Designed and implemented a unified LLM gateway providing OpenAI-compatible API access to multiple AI providers, complete with enterprise-grade RBAC, usage metrics, and cost allocation.
The Challenge
A global pharmaceutical leader needed to enable AI capabilities across their organisation while maintaining strict control over usage, costs, and compliance. Different teams were independently procuring AI services, leading to:
- Fragmented vendor relationships and inconsistent pricing
- No visibility into AI usage patterns or costs
- Security concerns with teams using consumer AI tools
- Inability to enforce corporate policies on AI usage
Our Solution
We designed and built an Enterprise LLM Gateway - a unified platform that provides:
OpenAI-Compatible API
A single API endpoint that applications can integrate with, regardless of which underlying LLM provider is being used. This allowed teams to:
- Write code once and switch providers seamlessly
- Avoid vendor lock-in
- Leverage the best model for each use case
Multi-Provider Support
The gateway routes requests to multiple LLM providers including:
- OpenAI (GPT-4, GPT-3.5)
- Azure OpenAI Service
- Anthropic Claude
- Open-source models via self-hosted infrastructure
Enterprise RBAC
Role-based access control integrated with corporate identity systems:
- Department-level quotas and spending limits
- Project-based access tokens
- Audit trails for compliance
- Approval workflows for high-cost models
Comprehensive Metrics & Analytics
Real-time dashboards providing:
- Token usage by team, project, and model
- Cost allocation and chargeback reporting
- Latency and reliability metrics
- Usage pattern analysis for capacity planning
Technical Implementation
The gateway was built using:
- API Layer: High-performance proxy handling thousands of concurrent requests
- Authentication: OAuth 2.0 integration with corporate SSO
- Rate Limiting: Intelligent throttling to manage costs and ensure fair usage
- Caching: Response caching for common queries to reduce costs
- Logging: Comprehensive request/response logging for audit and debugging
Results
The platform transformed how the organisation approached AI adoption:
- Unified access to 5+ LLM providers through a single API
- 40% cost reduction through intelligent routing and caching
- 100% visibility into AI usage across the enterprise
- Compliance confidence with full audit trails and access controls
- Accelerated adoption as teams could start using AI immediately with proper governance