The evolution of cloud technology has changed the equation for content and experience management, meaning that strategists, marketers and technical architects alike are able to keep up with this demand, and execute on their business strategy with much greater agility and lower cost than before. Most importantly, this means that organisations can shift their focus from operation to innovation.
Reaping the benefits of cloud
The ability to deliver dynamic, scalable, digital experiences is becoming more important than ever
Accelerating value
The cloud market has been growing exponentially. World spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 23% (Gartner, 2021). As the scale of digital business grows, the more cloud solutions become accelerators of value.
Cloud-based architecture can help solve the challenges of managing large volumes of content across globally distributed teams, tailoring it for multiple touchpoints and personalising it based on real-time data and insights.
But the move to cloud is about more than a simple technology change, it’s a catalyst for new ways of working. Focusing on customer needs rather than internal team structures is bringing about a shift to agile ways of working and multi-disciplinary teams. Barriers between organisational silos and information stores need to be broken down to ensure these teams can work together seamlessly. Content, data and functionality need to be readily available to everyone, everywhere, which is where the cloud approach excels.
Adobe Experience Manager as a cloud service
Adobe’s technology stack, used alongside a host of other compatible service providers in a complementary fashion can provide a powerful capability for fulfilling your customer experience vision. The steps required to transition to Adobe’s Experience Cloud will be unique to each organisation and each will require their own approach. Moving from on-premise or hosted environments to the cloud is not without challenges, particularly if you are on an older version of AEM. However, there are a host of development frameworks, tools and supporting options that can help Adobe customers make the transition more seamless.
What are the key benefits?
- Capitalise on the product roadmap – new elements will become available to customers in a non-disruptive, automated basis. The heavy lifting of piloting, building, testing and launching something new is done for you.
- Enjoy faster time to value – achieve a boost to content development without having to develop bespoke customisation for new site experiences.
- Enhanced experience optimisation – create and deliver experiences across any channel, device or app. Brands can focus on content that will resonate with key audiences and preferences, using built-in AI capabilities to adapt content for different channels.
- Better business agility and continuity – with a scalable and accessible application that is always up-to-date, business leaders don’t have to worry about factoring in downtime to accommodate version upgrades and can rely on a production environment that is configured and constantly maintained to be consistent with Adobe’s standard security practices and controls.
- Reduced total cost of ownership – customers will no longer have to endure the costs associated with upgrades, hosting and downtime. Contingency planning is taken care of for you and the system is always available and up-to-date.
Source: Forrester - Industry Report. “Hybrid Cloud Enables Agile Content Management And Collaboration”. Enterprise Architecture Research Group. Web publication. January 2020.
How can we help?
Wunderman Thompson’s expertise lies in building out the roadmap that combines technology and business capability via cloud. We apply our world class technical expertise in Adobe Experience Manager, along with our deep expertise in customer experience design and offer a comprehensive service that can provide a fast, yet rigorous, technical and business evaluation that will help you objectively map out the best future direction for your business.
Wunderman Thompson has been Adobe’s Solution Partner of the Year for four consecutive years. This is a result of our proven record of successful deployments. All programs we run monitor, align and communicate with Adobe regarding cloud capabilities, feasibility of custom integrations and their usage on cloud infrastructure. This is further bolstered by our migration and testing toolkits, hosting a range of tools developed in-house and third-party elements numbering in their hundreds.
Some examples of our work in this area include:
Upgrading a medical manufacturer’s martech legacy stack to Adobe Experience Manager 6.5, in preparation for a full cloud conversion program.
Facilitating requirements engineering for an insurance provider’s microservices installed to an integration framework running on Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service.
Delivering an end-to-end integrated ecosystem on the full Adobe Experience Cloud for a leading automotive manufacturer.
Migrating and transitioning a world-class consumer goods business from a network of locally hosted environments to run on Adobe Experience Cloud as their new status quo.
Are your digital experiences cloud-ready?
Our report explores the evolution of cloud technology and how it has changed the equation for content and experience management.