Editor’s note: Today we hear from Jon White and Angela Donohoe from BPAY Group. BPAY Group is best known for BPAY, the leading electronic bill payment system in Australia, handling one-third of the market. Learn how BPAY Group is positioning the organization for the future by using APIs to streamline workflows for existing customers and new businesses.

BPAY has been a leader in the bill payment industry in Australia for 22 years and provides a secure, fast, and convenient way to connect individuals, businesses, and banks to help people stay on top of their bills.

One of the reasons that BPAY is the preferred bill payment service for so many Australians is our commitment to human-centered design. We’re continuously talking with customers and looking at ways that we can deliver better experiences, products, and services, such as peer-to-peer payments. During these conversations, we noticed some ways that our processes were causing friction for existing or potential customers.

For example, we traditionally used a batch processing system to handle requests between billing companies and banks. But that could cause headaches for some customers, as an error in even one request could cause the whole batch to be rejected. Plus, many “neobanks” (new types of digital-only banks) wanted to work with real-time transactions instead of batch processes, which take longer to complete.

We realized that APIs had the potential to solve many of the challenges impacting customers while opening the doors for future product and business development. We developed a few customer-facing APIs and tested them in closed betas. This experiment went far better than we expected, and we realized that there was a huge appetite for APIs among our biller customers.

While we had developed many APIs for internal systems, developing APIs that were easy to consume by our customers was a new challenge. We needed to move away from our home-grown API development approach and make our API environment more powerful, versatile, and easier to use. The API experts at The Singularity worked with us to develop a strong API strategy. We decided that we would need to support our new strategy with a scalable API management platform.

After a rigorous search, we landed on the Apigee API Management Platform. Apigee was the only solution that met all our technology and business requirements. With Apigee, we have a solid foundation for APIs that will help us deliver more value for all customers.

Creating a custom development environment

BPAY is a trusted brand in Australia, so it was very important to us that we maintain our reputation for excellent customer experiences. When setting up our developer portal, we started with a closed pilot and used developer feedback to make the portal as convenient and simple to use as possible. The Apigee developer portal has many built-in features to help us customize experiences, and if we run into roadblocks, the Apigee team at Google listens and helps us create the custom experience we want.

The developer portal has already proven to be extremely popular. In its first month live, we registered 104 developers in the sandbox environment and 10 developers in the production environment. That was before we even started marketing our developer portal, so we expect those numbers to rise quickly.

Breaking new ground with APIs

We’ve already released four foundational APIs, with a goal of eventually releasing dozens. Our APIs are helping us create smoother experiences for customers. We mentioned that when processing a batch of payment files, one mistake could cause the entire batch to get rejected. Our APIs now enable businesses to validate all payment information before submitting a batch file, dramatically reducing the chances of errors. They can even use our APIs to automatically generate batch files in the right format for different banks.

While APIs improve service for current customers, they also open the doors for new areas of business. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) services, which enable customers to spread out payments across weeks or months, are already popular in retail spaces. After releasing our first APIs, we connected with two BNPL billing services. These companies use our APIs to validate customers’ bill payment information and then pay the bill in full on behalf of customers. This was a completely new use case for us, one that could not have been implemented without our APIs.

The payment service NoahPay also adopted our APIs to validate payment information and let customers pay bills using funds from their WeChat accounts. This is an exciting new market for us, as it’s one of the first examples of how we can connect to international digital wallets through our new APIs. It’s also a great way to introduce users of WeChat, a messaging app used by more than 1 billion people in China, to the BPAY brand.

Planning for the future of bill pay

We have big plans for APIs in the future, and Apigee helps make these plans a reality. We plan to establish a generous freemium monetization model that will allow customers to make up to 200,000 API calls for free each month with tiered payment plans above that. This will enable us to open the doors for smaller organizations while providing optimal support for larger businesses and banks that might need to make millions of calls. Having powerful end-to-end monetization features built in to Apigee means that we can process monetized transactions with ease.

Built-in reporting functionality will also help us make sure that we’re understanding the market’s need for APIs and always providing our customers with valuable services and support.

Apigee greatly streamlines creating self-service API environments. Even as we grow our business, our internal teams will be able to continue providing excellent customer service without needing extra staff to answer questions, help with integration support, and constantly check API security. APIs are the way of the future, and Apigee prepares us meet the challenges that come along with it.

Editor’s note: Today’s post is a Q&A with the VCCP London and VCCP CX team. VCCP London conceived of and built the Cadbury Worldwide Hide platform using Google Maps Platform as a way to get consumers ‘hiding’ eggs and engaging with loved ones during a time when they could not be physically together.

How did the team come up with the idea for the ‘Cadbury Worldwide Hide’?

VCCP London is the agency of record for Cadbury both locally in the UK and centrally with the Global team. So, when Cadbury briefed us in May for their Easter 2021 campaign, they wanted us to come up with a creative way to encourage people to hide eggs and get consumers excited about interacting with loved ones. At the time, the pandemic was constantly changing, and it was looking like we were going to continue to be in lock-down for the foreseeable future, into the Easter season.

