Australian retailer Woolworths is continuing with the WebMethods integration platform from Software AG and is using the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform to power its WPay payments platform.

Software AG has extended a multi-year partnership with Woolworths to help enhance its data-driven transformation. The WebMethods integration platform has helped it implement initiatives including scan-and-go, digital electronic receipts and real-time stock-on-hand visibility.

Woolworths is well advanced in moving to a hybrid, multi-cloud environment, with workloads being migrated to both public and private clouds. WebMethods’ new iPaaS offering is central to Woolworths’ hybrid integration platform, which widens access to technology throughout the organisation. The ambition is for line-of-business and domain specialists to have self-serve tools to make necessary changes and innovate in their area, reducing the reliance on rarer specialist technical skills.

“We operate in an increasingly connected and hybrid technology landscape,” said John Hunt, Woolworths CIO. “The ability to seamlessly access and integrate data across multiple platforms and environments, both cloud and on-premise, is fast becoming the ticket to operate. Our ongoing partnership with Software AG provides our organisation with the tools to effectively meet the ever-changing demands for data and agility.”

Sanjay Brahmawar, CEO at Software AG, added: “Woolworths is an iconic Australian brand and leader. It has been at the head of the grocery market in Australia for decades. At the same time, it knows that transformation is never done and continuing to look at new opportunities or ways of working is the hallmark of a top business. Our platforms are helping Woolworths navigate through some of the complex changes that many organisations today face, as its moves into a multi-cloud environment. Having stability in that journey helps immeasurably, and that’s something Software AG is helping to provide.”

HPE GreenLake provides an easy to manage cloud platform that allows users to innovate with agility, scale up and down to meet business requirements, and improve visibility and management of costs.

Woolworths is Australia and New Zealand’s largest food and everyday-needs retailer with more than 1300 stores across both countries and a fast-growing ecommerce businesses.

As a long standing HPE user, Woolworths was already benefiting from HPE’s infrastructure and managed services, which have been supporting the group’s supermarkets and Big W discount department stores and its customers since 2007. The existing platform processes nearly 30 million transactions for Woolworths a week.

To power further growth for WPay as it enters new markets, the business required end-to-end technology that combines a powerful architecture with the ability to scale, and provides better cost efficiency back to WPay and its merchant partners.

Woolworths turned to HPE to support the company’s move from its current data centre environment and deliver an end-to-end way to support the payments platform, which provides rich transaction processing, settlement services, in-store terminals, and reporting and analytics.

GreenLake provides mission critical, easy to manage as-a service technology, increasing capacity and ensuring business continuity for its new and existing payments operations. It leverages HPE’s full edge-to-cloud portfolio, including Aruba, NonStop, Primera and Synergy. HPE Pointnext Services also play a role in providing expertise to accelerate the digital transformation initiatives at Woolworths.

“As Australia and New Zealand’s largest retailer, we’ve been investing in leading-edge payment capabilities to service our retail businesses for many years,” said Angelo Clayton, general manager for IT in stores and payments at Woolworths. “We’re pleased to now extend the benefits of our investments to other merchants who may not have the scale to build a payments platform themselves. With HPE, we know we have a reliable and trusted partner to support the growth of our payments platform into the next phase.”

The GreenLake cloud platform integrates with thirteen ISV and system applications, including from technology companies Thales, Fortinet and Citrix as well as data centre hosting services from Equinix.

“We’re delighted to continue our existing partnership with Woolworths to provide industry-leading technology and services with HPE GreenLake, which enable the company to enter entirely new markets,” said Stephen Bovis, managing director of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Australia and New Zealand. “Woolworths is a terrific example of the end-to-end support we can offer to businesses across different sectors, to modernise IT operations and open up new avenues for growth.”