Picsart’s Apigee-powered Pivot: From B2C to B2B, Bringing Graphic Design Capabilities to Businesses
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With 150 million users and counting, Picsart was originally founded as a photo and video editing app we use to enhance our everyday life before uploading them to various social media platforms. As its user numbers continue growing, the company began exploring options for incorporating its easy-to-use editing tools into other applications and services. Now, businesses looking for a low-lift solution to enhance their product offerings with Picsart’s award-winning software suite can do so. Thanks to Apigee, organizations from assorted markets, such as printers, t-shirt makers, and phone case designers, are benefiting from Picsart’s custom design APIs.
Picsart helps companies reach a new audience of customers by offering them graphic design capabilities at an affordable cost, avoiding the resource and time-intensive process of hiring developers and building these functions from scratch. The benefits of APIs are energizing Picsart’s business partners, too; with the addition of photo editing, keeping customers engaged, and returning to their apps.
“Eighty percent of our users are Generation Z and Millennials,” says Jinny Jung, vice-president of Picsart’s API program. “They’re the future of creators all over the globe. They want creative control.”
“Many of the businesses we serve are looking to tap into that audience. They really need solutions like this to take their business to the next level,” Jung adds. Having an API service also takes Picsart to the next level — thanks in part to Apigee.
How to turn a quick pivot
Moving from strictly business-to-consumer (B2C) services to a business-to-business (B2B) offering wasn’t easy for Picsart. The company had to adopt an entirely new business model and develop a new suite of API products — and they did so quickly.
When a prominent social media site contacted Picsart about offering its editing tools to their users via APIs, Picsart knew it couldn’t miss this opportunity. However, none of their developers knew how to manage APIs for external use, an endeavor involving multiple processes and fraught with logistical complications. Failing to configure APIs correctly allows malicious actors to effortlessly bypass cybersecurity protections, exposing network data.
The company quickly assembled an API business unit to plan and coordinate the creation of a secure API development process. This process would support marketing, sales, distribution, and other facets of the business, all while still delivering great functionality to the company’s original B2C customers. And voila! Picsart was reborn.
The API BU works as “a scrappy startup within a larger company,” as Jung puts it. Its budget is scrappy too. Among the unit’s first tasks: finding an API management platform that could simplify and streamline all the tasks the team faced at an affordable price. Jung says that Apigee was a clear choice.
“Apigee’s offerings gave us the flexibility to get off the ground without a huge budget and grow our business over time. It’s super easy to use, the dashboard is very intuitive, and the price came in well for us.”
The company had already used APIs internally, but had never provided them to customers or partners.
“We needed to lean on gateways and management platforms that already knew how to set everything up,” Jung says. “We really needed the shortcut.”
Her team did consider other API platforms, but being part of Google Cloud gave Apigee a natural edge.
“We were already Google Cloud clients. We were already part of the Google Cloud ecosystem. We really liked Apigee’s ease of use and the power of Google behind it.”
Apigee works seamlessly in tandem with its other Google Cloud services, including the Google Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN) and BigQuery, Google Cloud’s fully-managed data warehouse.
“Apigee’s integration with the whole Google ecosystem makes our lives easier, and makes it quite natural for us to use,” says Tiberiu Stanescu, director of engineering for the Picsart API business unit. “It allows us to also meet our technical needs, including scalability and even improved performance with queries and, when we’re integrating the data, dashboards.”
Using Apigee for total API control
Picsart uses Apigee to manage all its external APIs, which include those that enable users to remove or change photo backgrounds, apply filters, and add text. Apigee also manages the API features for Picsart’s Editor SDK package.
Key ways in which Picsart uses Apigee include:
- API management. Apigee runs test/stage and production environments, can customize pre-and post-flows, and automatically authorize for services with different methods including API Keys and oAuth.
Apigee’s pre-built integrated portal has helped Picsart “greatly” in the time the company has been using it, Stanescu says. He praised its flexibility and its rate-limiting function, “which allows us to properly define and secure our products.”