We then came up with an idea: wouldn’t it be really cool if somehow you could still hide a real Easter egg for someone you love, but do it virtually. And then once it’s found, that real egg could be delivered to the seeker’s home. With the use of some creativity and technology, we brought this idea to life. The experience we developed allowed our users to purchase a real Cadbury Easter Egg, hide it virtually on the map in a special location, then write the recipient a personalized clue for him to find the egg. Once the seeker found the egg, they would receive a real, physical egg the hider bought for her delivered to her home.

We wanted it to be a truly meaningful one-to-one connection, to bring back some lovely memories for people, and to allow a real chocolate egg to be hidden for a loved one no matter where they were.

Why was this important to Cadbury?

Generosity is at the heart of Cadbury’s brand, and Easter is our opportunity to show that ‘there’s a glass and a half in everyone’. As we enter the second year of our campaign ‘Show you care, hide it’, we are flipping the Easter ritual on its head and showing that the generous act is in hiding an egg for someone you love.

Physical connection has been restricted by the global pandemic and that’s why this year’s Easter campaign sets out to connect people across the UK through the power of generosity.

Tell us a little bit about the technical side of the project. Which Google Maps Platform products did you use to create the user experience?

The Cadbury Worldwide Hide launched across 4 markets (UK, IE, AU, NZ) simultaneously. Integration with regional e-commerce and CRM partners brought the activation into the real world with chocolate eggs being delivered throughout the campaign as seekers found them.

Providing an engaging map experience to our users was key to the execution and by leveraging the Google Maps interface consumers already use on a daily basis, we were able to focus on our core campaign message. We built the platform using both the Maps Javascript API to render the 2D maps and the Street View API, which allowed users to hide their egg anywhere in the world for their loved one to find. We also used Place Autocomplete powered search allowing users to search for their favorite location while contextual hints kept hiders on track. Seekers were aided with a distance meter and hints system if they got stuck. Our Design and Engineering team used Google Maps Platform Cloud-based maps styling to customize the map.

To get the campaign to as many people as possible we prioritized accessibility throughout the site, from screen-reader support and relevant tab indexes through to full keyboard shortcuts within the map experience – allowing users to hide (or find!) their egg without ever using a mouse. Real user testing was done throughout the UX, design and development process to ensure best practices were being followed.

How long did it take the VCCP team to build-out the solution?

Discovery to the roll-out of the solution took about 7 months. Our Design and Engineering team started with a 4-week discovery phase in September 2020 where we developed a service blueprint that set the foundations of the project. By visualizing the entire process of a service from start to finish, listing all the activities that happened at each stage, and the different roles, actions, processes and systems involved, the blueprint allowed all stakeholders to align on the solution.

We started iterative cycles of development in November 2020, beginning with UX (prototype for user testing), UI (look and feel and customization of Google Maps using Cloud-based Maps styling), and then kicked off front end and back end development in December. We launched the Cadbury Worldwide Hide platform in early March 2021—just in time for millions of users around the world to enjoy ahead of Easter.

Did you experience any challenges as you developed the experience?

The biggest challenge was actually around adapting to change in plans in response to the desire to launch the platform across more markets than originally intended. During the development phase, we rapidly scaled up to develop the platform for Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in addition to the UK within the same timeframe.

What results were you able to achieve and how did you measure the success of the project?

One week before Easter Sunday, we had sold out of Cadbury Worldwide Hide chocolate eggs. There were over 2.26 million site visits with an average time spent on the platform of almost five minutes. Over 809k virtual eggs were hidden in total and 14.5k real Cadbury Easter eggs bought. The Cadbury Worldwide Hide platform was the number one Mondelēz International website globally, and a couple even used the platform for a marriage proposal!

Would you recommend this type of campaign and user engagement to other B-to-C brands, if so, why?

Direct to consumer capabilities are increasingly important for brands, particularly in the FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) space. Local lockdowns and restrictions on physical retail have accelerated our adoption of ecommerce. Not only have brands had to adapt quickly, but consumers are beginning to expect direct-to-consumer capabilities from their favorite brands. Cadbury recognized this behavior shift early. What the Cadbury Worldwide Hide did well was to innovate beyond the traditional DTC and ecommerce experience by gamifying the platform and enabling moments of human connection at a time when physical connection was impossible. 

What advice would you give to other agencies or brands thinking about creating user experiences with Google Maps Platform?

We learned a great deal taking on this project. Here are just a few highlights:

• Assume anything is possible.
• Our ‘Mobile First’ approach allowed consumers to access the platform from any device with consistent, engaging brand experience.
• Think big and beyond the traditional use of Google Maps and treat it as a foundation platform to build upon.
• Prototype and test early to validate your hypotheses. We created a technical proof of concept which enabled us to test using ‘real’ Google Maps and real people early in our design process.
• Don’t assume everything is accessible to everyone. You may need to build upon the ‘out the box’ functionality to ensure as many people as possible can use your solution.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

As CentOS 7 reaches end of life, many enterprises are considering their options for an enterprise-grade, downstream Linux distribution on which to run their production applications. Rocky Linux has emerged as a strong alternative that, like CentOS, is 100% compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

In April 2022, we announced a customer support partnership with CIQ, the official support and services partner and sponsor of Rocky Linux, as the first step in providing a best-in-class enterprise-grade supported experience for Rocky Linux on Google Cloud. Today we’re excited to announce the general availability of Rocky Linux Optimized for Google Cloud. We developed this collection of Compute Engine virtual machine images in close collaboration with CIQ so that you get optimal performance when using Rocky Linux on Compute Engine to run your CentOS workloads.

