Blockbuster API Management Case Study

Customer Story

Background

Blockbuster is a leading global provider of in-home movie and game entertainment with over 6,000 stores throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Blockbuster uses APIs to power it's “Blockbuster Everywhere” cross-channel, multi-device strategy. Through industrial strength APIs, Blockbuster can now deliver movies, product reviews, real-time inventory availability and account information everywhere its customers are, on various devices including phones, set top boxes, gaming consoles and other consumer electronics.

Blockbuster launched first its API with an iPhone app, enabling customers to access their accounts and Blockbuster’s entertainment library, add movies to a rental queue or find out if a movie is in stock in a nearby store from their iPhone or iPod.

They then used this API to enable partners to build applications that reach millions of new consumers through connected internet devices beyond the web browser. With Blockbuster Everywhere, consumers can access this content whenever and wherever- in stores, and online or through their mobile phones and gaming consoles.

Blockbuster is using ServiceNet, Apigee’s industrial-strength cloud service and API infrastructure, to leverage capabilities such as mobile app acceleration, back-end protection, enforcing access control, operational and business policies on API traffic, throttling, rate limiting, credential authentication, SOAP/Rest mediation and caching.

Challenge

Create a consistent, multi-channel and cross-channel experience for customers.
Reach consumers via partners connected devices, from DVRs to smartphone apps to kiosks.
Launch industrial-strength API with a small and focused team and tight deadlines.

Solution

Apigee provides a proxy layer that provides visibility, authentication, and scalability for the Blockbuster API.
Apigee provides API mediation and transformations to optimize API for key partners and consumption by mobile apps.
Apigee ensures API scalability and manageability with caching, endpoint-routing and transformations.

Results

Solution deployed in the cloud in less than two weeks.
Control over APIs in an independent layer reduces compexity and improves agility.
Full visibility of API operations with business-level analytics, monitoring, and root-cause analysis.