The 2014 Digital Accelerator Awards Winners Announced at Apigee's "I Love APIs" Conference Today

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Sep 9, 2014) - I LOVE APIS -- Apigee®, developer of the leading platform for digital acceleration, today announced the winners of the 2014 Digital Accelerator Awards, a global awards program recognizing innovative individuals and organizations that are accelerating and transforming businesses with APIs and data. The winners are being revealed today and tomorrow at the "I love APIs" conference in San Francisco.

"Congratulations to the Digital Accelerator winners for their vision and innovation and for serving as models for digital business in today's connected, mobile world," said Chet Kapoor, Apigee CEO. "These individuals and companies are embracing APIs and data to adapt for digital -- building app ecosystems, creating valuable new services for customers, and accelerating across functional areas."

The 2014 Top Digital Accelerator - Walgreens
Walgreens has been named the Top Digital Accelerator for 2014. This award recognizes the company with the most impactful digital transformation over the past 12 months, showcasing industry-shaping approaches that have resulted in a marked improvement in areas such as customer satisfaction, brand reinforcement, market share, time to market and IT efficiencies.

Walgreens continues to build on its strong tradition of technology innovation. The 113-year-old business is successfully embracing the digital economy by leveraging the power of data and APIs to radically increase the scale and value of customer interactions. The company has championed the developer community, app ecosystems and the platform model -- and has the results to show for it.

Through Walgreens' omni-channel retail approach, customers who engage with the brand via store, mobile and online spend approximately six times more than store-only customers. Such results are not possible without forging close relationship with talented developers, and creating innovative products and functionality to meet customers' needs.

"We're thrilled to receive the Top Digital Accelerator award for Walgreens mobile efforts, which wouldn't be achievable without our dedicated team," said Abhi Dhar, Walgreens Chief Technology Officer. "Such noteworthy recognition is testament to the impact we've been able to make by forging valuable relationships with a talented developer community."

Top Digital Visionary -- Joint winners: Allen Rodgers: Director, Developer Network and API Program; and Kendrick McLish, Head of Product Marketing and Strategy, Global Higher Education, Pearson

The Top Digital Visionary recognizes a business leader (or leaders) who has had positive change on his organization by leading enterprise innovation and transforming digital assets into new value for customers, partners and/or employees using APIs and data.

Allen Rodgers and Kendrick McLish lead Pearson Higher Education's digital strategies. They have pioneered Pearson Higher Education's platform approach to enable a digital education environment that adapts to the needs of the individual learner in real time. Under Allen and Kendrick's guidance, Pearson Higher Education has been revolutionizing e-learning via LearningStudio, a scalable SaaS learning platform, and OpenClass, a cloud-based learning environment and content distribution platform. Allen and Kendrick's contributions helped the Pearson brand transform from a traditional publisher to a technology innovator creating new value for customers, partners and employees using APIs.

Top API Innovator: Joe Rago: Senior Mobile Product Manager, Walgreens

This category recognizes an API evangelist who has driven the implementation of his/her company's API program by building an effective team and executing the company's digital strategy.

Walgreens is a model for retail digital innovation, and Joe Rago has been a driving force behind the digital transformation of this Fortune 50 company. Joe has tapped the power of third-party development to build a massive Walgreens app ecosystem, enabled by APIs. Under Joe's leadership, Walgreens' suite of APIs has grown across its diverse business. APIs like Balance® Rewards, Prescription Refill & Transfer and QuickPrints have extended Walgreens' presence outside of its own brand, increasing overall customer engagement.

Top Digital Pioneer: Jerry Wolfe: CIO, Connected Commerce Executive, McCormick
This category recognizes individuals who are pioneering successful digital programs at some of the oldest companies in the world -- businesses that have had the vision and agility to thrive for 100+ years. These people are spearheading technology initiatives that will ensure their organizations continue to lead in the digital economy.

In his role as CIO of McCormick, Jerry Wolfe has spearheaded the 125-year-old brand's digital strategy. Recognizing the power and promise of new digital technologies, he created a team at McCormick focused exclusively on incubating global digital innovation. Among other initiatives, this team has championed FlavorPrint, a unique mobile service that extends "flavor science," by identifying the flavors that individuals most enjoy and suggesting recipes that express those flavors.

Best API Program: Walgreens
The Best API Program award recognizes an organization with an outstanding API program that exemplifies innovation in strategy, design, developer experience and support. The organization with the winning API program will have a well-defined plan and business model, a simple, flexible design, and will have created business value.