These new images contain customized variants of the Rocky Linux kernel and modules that optimize networking performance on Compute Engine infrastructure, while retaining bug-for-bug compatibility with Community Rocky Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The high bandwidth networking enabled by these customizations will be beneficial to virtually any workload, and are especially valuable for clustered workloads such as HPC (see this page for more details on configuring a VM with high bandwidth).

Going forward, we’ll collaborate with CIQ to publish both the community and Optimized for Google Cloud editions of Rocky Linux for every major release, and both sets of images will receive the latest kernel and security updates provided by CIQ and the Rocky Linux community. And of course, we’ll offer support with CIQ for both these images, per our partnership.

Rocky Linux Optimized for Google Cloud lets you take advantage of everything Compute Engine has to offer, including day-one support for our latest VM families, GPUs, and high-bandwidth networking. And for customers building for a multi-cloud deployment environment, the community Rocky images have you covered.

Starting today, Rocky Linux 8 Optimized for Google Cloud is available for all x86-based Compute Engine VM families (and soon for the new Arm-based Tau T2A), with version 9 soon to follow. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

To help improve your security posture, improve the reliability of your applications, and reduce configuration drift in your environment, we’re excited to announce a new Anthos reference architecture.

Written in collaboration across our product, engineering, support, and field teams, this new reference architecture helps you plan, deploy, and configure the required components for Anthos hybrid environments.

Anthos hybrid environments give you the flexibility to deploy on-premises components that run container-based workloads and VMs using Anthos clusters on VMware and Anthos clusters on bare metal. You can continue to utilize existing investments in your on-premises infrastructure, and start to add components like Anthos Config Management. When you’re ready to bring everything together, you can add additional Google Cloud-based services like Artifact Registry, Cloud Monitoring, and Identity and Access Management (IAM).

The following sneak peek covers some of our best practices for architecting an Anthos hybrid environment. For more detailed guidance and planning information, see the full Anthos hybrid environment reference architecture.

When you design and deploy an Anthos hybrid environment, we recommend that you use two or more on-premises computing customer sites and two or more Google Cloud regions. In your sites, run multiple clusters. This approach is recommended for several reasons, such as:

• Disaster recovery. If one cluster or site fails, you can continue to run workloads.
• Multiple environments, like production and staging, to test infrastructure changes.
• Different cluster types in each environment: admin clusters and user clusters. This approach separates administrative resources, which is a security best-practice.

The following diagram shows an example of an Anthos hybrid environment that’s spread across customer sites and regions, with different clusters for admin and user workloads and for production and staging:

In each site, you can use Anthos clusters on VMware or Anthos clusters on bare metal. For both products, we recommend the following:

• Use a highly available (HA) control plane with three members for continued control plane availability concurrently with operating system upgrades, control plane software updates, or single-machine hardware or kernel failures.
• Deploy two admin clusters so that admin cluster configuration changes and updates can be tested in the staging environment first.

The following diagram shows an example of Anthos clusters on bare metal with control plane and worker nodes spread across physical machines. With Anthos clusters on VMware, the control plane and worker nodes are spread across VMware VMs:

Configure your on-premises clusters and applications to send logging and monitoring data back to Google Cloud for analysis and review. Different personas should only be granted access to the environments they need. The following diagram shows how application developers and application or platform operators can then view logging and monitoring data in Google Cloud:

Use Anthos Config Management to manage Kubernetes objects in your clusters. Anthos Config Management is a GitOps-style tool that uses a Git repository or Open Container Initiative (OCI) as its storage mechanism and source of truth. Git provider workflows allow multiple stakeholders to participate in review of changes.

As shown in the following diagram, a common Anthos Config Management deployment uses one folder containing configuration for all clusters. Use separate additional folders to hold configuration data, one for application:

Plan and implement a way to secure the network traffic in your Anthos hybrid environment. The following services help with authentication, connectivity, and communication in a cluster:

• Anthos Identity Service connects clusters to on-site identity providers to authenticate local access.
• Connect gateway and workforce identity federation can provide secure cloud-mediated access to mobile workforce clusters without using a VPN.
• Workload Identity provides on-premises workloads with managed short-lifetime credentials for access to cloud resources.
• Anthos Service Mesh encrypts and controls communication between services in the same cluster.

The following diagram shows how Anthos Service Mesh can control the flow of traffic between services within your clusters:

You don’t have to implement all these cloud-based services as part of your initial on-premises deployments. As you become more comfortable and want to expand your capabilities, you can add in some of these hybrid offerings. But, we hope that this blog post has given you some ideas to think about when you start to plan and design your own Anthos hybrid environments.

For more detailed guidance and planning information, see the full Anthos hybrid environment reference architecture. Let us know what you think!