What is Adobe Experience Manager?

Adobe Experience Manager is a software package which is used by larger companies to run their large marketing and corporate website presence. It combines the features of a Content Management System (CMS) with extensive digital asset management (a place to organize, manage, store and serve images, video and other assets like PDFs). It also has a massive array of features which allow it to be extensively customized to provide personalized experiences to web & mobile visitors based on things like location, language, purchases, previous visits, etc, and is designed to plug into Adobe’s many other solutions for complete web experiences like their commerce, analytics and customer data platforms.

With AEM you can build sites, mobile apps, forms, run eCommerce, and more. AEM is a tool to manage every aspect of your customer’s online interactions with your business.

AEM is primarily targeted at large enterprise businesses because of software costs and the costs of running an AEM solution. However, Adobe is shifting to mid-market companies with their move to Cloud-based out-of-the-box solutions.

Businesses choose to use AEM because it is second to none in its ability to keep a streamlined, consistent message across a wide variety of web pages, devices, workflows, and languages.

In our podcast here, we aim to rapidly explain some of Adobe Experience Manager’s key features, benefits, structure and challenges.

A Basic Diagram of What AEM Consists Of

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History

Adobe Experience Manager was originally a Day Software Product called Day Communique or (Day CQ). Day Software was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2010. The name was then changed to Adobe CQ.

With Adobe CQ, Adobe’s goal was to lead the market with the best Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management, and Social Collaboration offerings by merging Adobe and Day Software’s technology.

The Adobe CQ Product was then rebranded as Adobe Experience Manager in 2013. If you would like to learn more about the history of AEM check out this blog.

How Many Businesses Use AEM?

By looking at public data from Adobe we were able to predict that there are between 5,000 and 4,000 different organizations using AEM.

How Much Does AEM Cost?

By using our predicted number of users and revenue numbers from the annual 10-k from 2021, we can calculate the average cost of AEM licensing. Digital Experience revenue for Adobe was listed at $3.87 billion in 2021. Using our estimation of 5 thousand and 4 thousand AEM users, and our team’s experience your business can expect average licensing costs of between $774,000 and $967,500.

There are more costs associated with AEM than licensing costs. Your business will need developers, content creators, engineers, and more to properly operate AEM.

The cost of AEM varies on the size and needs of your organization. Adobe is trying to make AEM cheaper to manage and license with its Cloud Service for Adobe Experience Manager offerings as it moves to the mid-market.

Conclusion

You have been interacting with Adobe’s AEM without realizing it. Many of the largest consumer-facing retailers, banks, schools, and government sites use AEM to conduct business. This blog is not a complete explanation of AEM. In the future we will tackle how AEM works, the process of purchasing AEM, how to get a job in AEM, and much more. Please reach out to us through the contact form or business phone number for any AEM questions you may have!

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