Asahi Group: Global Expansion through API-First Strategy and Apigee Integration

Asahi Group Holdings Ltd. is a leading food and beverage company based in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1949, the company operates in various segments including alcoholic beverages, soft drinks, food, overseas, and others such as logistics. Asahi Group has a global presence, running a beverages empire that spans from Australia to Indonesia, Romania, the United States, and beyond. The company is known for its commitment to tradition and innovative spirit, which has helped it develop Japan's popular, homegrown beer brand and expand its operations globally.

Asahi Group, a leading food and beverage company, faced significant challenges in its global operations due to its legacy on-premises infrastructure. The company's global units, often born of acquisitions, needed to collaborate seamlessly and in real time. However, the existing infrastructure was causing bottlenecks even in routine tasks such as onboarding new employees, as data needed to be funneled through a centralized hub server. The company's ambitious multi-year cloud modernization program aimed to overhaul its legacy infrastructure to a modernized cloud architecture by 2027. However, the sprawling global business could not afford to skip a beat even in the midst of this transformation. The challenge was to ensure seamless data sharing and cooperation across platforms, offering transformative agility, scaling power, and robust security.

To overcome these challenges, Asahi Group adopted an API-first strategy, turning the company into an API-first organization. The company chose Apigee, a part of Google Cloud, as the API-management platform to enable its global modernization vision. Apigee allowed Asahi Group to build APIs on top of its legacy systems, enabling integration with systems that had migrated to the public cloud. This ensured seamless operations while the architecture was being modernized in parallel. The company also leveraged Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for more agile and dynamic scaling, and BigQuery for real-time data analytics. The API-first strategy managed by Apigee enabled all stakeholders in Asahi Group's business ecosystem to work together seamlessly, while also paving the way for future digital growth strategies.

• The adoption of an API-first strategy and the integration of Apigee have brought about transformative changes in Asahi Group's operations. The company's computer systems are now updated in real time, enabling seamless processing of new employee data. This has significantly improved the onboarding process, with all new staffer credentials, including Identity and Access Management (IAM), set up from day one. This is a significant improvement from the past, where it was a laborious multi-day process that required daily entry and access badges. Furthermore, the API-first strategy has opened up a future of unlimited potential for Asahi Group, from smart factory transformation to advanced global consumer and market analytics.

• Real-time computer system update with seamless data processing, compared to a laborious multi-day process previously.

• Over 70% of the company’s data integration jobs are now handled by Apigee, leading to significant efficiency gains.

• BigQuery’s speed, ease of use, and affordability have made a significant impact on the IT team.