As one of the largest petroleum companies in Italy, Q8 Italia operates service and fueling stations all over the country. Its sister company, Q8 Northwest Europe, operates in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Both organizations are subsidiaries of Kuwait Petroleum International, which has operations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
With such a broad reach, it’s been difficult to standardize on a single integration platform, but it was clear that such a move would help streamline operations and reduce development costs. Both Rischia and Bove saw IBM Cloud Pak for Integration as the right platform to standardize on, though for different reasons.
For Rischia, the key advantages were strength and security. “We introduced the platform in combination with IBM® DataPower® Gateway. The new platform will expose APIs externally, so security is critical. DataPower is probably the biggest value to us from a security perspective as compared to the competition.”
For Bove, flexibility was key. “We are a diverse organization,” he says. “We need to guarantee the standardization of processes, but we also need some flexibility because the Italian market is quite different from the Northwest European market,” he says.
With IBM Cloud Pak for Integration, the team at Q8 Italia was able to create three separate API catalogs—one for Q8 Italia, one for Q8 Northwest Europe and one for Kuwait Petroleum International. That way, all three arms of the company can develop APIs that work within their specific markets.
At Q8 Italia, that work began with building out digital payment processes for business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. At the same time, the organization is developing a mobile app that will allow business and private customers to make payments using their phones. The solution will also integrate with Q8 Italia’s loyalty program app, Club Q8.
Says Rischia, “We are starting to increase the number of services that will be available for our clients through apps. APIs are a faster and more relevant way to for those services to interact with our back-end systems.”