The superhero origin story of how Document Authoring for Edge Delivery Services came to be
This is a podcast that's been a year in the making, with illustrious celebrity guest Chris Millar from Adobe Systems. Chris has been an engineering manager behind Adobe's internal web properties (adobe.com, business.adobe.com, blog.adobe.com, etc) and is now the mastermind and architect behind the Edge Delivery Authoring solution known as DA (formerly Dark Alley). If you're an AEM professional, this is a story you want to hear.
Also available on Apple Podcasts and as an audio or video podcast on Spotify.
Leading to This Podcast: The Dark Alley Journey
Some context: in 2024, long-time listeners to the podcast might remember our Adobe Summit '24 Recap podcast, which at this point is still our most-listened-to episode ever. At the time, I was known as an ardent AEM cloud skeptic, so there were calls on Linkedin of "...where's the real Tad and what have you done to him?" when that episode was released.
What was really happening behind the scenes was a lot of talks with folks like David Neuscheler and Chris Millar here about traditional workloads that a sensible person would ALWAYS recommend be on a big, self-managed application server like AEM -- and how these workloads could ACTUALLY and FOR-REAL be done better on Edge Delivery Services.
I was a HUGE skeptic, but the evidence was pretty undeniable. I was also leading a large classic AEM Cloud Service migration which I had just started implementation on, and which really looked like it would be a far-better candidate for Edge Delivery instead.
Limitations of Universal Editor, Sharepoint and Google Drive Approaches
I was not entirely convinced though. See, the project I was leading had a number of factors which made it a less-than-ideal candidate for Universal Editor or Sharepoint. These factors were:
- A need for deep and relatively-seamless AEM Assets integration
- Translations & localization support
As detailed in other podcasts like this one, Universal Editor has its strong points, but especially as of its state in 2024, UE had no localization support at all. This made it a total non-starter for integration into a highly-localized website. That left a solution like Sharepoint or Google Drive, which (a) the customer really was 0.00% interested in, and (b) was going to have major issues integrating well with Assets, as pictures would then be residing INSIDE of documents, and (c) it would mean rolling from scratch our own localization engine and workflow.
And that's where a little project called Dark Alley came in.
The rest is history (and detailed pretty well in the podcast) but in the end we collaboratively worked though growing pains, political strife and multiple feature-set hurdles like author customization, permissions management, translation workflow, bulk tooling, and more.
The customer launch (which ultimately was the first customer launch of Document Authoring for Edge Delivery) was ultimately TOTALLY successful, and they remain highly pleased with the outcome.
All through this, I have to say that Chris and a whole gang of Adobe employees have demonstrated why Adobe is the premier outfit to work with for mission-critical enterprise sites. They have some of the most talented engineers anywhere, and I'm absolutely honored to count them as my friends.
I won't name names, to save their Linkedin inboxes, but they may be picture above, and they know who they are. :)
So now that DA's place in the world is assured, its feature set has only matured, and the future looks very bright, I'm happy to let you all in on this great history lesson on the backdrop of "Dark Alley" and why understanding it means EVERYTHING for any AEM professional today.
Podcast Key Moments
In this podcast:
- 00:00:25 - Chris Millar's Role and Background at Adobe
- 00:02:00 - Launching blog.adobe.com and the origins of doc-based authoring
- 00:04:18 - Superhero Origin Story of DA
- 00:05:00 - The mega scale of adobe.com
- 00:08:00 - 400,000+ pages across locales.
- 00:10:00 - Challenges with Traditional AEM
- 00:13:00 - Limitations Even with High-Quality Teams
- 00:15:00 - Transition to Document-Based Authoring with SharePoint
- 00:19:00 - Telemetry Showing Faster Authoring
- 00:20:00 - From Zero Code to Foundation in Six Months
- 00:23:00 - Opening the Floodgates and Training Engineers
- 00:26:00 - DA Origins as Research Project
- 00:31:00 - Reluctance to Show Leadership
- 00:33:00 - Opinions vs. Facts Challenges
- 00:35:00 - Applying Gall's Law to DA
- 00:40:00 - Evolution of Branding from "Dark Alley" to "Document Authoring"
- 00:44:00 - First External Launch by Arbory Digital Team
- 00:48:00 - Current Role of DA
- 01:17:13 - Initial Customers and Ambitious Goals
- 01:18:38 - Poster Child Success Stories
- 01:19:34 - Defining CMS for Non-Technical Users
- 01:20:33 - Early Support Needs and Paper Cuts
- 01:21:15 - Weekly Feedback Calls in 2024 during DA's early days
- 01:22:03 - Benefits of Shared Feedback
- 01:22:20 - Handling Customer Dissatisfaction
- 01:23:00 - Prioritizing Fixes Rigorously
- 01:23:49 - Universal Editor Trade-offs
- 01:25:32 - Customer Trade-Offs with WYSIWYG
- 01:27:09 - Basic DA Requirements
- 01:28:37 - Evolving Author Customization
- 01:34:00 - Security and UX Trade-Offs
- 01:36:58 - DA Simplicity Enabling Imagination
- 01:41:37 - Automated Site Creator for Schools
- 01:48:57 - Debunking Lighthouse Hack Myth
- 01:53:59 - Edge Delivery for Large-Scale Sites
- 01:55:46 - Trade-Offs Between AEM and Edge
- 02:01:56 - Intentional Patterns vs. Hacks
- 02:04:27 - Espresso Analogy for Learning Curve
- 02:20:59 - Future Content Explosion for LLMs
- 02:26:04 - Practical AI Integrations
- 02:34:52 - Relearning Open Systems with LLMs
- 02:37:25 - MCP Research in Edge Delivery
- 02:42:42 - AI Transforming DA Development
- 02:44:22 - Risks and Benefits of AI Coding
- 02:45:03 - Balancing Speed and Sustainability
- 02:46:24 - Vibe Coding with AI Juniors
- 02:47:41 - MCP Value for All Sites
- 02:47:54 - Anticipating Adobe Summit
- 02:49:22 - Failures of Homegrown CMS
Podcast Speakers
Tad Reeves
Principal Architect at Arbory Digital
Tad is a two-time AEM Champion, and has been working with Adobe Experience Manager & CQ since 2010. Starting in 1996, he has worn nearly every hat in website delivery from solution architecture to product management, as well as years in devops and system adminstration. He loves that Arbory Digital gives him the opportunity to provide honest and effective solutions, even if it means challenging prevailing sales perspectives. When Tad isn’t working (and sometimes when he is), he enjoys mountain biking and exploring nature with his wife & 3 kids.
Chris Millar
Architect at Adobe Systems
Chris is a veteran software engineer, recovering engineering manager and architect at Adobe Systems, and is the driving force behind the Edge Delivery Authoring system "DA", formerly known as "Dark Alley".
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