- Developer support. With Apigee, Picsart now takes an “API-first” approach to developing new features by using microservice architectures. They’re exposing APIs via their developer portal, which allows them to describe precisely how developers can use each API.
- Apigee helps Picsart’s own developers use APIs to simplify the development process and save the company time and money. In conjunction with other Google products, Apigee is providing Picsart with the data and analytics it needs to view and monitor API-related productivity improvements.
- Security. Apigee’s out-of-the-box security requires no specialized knowledge or skill to implement. Picsart relies on Apigee security features such as including headers to set up security parameters, and custom rate-limiting policies and quotas, allowing the company to avoid stack overflow from API calls.
As a result, the company has experienced zero API-related security incidents, Stanescu notes. “We’re definitely grateful to Apigee for this,” he adds. Recently, Stanescu says, a company performed penetration testing on Picsart’s APIs, looking for vulnerabilities, but failed to discover any security flaws or threats. Apigee’s easy-to-use, but powerful security features are helping Picsart keep its clients and customers safe and secure.
From scrappy startup to business core
In the three years since implementing Google Apigee, Picsart’s API business unit has gone from a seemingly simple request to a critical product offering enabling new and recurring revenue.
“It’s part of the foundation of our business,” says Jinny Jung. “It powers our entire API external-facing business. We wouldn’t be able to sell APIs to developers and partners without the Apigee API gateway. We wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without Apigee.”
Apigee is helping Picsart in another key way, too: its integration with products like BigQuery, Google’s data analytics platform that lets it stay on top of which APIs are most used. That information guides every aspect of the business and helps the company develop and release new generative AI-powered products.
“The data absolutely informs what we choose to develop and where we put our resources,” Jung says. “Apigee makes it super easy for us to track API use and see the trends.”
With Apigee, Picsart is opening up a new world of creative design to audiences across all markets and demographics, while avoiding the stress that comes with a costly development process. Today, generative AI apps continue capturing imaginations, unlocking the ability to create awe-inspiring art with only a few natural language prompts. Picsart and Apigee will continue working together to provide a canvas through APIs no matter where an artist may be.
Enhance Your GKE Deployment with Improved Control Plane Connectivity and Isolation
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Once upon a time, all Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters used public IP addressing for communication between nodes and the control plane. Subsequently, we heard your security concerns and introduced private clusters enabled by VPC peering.
To consolidate the connectivity types, starting in March 2022, we began using Google Cloud’s Private Service Connect (PSC) for new public clusters’ communication between the GKE cluster control plane and nodes, which has profound implications for how you can configure your GKE environment. Today, we’re presenting a new consistent PSC-based framework for GKE control plane connectivity from cluster nodes. Additionally, we’re excited to announce a new feature set which includes cluster isolation at the control plane and node pool levels to enable more scalable, secure — and cheaper! — GKE clusters.
New architecture
Starting with GKE version 1.23 and later, all new public clusters created on or after March 15th, 2022 began using Google Cloud’s PSC infrastructure to communicate between the GKE cluster control plane and nodes. PSC provides a consistent framework that helps connect different networks through a service networking approach, and allows service producers and consumers to communicate using private IP addresses internal to a VPC.
The biggest benefit of this change is to set the stage for using PSC-enabled features for GKE clusters.
The new set of cluster isolation capabilities we’re presenting here is part of the evolution to a more scalable and secure GKE cluster posture. Previously, private GKE clusters were enabled with VPC peering, introducing specific network architectures. With this feature set, you now have the ability to:
- Update the GKE cluster control plane to only allow access to a private endpoint
- Create or update a GKE cluster node pool with public or private nodes
- Enable or disable GKE cluster control plane access from Google-owned IPs.
In addition, the new PSC infrastructure can provide cost savings. Traditionally, control plane communication is treated as normal egress and is charged for public clusters as a normal public IP charge. This is also true if you’re running kubectl for provisioning or other operational reasons. With PSC infrastructure, we have eliminated the cost of communication between the control plane and your cluster nodes, resulting in one less network egress charge to worry about.
