the connector no longer does — in a scalable, resilient, cloud-native architecture built for enterprise data volumes.
The production pattern: an SQS FIFO queue for reliable, ordered job processing; DynamoDB for job state persistence; Streaming Parquet generation so large Revit and ACC models never cause memory blow-up; and S3 with CloudFront for secure, signed delivery back to the client.
This backend serves Power BI today. Tomorrow — with zero changes to the connector — it serves Tableau, a custom dashboard, or an AI inference pipeline. The architecture is AI-ready by design, not by accident.
Pillar 3 — Secure Service Accounts (SSA)
The traditional approach: each user manages their own OAuth token. The connector handles N tokens across every customer. Admins have no central visibility. Rate limits are chaotic and fragmented.
The SSA approach: an admin provisions one scoped service account. The backend uses it. Users never interact with credentials.
What this unlocks: one connector serving 100 enterprise customers, central access control across your entire customer base, a full audit trail on a single managed identity, and no per-user rate limit collisions. SSA turns your APS connector from a per-user tool into an enterprise platform.
Key Takeaways from the Session
- Diagnose the anti-pattern — most teams don't realise they have a thick connector until they've rebuilt it three times
- Separate concerns permanently — Thin Connector + Smart Backend + SSA is not a refactor, it is an architectural reset
- M language has limits — Power BI M is the wrong tool for complex API orchestration; the right tool is a backend you own
- AI-readiness is architectural — you cannot bolt AI onto a thick connector; it must flow through a backend you control
- Build it once — the same architecture that serves Power BI today serves every client, every tool, and every AI pipeline without rebuilding
About the Speaker
Varun Bhartiya(CEO, nCircle Tech), Mayank Mridul (Senior Software Engineer at Autodesk)
Varun Bhartiya is the CEO of nCircle Tech, a certified Autodesk Forge Systems Integrator headquartered in Pune, India. Under his leadership, nCircle has delivered 300+ solutions across 100+ clients in 20+ countries in AEC and manufacturing, earning recognition as a trusted partner to Autodesk, Siemens PLM, and Hinduja.
nCircle has been an early adopter of Autodesk Forge since its launch and is now a recognised leader in enterprise Autodesk Platform Services development — building connectors, 3D web applications, and AI-powered BIM workflows for some of the world's most demanding organisations.
"nCircle Tech is a long-standing and trusted Certified Partner of Autodesk. They have a proven track record of providing transformative solutions, most recently delivering mission-critical interoperability integrations for AEC and Manufacturing customers." — Hardev Saini, Director of Product Management, Autodesk
Mayank Mridul is a Senior Software Development Engineer on the Data Exchange team at Autodesk. With over four years of experience at Autodesk, he works on building scalable, data-driven systems that improve interoperability across platforms. Passionate about emerging technologies and collaborative development, Mayank focuses on turning complex data into real-world solutions. He has presented his work at DevCon 2025 and Autodesk University, and holds a degree in Computer Science from KIIT University, India.
Want to Explore the Framework Further?
The 3-Pillar APS Integration Framework is the architecture behind nCircle Tech's DX Power BI Connector — available to try today.
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