London – 21st April 2022 – WSO2, the leader in digital transformation technology, today announced that it has won a significant new customer, Central England Co-operative (CEC). WSO2 will deliver its world-class API management and enterprise integration solutions to CEC, helping the organisation put in place the technology infrastructure to better support its growing community of members and consumers.

Central England Co-operative is the second-largest regional consumer co-operative in the UK out of 16 consumer co-operatives. Formed by the merger of Midlands and Anglia Co-operatives, CEC has more than 400 trading outlets, a family of over 8,000 colleagues, and more than 250,000 regular trading members. While the organisation is independent from the co-operative group, it is part of the wider co-operative movement, working together to provide benefits to its members and customers. CEC trades across 20 counties from the Midlands to the East Coast—through more than 250 food stores, 100-plus funeral homes, filling stations, and florists.

CEC is partnering with WSO2 to meet its evolving API management, system integration and access management needs in both on-premises and cloud-based deployments. The project, which is due to kick off in the first half of 2022, will enable CEC to sync databases between different locations and create much-needed insights, files, and reports. CEC selected WSO2, which now serves more than 800 customers in over 80 countries, based on its advanced technical capabilities and solutions for securely delivering APIs, applications, and digital services.

"As multi-market retailers, like CEC, look to embrace digital business models, we are seeing growing demand for our unique approach to coupling best-in-class API management and integration," said Ricardo Diniz, vice president and general manager, United Kingdom, Spain and France, WSO2. "We are honored to work with CEC in significantly lowering the required skills, time, and cost barriers to delivering secure new digital services to the co-operative's customers and members."

"Our goal is to always meet and exceed our members' needs and stand up for the things they believe in, and our collaboration with WSO2 will enable us to deliver better services to our members," said Adam Testro, Software Engineering Manager, CEC. "We were impressed by WSO2's solutions and approach and its role in delivering API management, integration and integration to a global blue-chip customer base, and we are excited to work with the WSO2 team in 2022 and beyond."

About WSO2

Founded in 2005, WSO2 enables thousands of enterprises, including hundreds of the world's largest corporations, top universities, and governments, to drive their digital transformation journeys—executing more than 18 trillion transactions and managing more than 500 million identities annually. Using WSO2 for API management, integration, and customer identity and access management (CIAM), these organizations are harnessing the full power of their APIs to securely deliver their digital services and applications. Our open-source, API-first approach to software that runs on-premises and in the cloud helps developers and architects to be more productive and rapidly compose digital products to meet demand while remaining free from vendor lock-in. WSO2 has over 900 employees worldwide with offices in Australia, Brazil, Germany, India, Sri Lanka, the UAE, the UK, and the US. Visit https://wso2.com to learn more. Follow WSO2 on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About Central England Co-operative

Central England Co-operative is one of the largest independent retail co-operative societies in the UK with interests in food, funeral, floral and property investment. Owned by hundreds of thousands of members, its over 8,000 colleagues serve customers across 400 plus trading sites in 20 counties in the East and West Midlands, Yorkshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire. Its purpose is to inspire communities to create a sustainable Society for all. It actively campaigns for the Government to increase sentencing for violent attacks on retail workers and works with FareShare Midlands and hundreds of food banks, generating enough food donations to create over 2.1 million meals for people in need. The Society embraces inclusivity and equality and is a signed-up member to the Business in the Community (BITC) Race at Work Charter, while it is also fully committed to addressing the impact of climate change and is on track to be Carbon Neutral by 2030. It invests a percentage of its trading profit into local communities through its Community Dividend Fund scheme which has seen over £175,000 shared out between 116 good causes over the past 12 months.

Central England Co-op was named Leading Co-op of the Year by Co-operatives UK in 2021.

Press office contacts: Rob Smyth and James Brindle

Contact details: www.centralengland.coop/press-and-media

Trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.

Contact

Paula Elliott
C8 Consulting
Email: paula@c8consulting.co.uk
Call: 07894 339645