Now, let’s take a look at how this feature set enables these new capabilities.
Allow access to the control plane only via a private endpoint
Private cluster users have long had the ability to create the control plane with both public and private endpoints. We now extend the same flexibility to public GKE clusters based on PSC. With this, if you want private-only access to your GKE control plane but want all your node pools to be public, you can do so.
This model provides a tighter security posture for the control plane, while leaving you to choose what kind of cluster node you need, based on your deployment.
To enable access only to a private endpoint on the control plane, use the following gcloud command:
gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
--enable-private-endpoint
Allow toggling and mixed-mode clusters with public and private node pools
All cloud providers with managed Kubernetes offerings offer both public and private clusters. Whether a cluster is public or private is enforced at the cluster level, and cannot be changed once it is created. Now you have the ability to toggle a node pool to have private or public IP addressing.
You may also want a mix of private and public node pools. For example, you may be running a mix of workloads in your cluster in which some require internet access and some don’t. Instead of setting up NAT rules, you can deploy a workload on a node pool with public IP addressing to ensure that only such node pool deployments are publicly accessible.
To enable private-only IP addressing on existing node pools, use the following gcloud command:
gcloud container node-pools update POOL_NAME \
--cluster CLUSTER_NAME \
--enable-private-nodesTo enable private-only IP addressing at node pool creation time, use the following gcloud command:
gcloud container node-pools create POOL_NAME \
--cluster CLUSTER_NAME \
--enable-private-nodesConfigure access from Google Cloud
In some scenarios, users have identified workloads outside of their GKE cluster, for example, applications running in Cloud Run or any GCP VMs sourced with Google Cloud public IPs were allowed to reach the cluster control plane. To mitigate potential security concerns, we have introduced a feature that allows you to toggle access to your cluster control plane from such sources.
To remove access from Google Cloud public IPs to the control plane, use the following gcloud command:
gcloud container clusters update CLUSTER_NAME \
--no-enable-google-cloud-accessSimilarly, you can use this flag at cluster creation time.
Choose your private endpoint address
Many customers like to map IPs to a stack for easier troubleshooting and to track usage. For example — IP block x for Infrastructure, IP block y for Services, IP block z for the GKE control plane, etc. By default, the private IP address for the control plane in PSC-based GKE clusters comes from the node subnet. However, some customers treat node subnets as infrastructure and apply security policies against it. To differentiate between infrastructure and the GKE control plane, you can now create a new custom subnet and assign it to your cluster control plane.
gcloud container clusters create CLUSTER_NAME \
--private-endpoint-subnetwork=SUBNET_NAMEWhat can you do with this new GKE architecture?
With this new set of features, you can basically remove all public IP communication for your GKE clusters! This, in essence, means you can make your GKE clusters completely private.
You currently need to create the cluster as public to ensure that it uses PSC, but you can then update your cluster using gcloud with the --enable-private-endpoint flag, or the UI, to configure access via only a private endpoint on the control plane or create new private node pools.
Alternatively, you can control access at cluster creation time with the --master-authorized-networks and --no-enable-google-cloud-access flags to prevent access from public addressing to the control plane.
Furthermore, you can use the REST API or Terraform Providers to actually build a new PSC-based GKE cluster with the default (thus first) node pools to have private nodes. This can be done by setting the enablePrivateNodes field to true (instead of leveraging the public GKE cluster defaults and then updating afterwards, as currently required with gcloud and UI operations).
Lastly, the aforementioned features extend not only to Standard GKE clusters, but also to GKE Autopilot clusters.
When evaluating if you’re ready to move these PSC-based GKE cluster types to take advantage of private cluster isolation, keep in mind that the control plane’s private endpoint has the following limitations:
- Private addresses in URLs for new or existing webhooks that you configure are not supported. To mitigate this incompatibility and assign an internal IP address to the URL for webhooks, set up a webhook to a private address by URL, create a headless service without a selector and a corresponding endpoint for the required destination.
