When it comes to choosing a content management system for your business, the decision between Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS) and the more traditional Adobe Experience Manager on-premise solution can be quite the overwhelming task at hand. A company has a lot of choices to think of while searching for the right content management system to pick from, which includes looking for the cost, maintenance, and scalability among other decisive factors.
With the ongoing transition of most companies focusing on the incorporation of a cloud system, AEMaaCS has gained immense popularity over the past few years. Yet still, the on-premise AEM solution offers an installable option that some businesses prefer. In this post, we shall discuss AEMaaCS vs. Traditional AEM and focus more on key differences, features, and how each one adapts to your specific needs. This guide shall provide you with the right tips for easily transitioning towards the cloud or in evaluating how much security the on-premise solutions provide.
What is AEMaaCS?
AEMaaCS is a solution by Adobe to provide its users with extensive services through the Adobe Experience Manager, aka the cloud service, which allows the provision of AEM-managed features. This cloud service runs exclusively on SaaS, which is a stark difference from the on-prem server and private cloud systems that most people are used to.
For organizations aiming at optimizing their digital experience management as well as capitalizing on the current cloud infrastructure, AEMaaCS provides a handy choice against the traditional on-premises solutions. It incorporates Adobe’s wide range of functionalities and enables companies to manage, build, and provide custom-made content to clients effortlessly across different channels.
Similar to other cloud solutions, AEMaaCS removes most of the manual management processes that AEM has been traditionally requiring. This makes scaling, updating, and maintaining your website or other digital properties a walk in the park. You end up with a solution that is more flexible, more productive, and more affordable—perfect for companies that aim to remain relevant in an ever-digitizing economy.
Key Features of AEMaaCS
1. Automation of Maintenance Tasks
One of AEMaaCS’s notable characteristics is that it is capable of automating maintenance tasks that would otherwise be extremely tedious in an AEM environment. Indexing, backup, and maintenance tasks that are already routine are automated in the cloud service, which enables your IT department to concentrate on more advanced projects instead of routine administrative tasks. This alleviates the need for such processes to be manned by teams and consequently decreases operational costs.
As an illustration, companies are no longer required to watch over the performance of their servers, DB optimizations, or even regular updates, as Adobe covers all these tasks in the cloud.
2. Effective Scalability
As the activity landscape switches towards a more digital approach, it is inevitable for business needs to change in a swift manner. However, AEMaaCS eases the process when it comes to moving your operations to a larger scale by providing infinite scalability. When your business is expanding, the service enables you to grow your infrastructure alongside it. When your team is in need of extra storage and content delivery or even an additional resource during a traffic burst, AEMaaCS is able to fit your company’s needs through author, publisher, and dispatcher tiers.
The scaling nature is crucial to the businesses that work in fast-paced environments, for example, the e-commerce or media industries, where there are everyday surges in demand. AEMaaCS makes it easy for your company to expand and not constantly worry about acquiring more resources.
3. Security Updates
Apart from the new features, many users often complain about having to update their software, but with AEMaaCS, this is what makes it unique: updates and the newest security patches come integrated with the software, and so users never have to deal with updates. The system works with the continuous integration and continuous deployment models, and so users are always switching with the latest version of the software. Patching becomes automated and is no longer a hassle, which results in the software feeling fresh as it is enforcing security measures in the background without the need of putting a halt on operations.
In comparison, AEM only incorporates the CI/CD model over time; for the first few months, the software behaves similarly to most others and only has automated updates, allowing the users to manually schedule them and patch their devices, which is quite a headache. But after a few months with AEMaaCS, you can avoid them altogether as they are routine and taken care of.
4. 99.99% Uptime
AEM works on an unparalleled claim of AEM and does not fail to deliver. As they guarantee a staggering 99.99% uptime as well as constant connectivity to its users, which makes it a powerful asset for the company, allowing it to not make monetary losses.
Being a reliable tool, manual interventions might be required for the traditional AEM to keep it up and running. Frequent infrastructure failures can lead to AEM experiencing downtimes, which can be very inconvenient for a business. On the other hand, AEMaaCS is cloud-based and allows for risk mitigation while improving server distribution and redundancy systems, making it a better fit for customer experience management.