The Walgreens API program is designed "to put an API around its stores." Through APIs, Walgreens is exposing services across the business -- from pharmacy to its loyalty program with more than 81 million active members -- and is building an app ecosystem that creates new 1:1 customer interactions everyday. Today, Walgreens' API program has grown to more than 150 development partners, from small independent developers to major technology companies, and it has positioned the 113-year old brand as one of the world's leading digital innovators.

Best Data Analytics for Digital Business: Independence Blue Cross (IBC)
This category recognizes an organization that has driven the use of data analytics in their digital programs to provide new visibility and insight into their digital ecosystems, customers and/or business.

IBC's data analytics program is revolutionizing preventative patient care. The company successfully utilizes insights from aggregated claims data gathered from predictive big data analytics to help change patient behaviors and predict future hospitalization. Using advanced analytics, IBC is moving beyond simply answering customers' calls about their Medicare Advantage plans -- they are reaching out proactively to their members before they have issues that would require help. IBC is taking analytics-driven, patient-centered healthcare into the future.

Top API for the Internet of Things: Philips
The award recognizes an organization demonstrating ground-breaking innovation in creating a new experience or reinventing an existing experience by digitally enabling "things" such as wearables and other everyday devices. A successful IoT entrant will use APIs to enable things to use data in new ways that enhance the way people live, work and play.

Named one of the most innovative companies in 2014 by Fast Company, Philips is showing the world how digital can transform just about anything. Leveraging the power of APIs, the Philips' Hue system lets users control the color emitted from a light bulb for via apps on a smartphone -- from anywhere. By listening, engaging and taking inspiration from consumers, Philips continues to innovate with APIs to create personalized solutions to improve our lives.

Best Developer Experience: Pearson
This category recognizes an organization with an outstanding developer program. The winning program will excel at enabling developer success, providing the right incentives to attract developers and encourage adoption; offering support and tools; and inviting interaction and feedback.

Pearson Higher Education's overarching goal is to participate fully in the revolution of education. LearningStudio's Web Services On Demand program was designed to enable internal and external developers to build new applications, create rich user experiences, add new functionality, and integrate more quickly with third-party applications. Pearson has been able to grow its ecosystem to over 40 APIs, 250 applications and 3000 developers, and more than 10 universities, reaching hundreds of thousands students. With frequently incorporated developer feedback, Pearson Higher Education's APIs remain developer-friendly digital playgrounds where innovation thrives.

Digital Business Excellence in Retail: Target
Target kicked off its API strategy several years ago to empower its constituencies, including both customers and employees, to benefit from the power of data. The company has successfully leveraged APIs as part of its overall digital strategy to create new experiences that delight Target customers. As a result of its digital API-first strategy, Target continues to accelerate digital innovation in retail.

Digital Business Excellence in Finance: Tradier
Tradier is fundamentally changing how trading experiences are delivered. Through APIs, the company's brokerage platform enables developers to build innovative new products -- a completely new concept in the financial industry. Tradier is fueling the digital revolution in the financial sector and creating new value for business partners, retail investors and customers.

Digital Business Excellence in Telecom: Swisscom
Swisscom realized that the digital transformation journey was so fundamental that it required changing the very DNA of the company. Embracing a "digital-first" culture meant improving the Swisscom ecosystem by enabling collaboration, agility and digital innovation. By rejecting the notion of "bolting-on" new products/services, adding "digital" to the set of Swisscom's enterprise KPIs, and bringing the IP and cloud transformation to customer facing units through APIs, Swisscom has been able to distinguish itself as a digital telecom thought leader in a highly competitive market.

Digital Business Excellence in Healthcare: Kaiser Permanente
Interchange by Kaiser Permanente is enabling Kaiser to deliver on the promise of making lives better by expanding the boundaries of total healthcare to anywhere. Kaiser's Interchange provides a foundation for enabling innovation and co-creation of applications using publicly available data the healthcare giant already has. It is a platform bringing together multiple data sources in a unified environment, designed to help software developers build new and innovative Total Health apps.

About Apigee
Apigee provides the leading technology platform for digital business acceleration. Through APIs and big data, Apigee delivers the speed, scale and agility any business needs to compete in today's connected mobile world. Many of the world's largest and most respected organizations have selected Apigee to enable their digital business, including 20 percent of the Fortune 100 and 25 percent of the world's most admired companies. Apigee customers include global enterprises such as Walgreens, eBay, Shell, Live Nation, Kaiser Permanente and Sears. Apigee is headquartered in San Jose, California and has about 500 employees worldwide.

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