- The control plane private endpoint is not currently accessible from on-premises systems.
- The control plane private endpoint is not currently globally accessible: Client VMs from different regions than the cluster region cannot connect to the control plane’s private endpoint.
All public clusters on version 1.25 and later that are not yet PSC-based are currently being migrated to the new PSC infrastructure; therefore, your clusters might already be using PSC to communicate with the control plane.
To learn more about GKE clusters with PSC-based control plane communication, check out these references:
- GKE Concept page for public clusters with PSC
- How-to: Change Cluster Isolation page
- How-to: GKE node pool creation page with isolation feature flag
- How-to: Schedule Pods on GKE Autopilot private nodes
- gcloud reference to create a cluster with a custom private subnet
- Terraform Providers Google: release v4.45.0 page
- Google Cloud Private Services Connect page.
Here are the more specific features in the latest Terraform Provider, handy to integrate into your automation pipeline:
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How to Manage Complexity While Going Multi-Cloud with Anthos
Today’s success depends more than ever on making the most of both on-premises investments and the various cloud offerings available to you. Come learn about how Google Cloud is bringing to you simplified operations everywhere to help you succeed in a world of hybrid, multi cloud and edge scenarios that could otherwise threaten to fragment your deployment. Use Anthos to take an uncompromising stand on quality infrastructure everywhere for your applications.
Pizza Hut India: Increasing Customer Coverage and Delivering Pizzas on Time
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A subsidiary of United States-headquartered corporation Yum! Brands, Pizza Hut prides itself on serving more pizzas than any other pizza business. Founded in 1958, Pizza Hut operates 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. In the Indian subcontinent, Pizza Hut and franchise partners Devyani International and Sapphire Foods India operate more than 500 pizza restaurants, including 430 in India itself.
Yum! Brands aims to increase the number of Pizza Hut restaurants in India to 700 by 2022 and has nominated the country as one of the keys to its future growth. The business also operates the KFC and Taco Bell brands in India.
“Globally we are the number one pizza chain in the world based on store count and we aim to be the single biggest pizza brand in India,” says Prashant Gaur, Chief Brand and Customer Officer, Pizza Hut India Subcontinent.
Google Cloud Results
- Maximizes customer coverage and helps ensure riders deliver pizzas to customers within required timeframes
- Onboards new stores to delivery in half a day, rather than the one month required previously
- Meets tech-savvy customer demands to interact across new social media messaging channels
- Launch of live tracking delivers superior customer experience, driving positive word of mouth and repeat business
Pizza Hut launched initially in the country in the late 1990s as a dine-in restaurant brand. However, with changing customer needs, Pizza Hut soon included delivery and takeaway to provide customers with the best tasting pizzas whenever and wherever they wanted them. “Pizza is always at the center of the experience, whether through delivery, dine-in, or takeaway,” says Gaur. “Convenience is key in allowing people to access our products.”
Manual processes
While the business had long shifted into a model that featured delivery and takeaway options, it still used some manual processes. For example, some restaurants used manual listings of customer addresses to manage delivery, which ended up excluding some customers and compromising the brand. In other cases it could take the business up to a week to create a trade zone – a delivery zone assigned to a restaurant – for each new outlet, delaying the commencement of delivery services and costing the business money.
In addition, Pizza Hut India identified an opportunity to more closely track whether pizzas were being delivered within targeted timeframes.
“In some cases, we were using a manual, self-reporting mechanism that provided information about the number of orders that reached consumers less than 30 minutes after an order was placed,” explains Ashish Agarwal, Director, Technology and eCommerce, Pizza Hut India Subcontinent. “We wanted to objectively track and verify delivery times.”
Manual order tracking and execution also limited the number of orders that could be processed effectively during demand peaks. Further, customers could not monitor the status of their pizza orders, including estimated time of arrival.
