Adobe Named a Leader in 2015 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

Gartner has once again named Adobe Experience Manager as a leader in its Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management. This is the fifth consecutive year the team has been recognized for our leadership in this market. It’s especially exciting news coming on the heels of Adobe Experience Manager also being named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Mobile App Development Platforms.

We believe this leadership recognition of Experience Manager in both these categories speaks to the continued innovation by Adobe’s product team, partners and customers. We feel it also illustrates the investments we are making to rapidly evolve Experience Manager as customer expectations shift faster and faster to mobile everywhere experiences. People are expecting brands to seamlessly engage with them across websites, mobile apps and even traditionally analogue experiences with in-venue screens.

With even conservative predictions that by 2020, there will be 35 billion connected devices shipped, the opportunity and challenges we face with mobile will only mushroom with the onslaught of the Internet of Things. Technology to support the digital transformation of customer experiences should be simple, yet powerful. Experience Manager, is not only a solution ready to take on the web content management challenges of today, but the mobile and Internet of Things experiences of today and tomorrow. A single solution for managing rich assets and delivering digital experiences across websites, apps, online communities, forms and even the recently announced shoppable video capabilities.

I am fortunate to be in the middle of a two week tour with customers and partners. I’ve been sharing how Adobe sees customer experiences evolving and the innovations we are bringing to market, which will continue to give the organizations that use Experience Manager the competitive edge.

Content Velocity

Content marketing has become a critical focus as brands realize they need to the need create, manage and deliver relevant and delightful content across the customer journey. Content velocity, how quick a brand can harness creativity and marshall it into experiences that reach the intended audiences at the right moments is a defining competitive advantage in this digital age. To give brands this unique design advantage, Adobe has not only the leading web experience management solution, but also the solution connects to Adobe Creative Cloud in a way that accelerates the cycle from creativity to customer impact. In June, we announced an even greater connection between Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Creative Cloud. This innovation brings together the world’s best creative tools and also content sourced via Adobe Stock (formerly Fotolia) with the industry-leading digital experience management solution.

This past week, we also introduced the availability of shoppable video which brings content consumption ever closer to commerce. With global video consumption growing, especially via mobile apps, now any video that is delivered with Experience Manager can be made shoppable and interactive with a few simple steps in Experience Manager.

Mobile Everything

We recognized a couple of years ago that a platform that just supported web experiences was not enough. To truly deliver digital experiences that have the greatest impact with customers, Experience Manager needed to manage and connect a brand’s web experiences with those that happen in mobile apps and even in-store venues.

While the responsive grid capabilities of AEM makes it easier to design responsive sites, Adobe Experience Manager Apps enables marketers to manages mobile apps created across Adobe Digital Publishing Solution, Adobe PhoneGap and even native apps. Across sites and mobile apps, Experience Manager lets marketers have consistent content management, analytics, personalization and governance. We just announced new features in Adobe Digital Publishing Solution which is available as part of AEM Apps. The launch event in New York showcased the mobile apps initiatives from brands such as Shell, Qantas and University of North Carolina. I invite you to check out the latest launch of Adobe Digital Publishing Solution.

Cloud Agility

One of the fastest growing options for Adobe is our cloud offerings, both managed services and SaaS. Adobe Experience Manager is the only solution that gives companies the option to manage the technology themselves or have Adobe manage it as a service on their behalf. Based on the ROI savings and evermore shorter time-to-market needs, more IT and marketing departments are turning to Adobe as the trust partner to manage Experience Manager as a service that scales globally and with great agility to scale to the consumer demand needed. In one particular scenario, a brand was able to offload the management of intense traffic spikes due to a campaign they were running in conjunction with a global sports events.

We also made available Experience Manager’s digital asset management and delivery as a SaaS offering to make it even easier for organizations to share valuable assets that are the foundation of any digital experience. As digital experiences span more devices and seep into everything we do, the cloud offerings for Adobe Experience Manager give organizations unprecedented speed to deployment, customization options and the elasticity to scale.

Unified Experience

We have exposed more of Adobe Analytics and Adobe Target capabilities with Experience Manager to provide a simple way to gain data insights and target content to various audiences. Building on top of the leading analytics and personalization engines means you get the full power of predictive and engagement analytics and testing across touch points should you need them now or in the future.

Adobe Experience Manager for All

Adobe’s mission is to the change the world through digital experiences. With Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Marketing Cloud, we have helped the top brands, such as Nissan and Citrix on this journey.

“Adobe Experience Manager gives us the tools to take control of content to deliver a more accurate and personalized experience for people inside and outside our company,” says Michael Berg, director of web product management, Citrix. “By building our foundation of Adobe Experience Manager, we can expand communications for all internal and external customers.”

However, over the past several years, we have seen a growing demand from mid-size organizations as well who realize they face the same digital customer experience expectations as large enterprises. Customers do not adjust their expectations because of a company’s size. This is well understood by companies such as MedHost. And the complexities to integrate with the rest of the organization’s technology stack is often just as demanding as was the case with My Move with the help of Adobe partner ICF.

Integration with our back-end systems was key because those systems help drive revenue and improve the services we provide to consumers,” said Jon Herberger, senior vice president and CIO, My Move, an advertiser-funded website that offers information, support and special offers related to moving for nearly 600,000 unique visitors per month. “Adobe Experience Manager, along with ICFI’s expertise, enabled all our integrations, whereas many other content management systems were unable to do so or were overly complex.”

“Our clients have entered a new reality where the digital experience is no longer a luxury — but an expectation. Their customers expect mobile optimized experiences. They expect personalization. They expect a message that speaks to them as an individual, not as part of the masses,” said Matt Van Bergen, senior vice president for ICF Interactive. “This has led to organizations going through a massive digital transformation that is evaluating all parts of their business and their agility to react to customer demands. Adobe Experience Manager, cloud and commerce solutions, and the entire Adobe Marketing Cloud has played a part in that digital transformation and we’re guiding them through this transition to revolutionize the engagement they have with their customers.”

At the end of this past April, we announced we announced a specific offering of our enterprise-class web experience management solution for mid-size companies.

Get your complimentary copy of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WCM and Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for MADP. I also invite you to check out a recent podcast interview with our very own Irina Guseva and Tim Walters, co-founder and Principal Analyst of Digital Clarity Group discussing the needs and opportunities web content management and customer experience management for mid-size organizations.

Here’s to our success and our continued partnership. The future of digital is ours to imagine and create! Let’s collaborate on how Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Marketing Cloud can help your organization make the most of it.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.