Where do engineers and manufacturers get the equipment needed to build the electronic and industrial products we rely on every day? Enter RS Group, a global powerhouse that supplies everything from basic tools to cutting-edge robotics and software. The company is more than just a supplier, they also offer businesses technical support, design expertise, and supply chain solutions for maximum operational efficiency. Since its start in 1937, RS Group has expanded worldwide, becoming the go-to source for industrial and electronic solutions. At GraphQL Summit 2024, Juan Carlos, Senior Software Engineer at RS Group, explains how the company revamped its tech stack using Apollo GraphQL.
RS Group’s API Challenges
RS Group has been a leader in industrial and electronic solutions since the early days of the internet. Over the years, the company built numerous APIs, creating a complex and fragmented technology landscape.This made it increasingly difficult for teams to access and manage data across systems efficiently.
“Like many businesses that have been around for a while, RS Group had legacy systems that created certain inefficiencies,” Juan Carlos explained. “Over time, things were duplicated, standards became unclear, and we lost track of who owned which parts of the system.”
It soon became clear that RS Group needed to modernize its tech stack with a centralized API strategy. Managing multiple APIs endpoints with different authentication methods and documentation was slowing down innovation. The company needed a simpler, more flexible solution to reduce complexity, orchestrate APIs, and support future growth. A centralized API strategy would provide a single entry point for all services, with consistent authentication and complete documentation. This approach would help RS Group’s customers bring products to market faster by reducing overall purchasing costs and increasing productivity during development. Most importantly, it would lay the foundation for seamless, scalable API orchestration to support growing digital initiatives.
Bringing Apollo into the Mix
Turning to Apollo Federation was the natural next step for RS Group, and the company has now been a champion of the product for many years. It offered a way to break down RS Group’s complex monolith of APIs into manageable services while simultaneously creating a unified API orchestration layer or supergraph. This approach allowed the company to both reduce the complexity and improve the flexibility of their system so they could continue to scale. In addition to Federation, RS Group also uses GraphOS and Router Core, a configurable, high-performance graph router written in Rust to run a federated supergraph in Federation. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits the company has seen since its migration.
Upgrading legacy systems and business integrations
The supergraph has allowed RS Group to standardize its API operations and create a unified API orchestration layer across its growing portfolio of businesses. In turn, this helped the company upgrade the legacy systems and siloed APIs that were slowing down progress and creating inefficiencies across teams.
“Apollo helped us bridge those gaps by standardizing language and concepts across the board. Now, instead of having multiple data sources that create confusion, our supergraph is completely clear about where data comes from and who owns it.”
Apollo’s tools have also allowed RS Group to integrate systems from acquisitions seamlessly. With Federation, different teams can independently manage and maintain their services without the risk of breaking other parts of the system, which the company found particularly useful when migrating domain-specific services.
Beefing up performance and efficiency
RS Group made significant performance milestones after moving to Apollo Federation. By implementing granular caching mechanisms and event-driven architecture, the company has been able to boost website performance and provide real-time responses without constantly revisiting the source of truth.
“When we introduced more efficient, event-driven architecture through Apollo Federation, we only needed to cache data and provide responses to consumers when there was a change in data. This not only reduced the load on our infrastructure but also sped up our website’s response time.”
And for an organization with such large-scale operations, these performance improvements are crucial. The company saw even more benefits when it moved from Gateway to Router Core, an option that offers a leaner, high-performance runtime option for Federation with 10x the speed and throughput. It further reduced latency in website requests for a better user experience, along with overhead costs.
The team at RS Group explained that Apollo is a major generator of future growth. The added efficiency allows them to self-finance the next stage of their federated graph and take on more subgraphs and traffic. Using Apollo’s infrastructure, the company achieved a 5x increase in throughput that has enabled them to grow without additional financing. What’s more, they also saw a 24% decrease in P95s for maximum efficiency.
Establishing workflows with clear, concise documentation
Juan Carlos didn’t hesitate to mention that Apollo stood out as an industry leader for its ease of use and commitment to clear, accessible documentation.
“Apollo Router and Federation are incredibly well-documented systems that are a joy to use. Whenever someone on the team wants to make an improvement to the schema, we can simply refer them to the documentation. It becomes the first point of reference for anyone on the team, and there are so many features available. It’s brilliant.”
Documentation makes the development process less daunting for teams of any size, and RS Group has since found it easier to train new team members and help them quickly get up to speed with ongoing projects.
Providing collaboration and support
Apollo is more than just the cutting-edge technology powering API orchestration. Juan Carlos commented on the strong, collaborative relationship that RS Group has with the Apollo team. Whenever his team has faced challenges, Apollo has worked with them to address their concerns and feedback.
“Apollo engineers have been quick to jump on calls with us and drill down into any issue. We have been really impressed with their support, and that’s one of our motivations to move faster into Router,” Juan Carlos said.
RS Group is also a participant in Apollo’s Champions Program, where they’ve shared invaluable experiences and learned from other industry leaders like PayPal. For them, this journey is more than just using the tools – it’s about constantly improving and innovating with the community.
Next Steps
Looking forward, Juan Carlos and his team are excited about the continued growth and improvements that Apollo GraphQL can bring. With future plans to dive deeper into Apollo Connectors for REST APIs, RS Group is eager to explore how they can further streamline their API architecture.
Built for developers, Apollo Connectors unlocks innovation and boosts productivity by transforming any REST API into a flexible GraphQL endpoint. By unifying REST and GraphQL into a single API, enterprises can effortlessly orchestrate many APIs across their organization and modernize their tech stack at their own pace, no matter their experience level.
“It’s definitely on our roadmap,” Juan Carlos said of Apollo Connectors. “It’s another step in our journey to make our systems even more efficient.”
Conclusion
Watch the GraphQL discussion with RS Group to learn more about the company’s journey with federated GraphQL, including overcoming the challenges of legacy systems, integrating new business domains, and creating a unified, efficient API ecosystem.
Explore other inspiring customer stories and discover how Apollo GraphQL can modernize your tech stack today!
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