“Millennial consumers expect products and services to be available when and where they want them. Our focus is to retain the heritage of the brand, which is the dine-in environment, legendary service, and great assets in terms of our stores, while responding to this demand,” adds Gaur.
Pizza Hut India also needed improved analytics in order to identify where the best returns could be achieved by opening new restaurants; how to improve the customer experience; and operate more efficiently.
The business decided to implement a transformation program underpinned by two imperatives: the need to deliver operational efficiencies and scale faster by accelerating the opening of new stores, and the need to give consumers the option of connecting with the brand using the most convenient channel.
A ground-breaking initiative
Pizza Hut India evaluated potential technology partners that could help deliver the program and decided to partner with digital consulting services company MediaAgility, and use Google Maps Platform and Google Cloud Platform services.
“Our journey with MediaAgility and Google incorporated two key initiatives that had a specific impact on our brand and consumers,” says Gaur. “The first of these initiatives was the launch of a feature that enabled consumers and our business to track delivery riders in real time.”
This initiative was ground-breaking for a business that had, until recent years, focused on establishing itself as a restaurant brand. However, with delivery an increasingly important part of its revenue mix, Pizza Hut India decided to build customer engagement through the channel. “By allowing customers to track delivery riders in real time, we could improve engagement – but more importantly give them control,” says Gaur.
During the evaluation, MediaAgility demonstrated Google Maps Platform to Pizza Hut India. “We loved Google Maps Platform as its accuracy and value was proven by consumers using Google Maps for their day-to-day needs,” says Agarwal.
Pizza Hut India conducted brainstorming sessions with MediaAgility and its franchise partners to develop its strategy and complete the implementation. The business then completed several proofs of concept to determine how best to deploy and adapt the technology to some operational processes. “We submitted some data points to our franchise partners and our Pizza Hut brand operations team, and they determined which option to adopt,” says Agarwal.
Google Maps Platform powers delivery
MediaAgility, Pizza Hut India, and the franchise partners then completed a three-month implementation that included onboarding all existing restaurants and new restaurants to the delivery platform based on Google Maps Platform and on Google Cloud Platform.
Pizza Hut India now uses Distance Matrix API through Google Maps Platform to provide travel time and distance based on recommended routes between origins and destinations. This service helps provide delivery riders’ estimated time of arrival to customers.
Directions Service calculates directions by communicating with the Google Maps API Directions Service, which receives direction requests and returns efficient paths based on travel time and factors such as distance and number of turns. This service provides a view of the delivery rider’s position relative to the customer’s location.
Through the Nearest Roads service included in Roads API, Pizza Hut India obtains individual road segments for given GPS coordinates, while Snap to Roads provides the best-fit road geometry for given GPS coordinates.
The business employs Maps Javascript API to customize maps with dedicated content and imagery for websites and mobile devices – showing a map view to store managers and customers – and uses Maps SDK for Android to add maps based on Google Maps to its applications.
Google Cloud Platform runs the delivery platform
Pizza Hut India is running its delivery platform on a Google Cloud Platform architecture that comprises App Engine to run its web applications; virtual machine instances provided through Compute Engine; Cloud Datastore to run a NoSQL document database; Firebase to develop and run its mobile applications; Cloud Storage to store data; and a BigQuery analytics data warehouse.
Realizing goals
With Google Maps Platform and Google Cloud Platform, Pizza Hut India and its franchise partners are realizing the goals of the transformation program.
Rather than take up to seven days to manually map trade zones for stores, Pizza Hut India uses Google Maps Platform to create and update them as required. “After we started working with MediaAgility and Google, we digitized those maps and created trade zones – zones within which Pizza Hut India restaurants will deliver – based on estimated travel times during the busiest time of the week,” says Gaur. “This minimizes the risk of late deliveries.
“The other benefit was reduced time to activate new stores,” he adds. “If you are launching 100 stores per year, this becomes a big, big task. Now we can bring new stores into the market much more quickly.”
With MediaAgility and Google Maps Platform, the business can also help ensure newly built establishments – such as blocks of flats – are captured within trade zones, allowing stores to deliver to residents.
