Conrad Electronics: Simplifying and accelerating development with Apigee and GKE

Since 1923, Conrad Electronic has been a reliable partner for companies and organizations when it comes to technology and electronics. Today, as a sourcing platform, the company provides all parts for a successful sourcing of technical supplies. At Conrad, business customers get exactly what makes their project or business a success: a wide and deep product range comprising nine million products from more than 6000 brands, customer-centric solutions and services, and face-to-face expert advice. Conrad’s tailored e-procurement solutions simplify complex sourcing processes and help businesses of all types and sizes save time and costs.

The company has over 21 million B2B and B2C customers worldwide and operates in 17 European countries. We have been running on Google Cloud since 2016. The launch of Conrad Marketplace in 2017 marked the beginning of our transformation towards a B2B sourcing platform, future-proofing our business in the process. Our strategy also works on a global scale: Conrad Marketplace Austria went live in 2021; last year it was the Netherlands and Italy, and most recently, France. In deciding what to prioritize, we chose to focus on increasing engineering and development ROI, while accelerating and simplifying development.

Not only did we want to tick all of those boxes, we were going to do it while providing best-in-class security without burdening our engineering team. Migrating to Google Cloud’s Apigee , we centralized API management, sped up response time by 15-25 milliseconds per request, and greatly simplified security. And with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), App Engine , Compute Engine , and Cloud Functions , we streamlined Kubernetes and container management, all while optimizing microservices and app development.

Improving development with a convenient, central API Gateway in the cloud A B2B sourcing platform consists of an e-commerce website, a marketplace, and eprocurement solutions.