Adobe AEM as a Cloud-native SaaS application - a quick assessment 6 months after launch
Timur Asar
Managing Director & Partner @ Comwrap Reply | Author + Speaker | Crafting the best tech stacks for marketing + CX engagement ?? Powered by content, data, design and AI (+ caffeine ??)
Adobe announced the launch of AEM as a Cloud Service earlier this year with a little bit of the usual fanfare when software vendors bring a new product or significant update to market. https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/13/adobe-experience-manager-now-offered-as-cloud-native-saas-application
After 6 months of webinars, training bootcamps, POCs and running projects with some of our amazing clients, I have come to the conclusion that Adobe should have shouting much louder about AEM SaaS than they did, and here is why:
The demise of the on-premise CMS
Yes, in 3-5 years all Content Management Systems are going to be cloud-based and technologies need to be cloud-native. There are few reasons why, when recommending a CMS solution to clients I would be encouraged to go down the on-premise path.
This is the right product, and the right direction, at the right time!
AEM as a Cloud has all the bells and whistles
From an IT perspective it is always current on the latest version and bringing the latest functionality, it has a modular and scalable approach, maintaining the highest degree of performance resiliency and security.
“The driving force is now innovation, rather than customization. Customers are increasingly looking for more modern WCM technologies that are built on mesh app and service architecture MASA, microservices, serverless and ontainerized architectures." (Gartner)
From a business point of view Adobe offers their own Digital Foundation Blueprints to accelerate businesses to create or migrate simple website launches. In addition, AEM as a Cloud has the capability to seamlessly integrate Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target to create personalized experiences.
Differentiator Avanade
We are proud at Avanade to have launched our own fully compliant Adobe AEM Blueprint called ORBIT which offers significant advantages to our clients on top of the native AEM SaaS features:-
- Seamless integration of external data sources with our industry-leading data model approach
- Completely unique ability to author external data-feeds (content) within AEM authoring console
- Native ability to integrate Design Systems to manage brand and user experience
- Acceleration of Content at Scale and the ability to scale Personalization
- Headless content or Hybrid-approach delivered out of the box
And finally, Adobe now have a product that helps customers reduce the TCO of their digital marketing platform
It has long been my belief that there was a misconception in the market that "Adobe = Expensive", which is something I have often discussed with clients and other Adobe partners alike.
No more.
- Adobe AEM as a Cloud Service is competitively priced in the market, for license and support based on what I have seen in the last 6 months when working with multiple CMS vendors and clients
- The ability to use Blueprints and Best Practice Development (if clients and partners stick to a compliant approach) means TCO over 3-5 years can be significantly lower than many other CMS products in the market
- With our ORBIT accelerator, Avanade can migrate complete websites to AEM as a Cloud service in weeks, not months - time to market, and time to value is now a significant advantage
- And, significantly for both IT and Marketing, AEM as a Cloud Service (especially with ORBIT) reduces IT complexity, empowers the business and marketing to own content & brand easily, at scale and at speed.
My prediction is that the CMS market is going to shift significantly in the next 3 years, and that Adobe AEM as a Cloud service will be the leading CMS for enterprise and mid-market companies.
At Avanade we have all the building blocks to be a trusted partner that delivers value and business benefits as companies re-think their customer experience.
CTO Central Europe at Adobe
4 年Thanks Timur. In my role, no doubt, everybody would expect that I fully agree. I want to emphasise on your remarks regarding mid-market. We already see significant traction in German Mittelstand with quick wins and fast time-to-market. And this not with an MVP approach, but full-blown with a cutting edge solution.
Co-Founder & MD of Knapton Wright, marketing for brands that put the planet first | Ex-Facebook
4 年Rob Jefferson of interest to you(/us)?
Vice President, Digital Solutions at iCrossing
4 年Well said!
Transforming Marketing with Data-Driven Strategies | Principal Product Owner & Growth Architect | Driving Business Growth at R3 Group
4 年Not sure the CMS will last 5 years ??
About time. Adobe has been following a consistent approach for most of its product lines - acquire, change the UI, put it on cloud, offer it as a service. AEM surprisingly hasn't come out of its CQ5 shadow yet and continues to provide a lot of same features as an on-premise or hosted solution. While other marketing cloud products can be better integrated together now using connectors and Launch, it'll be a lot better to offer the Experience Platform as SaaS. Implementation time will be significantly shorter, especially considering the use case for product don't vary much - being established across industries. Infact, most of the configuration parameters can come out of the box, like some other workflow solutions, and AEM might even standardize best practices around use cases.