Delivery accounts for increased transactions
Pizza Hut India now automatically allocate orders to delivery riders using a rider tracking application on their mobile phones. When a rider starts his or her journey, Google Maps Platform enables point-by-point tracking by consumers and store managers. The Pizza Hut India delivery operations team monitors delivery performance through a real-time dashboard.
Pizza Hut India is meeting customer expectations of live, map-based streaming of delivery status on their devices – enhancing customer experience and loyalty, and adding accountability to the process. The business is reaping the rewards of its investment, with delivery now a large slice of its overall offering. “We have taken significant strides in the past three to four years to change our customers’ online ordering experience, and the last-mile delivery experience to the customers’ homes,” says Gaur.
Launching delivery tracking has also had a dramatic impact on Pizza Hut India’s internal key performance indicators. “The proportion of calls to our call center that are following up on an order, as opposed to placing an order, has fallen dramatically,” says Gaur.
Advanced analytics
Further, Pizza Hut India is running advanced analysis of data in the BigQuery data warehouse, enabling the business to determine which restaurants are doing well, which deliveries may be delayed, and what locations are most promising to open a new store. These insights enable the business to boost productivity, expand effectively, and operate more efficiently.
The business can now onboard new stores to delivery in half a day, rather than the month required previously. “The process enabled by Google Cloud and MediaAgility is also delivering significant operational cost savings as well as helping us open and grow new stores quickly,” says Agarwal.
“MediaAgility acted as our development partner across the project, helping us deploy everything from zones to rider tracking,” he says. “It’s been with us from the strategy discussion through the implementation and stabilization phases.”
Chatbot in development
MediaAgility has also helped Pizza Hut India create a chatbot using the Dialogflow development suite for creating conversational interfaces. “This project is about giving millennials and other customers one more channel to reach out and connect to the brand,” explains Agarwal.
Pizza Hut India is now ideally placed to continue growing and position itself as a brand of choice for tech-savvy consumers. “We’re extremely pleased with the contribution of all the parties involved in this project and look forward to continue transforming our business to meet the demands of the digital age,” says Agarwal.
While Gaur acknowledges it is difficult to predict change over the next two to five years, he believes delivery is likely to become more prominent in Pizza Hut India’s combination of offerings. “When we began our online journey in 2016, we predicted delivery would be about 25 percent of the mix by 2020,” he says. “With Google and MediaAgility, I think it will keep growing.”
Business Evolution with API Ecosystems
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During uncertain times, ecosystem partnerships that leverage APIs have proven to help companies scale and address gaps in their businesses. Apigee customers, like CHAMP Cargosystems, have pursued API-first ecosystem models to enter adjacent markets, create new customer interaction models, and rapidly grow their brand reach and partner ecosystems. As a result of building their API ecosystem, they are transacting 300 million electronic exchanges and 20 million shipments per year.
CHAMP selected Apigee to provide an API platform and developer self-service portal option to all of its SaaS customers. Google Cloud’s Apigee API management platform and portal allows CHAMP and its customers to quickly connect to a variety of backend systems, including in-house, third party apps, marketplace portals and more– thereby accelerating their digitization strategies and opening up new markets through an API ecosystem.
Join this webcast and hear from this leading Enterprise company on how to:
- Identify new revenue sources and markets using an API management platform
- Improve time to market while still complying with all industry requirements
- How to create a proof of concept to grow API adoption throughout your organization
- Align internal business leaders and partners to see the importance of an API-first platform vision
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Guide: How to Accelerate App Development with Google Cloud
Cloud-native, Kubernetes, Serverless have been the hottest and most widely discussed topics given the velocity and agility benefits. Learn more about how you can leverage these modern app development practices to ship software faster, while reducing costs and improving security and compliance. Learn how Google Cloud lets you modernize existing applications at your own pace using these technologies. Regardless of where you are in your app modernization journey, join this session to learn how to improve the developer experience and deliver software faster.
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