Adobe has been making large gains in digital commerce and digital marketing technologies with their creation and development of the Adobe Experience Cloud and Platform. What is the Experience Cloud and Platform? In short, the Adobe Experience Cloud is a bundle of applications focused on digital marketing and digital commerce. And the Adobe Experience Platform is the technology stack where the Cloud Applications runs which adds the core functionality for companies to running complex transactions, a high volume of transactions or multiple workflows stemming from a transaction. The platform connects seamlessly to Enterprise Systems and supports technologies like GraphQL and REST.
A little history….
Adobe acquired Magento in 2018. With that acquisition, Adobe had what it needed to be able to have a digital commerce offering to compliment it’s digital marketing offering. Adobe already had applications from the Adobe Marketing cloud like Adobe Campaign, Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics and Adobe Experience Manager. All key applications for the professional digital marketer. But what was lacking for its customers was the actual ecommerce engine, that would allow customers to generate revenue from its digital marketing efforts. A way for Adobe merchants to monetize their digital marketing efforts. With the acquisition of Magento, Adobe now had what it needed to be a complete digital commerce solution. It had the technology to acquire customers, engage with those customers, sell to those customers and then measure the performance of the various applications that make up the Adobe Experience Cloud.
Starting with Magento release 2.3, we start seeing the integration of many of the other technologies that Adobe has in its arsenal. Functionality from integrating Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Sensei (the Adobe AI technology) begin to emerge. With 2.4, released in April 2020, we start seeing improvements to the B2B module, including approval flows a necessary need for B2B functionality. The ability to restrict purchasing based on roles and permissions, again another needed feature for B2B customers. And an integrated feature which has had a tremendous acceleration during the COVID-19 pandemic, Buy On Line and Pick Up in Store (BOPIS).
But for the enterprise, the most significant changes on the Adobe roadmap will be the Adobe I/O capability which is the platform of microservices that will allow the Adobe Experience Cloud applications to integrate with the Top 20 Enterprise technologies. Integration into enterprise systems like SAP Hana, Oracle or JD Edwards, will be done seamlessly
Adobe I/O Architecture enables the Adobe Experience Platform to integrate into top 20 Enterprise Applications
In addition, Adobe has made improvements to its GraphQL interface, allowing a customer to integrate CMS’s or other front-end technology that they may already have developed in their environment. Applications like Amplience or Drupal will now have a way to connect to the Adobe Experience Platform allowing for a preservation of their front-end technologies, while allowing those customers to add the capability that they previously didn’t have like ecommerce.
Magento is the key application in the Adobe Experience Cloud that will allow customers to have a world class ecommerce application to transact business with customers, allowing businesses to generate revenue from their digital channel.
And for business, one of the most important aspects of the Adobe’s Experience Cloud/Platform is the elasticity of the offering. You can start with a simple implementation using Magento through its inherent content creation capability known as Page Builder, and as you grow and your marketing organization has unique needs to manage your digital assets or provide for a more dynamic user experience you can add technologies like Adobe Experience Manager. You can add Analytics and other digital marketing tools like Adobe Campaign or Adobe Target as needed. Essentially, the platform allows you the customer to grow and add capability as you need it, preserving the investment made and increasing your overall ROI.
No other platform in the industry allows the flexibility of the Adobe Experience Cloud and Platform at an investment and a total cost of ownership at a fraction of its competitors.
