Adobe releases Experience Manager as a cloud service

AEM as a cloud service is also aimed primarily at medium-sized companies that are becoming increasingly digital and need easy-to-use and more flexible tools for their content management challenges. The "Digital Foundation Framework" included in the cloud service enables faster project development, because the functional Blue Print website with basic analytics and personalization functions included in it provided an ideal basis for implementing one's own project.

The most important advantages at a glance:

• Faster Time-to-Value: Quickly meet customer and business requirements by streamlining marketing operations and application development. By automating the deployment of AEM environments on a service-based architecture, companies can develop and deploy modular solutions even faster.
• Cloud agility: cloud-native service that is always up-to-date, scalable, and available.
• Continuous optimization of their online presences: Increase ROI and conversion rates by optimizing every step of the customer journey based on real-time data
• Omnichannel: Create and deliver experiences across any channel, device, and application
• With native integrations to Adobe Sensei and Adobe Experience Cloud solutions such as Target and Analytics, it's easier to set up interactions across multiple apps to add value for customers with multiple apps.

Part of AEM as a cloud service is also the Cloud Manager. Cloud Manager enables enterprises to manage their AEM instances in the cloud. It includes a CI/CD pipeline, flexible deployment models and "autoscaling" of the required resources to absorb peak loads without compromising performance or security. This also allows for faster deployment of enhancements, updates or new developments. Part of the CI/CD pipeline is a thorough code scan, which ensures that only high-quality applications reach the production environment.

The pricing model has also been adapted. The pricing metrics of AEM as a cloud service cover use cases of large web applications in the enterprise segment. However, they also scale down to cover the requirements of medium-sized companies.

AEM as a cloud service is versionless and always up-to-date, so customers always use the latest version and features. Adobe promises that upgrade projects are a thing of the past with AEM as a cloud service.

AEM customers who want to run AEM themselves or use it as a managed service will continue to receive support in the form of feature packs that will be released at regular intervals.

You may be wondering what the difference is between AEM as managed services (available since 2017) and AEM as a cloud service?? 

AEM as Managed Services was introduced a few years ago to offer customers the benefits of Adobe Experience Manager in the cloud. In this offering, Adobe runs Adobe Experience Manager for its customers in AWS/Azure and provides customers with various value-added services such as 24/7 support, technical contacts, agreed-upon availability, etc. AEM as a cloud service, on the other hand, is a complete cloud-native redevelopment of AEM with a modernized architecture to enable customers to get the most out of AEM and easily link their AEM application with other Experience Cloud offerings.

By the way, the user interfaces of AEM Sites and AEM Assets as a cloud service are identical to the familiar interfaces, so users (editors, authors, etc.) do not need to be trained. AEM as a cloud service can still be extended, adapted to business requirements or integrated with third-party solutions.

To use AEM as a cloud service, the following requirements must be met:

• All deployments must be done through Cloud Manager.
• The code base must be based on Experience Manager 6.5
• The authoring UI must be based on the Touch UI. The Classic UI is not supported.

What happens to the on-premise offering of AEM?
Adobe's primary go-to-market strategy for Adobe Experience Manager is AEM as a cloud service. If customer needs are not met with the cloud service offering, AEM can also be run as a managed service by Adobe or on-premise, i.e., in your own data center. Adobe continues to support both of these options and there are no restrictions or discontinuations in this regard.

Is AEM Forms also available as a cloud service?
Currently, only AEM Sites and AEM Assets are available as a cloud service. However, there are efforts to offer AEM Forms as a cloud service as well.
If you have any questions about the new AEM as a cloud service offering, please feel free to contact us.

The key functional and technical highlights of the cloud service offering at a glance:

• Always on: High availability with minimal downtime or content freeze
• Always scalable: thanks to horizontal and vertical autoscaling
• Always up to date: Significant reduction of upgrade effort
• Always learning and adapting: Automatic and self-improving updates
• Always fast: Automated provisioning of production-ready, preconfigured AEM environments