GRTgaz: Calling on Apigee to help internal and external partners access intelligence securely
About GRTgaz
GRTgaz enables natural gas to be transported safely to industrial sites, gas-fired electricity production plants, and public distribution networks to supply individuals, communities, and businesses.
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With 110,000 employees in 73 countries, Atos is a global information technology service and consulting company helping organizations succeed in their digital transformation efforts.
GRTgaz, a leading European gas transporter, adopts an API-first IT strategy to enable business agility and give its partners easy access to its resources while keeping data secure.
Google Cloud results
- Ensures compliance by monitoring every step of data provisioning across the full IT ecosystem
- Enables partners to access business intelligence and other key GRTgaz services securely via APIs
- Supports collaboration between technical and non-technical teams with an easy-to-use, standardized API management interface
Improves IT security with full API life cycle visibility
Did you know that one of the main forms of energy used in Europe comes from many layers of decomposing natural matter exposed to intense heat and pressure under the surface of the Earth over millions of years?
That’s how natural gas is formed. And, if you live in Europe, chances are that you’re able to use it at home and work, thanks to GRTgaz. With 32,500 km of gas pipelines and 26 compression stations, the independent transport operator owns the longest high-pressure natural gas transmission network in Europe.
The company’s mission is to ensure the safe delivery of this gas to industrial sites, gas-fired electricity production plants, and the public distribution networks that supply individuals, communities, and businesses. At the same time, it aims to ensure fair competition among its customers by developing its network infrastructure, facilitating access to the market, and enriching its offer with new services. Underpinning all this is the need to guarantee transparency and access for all to the same business intelligence.
“An API-first strategy became central to our mission of enabling more agile processes in house and granting partners safe, easy access to our information systems. Apigee helps us in this mission by making it easy for us to track how our APIs are being requested across our full IT ecosystem.”
—Marion Poissonneau, Product Owner of API Management, GRTgazTo support this mission, GRTgaz decided to place APIs at the heart of its digitization strategy, with two main goals in mind. Firstly, to enable business agility by digitizing internal processes and connecting multiple applications across the company’s internal systems. Secondly, to provision data for partners more efficiently and securely by enabling them to access the company’s resources directly via APIs.
However, to ensure that this method of sharing information was compliant with company policies and industry regulation, the IT team needed an easy and effective way to manage and oversee all the data being requested, transferred, and processed across its information systems, at all times. To do this, the company worked with Google Cloud Premier Partner Atos to implement Apigee as its API management platform in 2019.
“An API-first strategy became central to our mission of enabling more agile processes in house and granting partners safe, easy access to our information systems. Apigee helps us in this mission by making it easy for us to track how our APIs are being requested across our full IT ecosystem,” says Marion Poissonneau, Product Owner of API Management at GRTgaz.
Driving innovation with an API-first strategy
For GRTgaz, adopting an API-first strategy means empowering its IT department of 250 employees with more agility and flexibility to meet business needs, while keeping existing systems running reliably and securely. “APIs are key to fostering collaboration inside and outside of the enterprise, between employees, suppliers, and partners. This is what we’re calling an ‘APIzation’ of our information systems, the cornerstone of our digital strategy,” says Marion, who explains that GRTgaz is developing 15 APIs to support this collaborative approach.
“APIzation through Apigee is helping us to improve IT security. Today, we can see exactly which end user activated which API and what data they requested. It gives us full visibility over the entire API life cycle and everything that happens across our systems.”
—Marion Poissonneau, Product Owner of API Management, GRTgazTo help both its IT team and non-technical staff to adopt these initial APIs, and to lay the foundation for future additions to its API catalog, GRTgaz prioritized ease of use in the selection process. Apigee stood out due to its extensive documentation, which GRTgaz felt would encourage widespread adoption across the company.
“Several elements of the Apigee offer were of interest to us,” says Marion, “such as the user experience and the ease of implementation. Apigee is easy to use, even for non-technical team members. I’m not a developer, yet I can easily use Apigee to create a proxy API, publish APIs on the portal, or monitor how our APIs are being used by partners,” she explains.
Furthermore, GRTgaz also prioritized a platform that helps it be transparent and compliant with industry regulations when it comes to data. In France, an independent authority called Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) ensures the smooth running of the natural gas market, and GRTgaz conducts all its business within its regulated framework. Using Apigee, GRTgaz can ensure and prove that compliance is maintained at all times by tracking every data request registered in the platform.
“APIzation through Apigee is helping us to improve IT security. Today, I can see exactly which end user activated which API, and what data they requested,” says Marion. “It gives us full visibility over the entire API life cycle and everything that happens across our systems.” Previously, this wasn’t possible, as the company relied on different systems to manage exchange flows, making it difficult to view all services simultaneously.
With Apigee, GRTgaz now has a single portal where employees can see all published APIs, each secured according to the confidentiality of its data. The portal offers self-service functions to partners, who can subscribe to certain APIs independently. At the same time, it provides monitoring and analytics functionalities for GRTgaz IT staff, who can understand which APIs are being called across its information systems, by whom, when, and how often.
“So far, we’ve learned that APIs are great for bringing business and IT teams to work together to anticipate users’ needs and foster business agility. Moving forward, we want to take inspiration from our API-first IT strategy and use Apigee to streamline even more processes across the company.”
—Marion Poissonneau, Product Owner of API Management, GRTgazEnabling agility beyond the IT department
Meanwhile, internally, the API-first strategy is also fostering business agility beyond the IT department. One internal project already in place uses an API to streamline HR processes related to expense claims. Previously, when GRTgaz employees needed to be reimbursed for work-related expenses, they’d make claims by handing in paper receipts of each transaction to their managers, and the paper would travel vertically until reaching the financial business unit for processing at the end of the month. Now, it’s all done digitally. From the comfort of their desks, employees can make a claim via an internal portal, and thanks to an API, it arrives for processing within minutes.
“So far, we’ve learned that APIs are great for bringing business and IT teams to work together to anticipate users’ needs and foster business agility,” she adds. “Moving forward, we want to take inspiration from our API-first IT strategy and use Apigee to streamline even more processes across the company,” she adds.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About GRTgaz
GRTgaz enables natural gas to be transported safely to industrial sites, gas-fired electricity production plants, and public distribution networks to supply individuals, communities, and businesses.
About Atos
With 110,000 employees in 73 countries, Atos is a global information technology service and consulting company helping organizations succeed in their digital transformation efforts.