5. DevOps with Cloud Manager
AEMaaCS is also compatible with the Cloud Manager, a service that fully automates deployment pipelines and greatly facilitates DevOps processes. This helps businesses optimize their digital endeavors by protecting and quickening operations in a collaborative manner between the different teams of development, operation, and IT. These tasks, such as deployment, content delivery, and application monitoring, tend to have huge room for errors, which in return worsen the time needed to launch new features.
If the goal of the company is to modernize its workflow, then Cloud Manager is a major boon when compared to more manual methods needed in traditional AEM, and it allows for more efficient DevOps implementation.
Real-Life Example:
An emerging e-commerce platform switched from AEM, where they had an IT infrastructure set up, to AEMaaCS to decrease their costs. Several operational aspects needed manual interaction, such as testing and content delivery and updates; therefore, the user experience was preserved, but the final product was released in a much shorter time frame. This shift led to an increase in revenue and customer satisfaction, as the platform did not go down during promotions even with large amounts of traffic.
What is traditional AEM?
Traditional AEM means the on-premise version of Adobe’s already popular Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) tool, which is ideal for web content management and digital asset management as well. The difference is that traditional AEM is based in a company’s on-premise infrastructure or a private cloud instead of being a cloud-based service like AEM as a cloud service (AEMaaCS). This allows for added flexibility in terms of control over the entire system but engenders maintenance, scalability, and infrastructure management problems.
In the case of deep-level customization that involves the implementation of unique workflows and integrations and different server configurations, most businesses have had to resort to using traditional AEM, in which case they are in full control over the system. However complex and sophisticated its features may be, it does come with investment in purchasing and maintaining new infrastructure to scale it further with respect to the changing needs of the business.
Peculiar Characteristics of Traditional AEM:
Customization:
Businesses and organizations have particular and specialized systems integration needs, server configurations, business flows, and a plethora of other requirements, and traditional AEM allows them the flexibility to have things done exactly how they please, which is a major benefit of this type of server. What’s more fascinating is the fact that this system permits industries to alter both the user interfaces as well as the system architecture in a drastically different way as compared to AEMCS, where the end-users are, for the most part, regulated by restrictions. As an instance, a firm is permitted to create a completely original environment intended for its marketing teams or even blend with older systems without being bound by practices associated with the cloud.
For industries that have complex, peculiar needs, such as hospitals and financial institutions, being able to offer and implement deep and thorough solutions becomes a major decision-making aspect when integrating AEM.
Infrastructure Management:
One of the fundamental distinctions between AEMaaCS and traditional AEM is the use of infrastructure. Each and every organization using the AEM traditional model is required to take care of their infrastructure, including computer systems, application data backup, security maintenance, and systems scalability. In simpler words, your IT will have to be engaged in routine maintenance of the system and server setup for your organization so that things are always optimized.
On the other hand, in the case of AEMaaCS, Adobe takes care of a lot of this infrastructure management, and companies do not have to think about the underlying technical setup because they are able to focus on the business. If some companies want the type of control that the traditional AEM offers, it is well known that there is a cost, and that cost is the management of performance and security of the system.
New Version
Traditional AEM requires for an upgrade an application development that can be an arduous task. Traditional AEM does not employ continuous integrations and continuous deliveries/automation of updates of versions; it requires a series of patches and upgrading the version manually, which is not the case with AEMaaCS. Those updates are always systems that involve downtime or any form of interruption, which can be difficult and sometimes expensive for the organizations that rely on the system to be available continuously.
Maintenance of those updates in most cases means a much larger bill for the IT department for proper integration of updates and testing the updates to make sure nothing important is broken. This can be very time-consuming, especially when it comes to large companies; this is even more pronounced when the enterprise class enjoys having bespoke features with special provisions and cool integrations that will need to be tweaked with consideration during the version updates.
Security
With its self-hosted model, AEM traditionally offers businesses a greater degree of autonomy over security; therefore, the companies retain the ability to provide the company with personalized security protocols, firewalls, and encryption tailored to their requirements. Or instead for sectors such as, for example, the financial sector, or governmental, which have additional layers in terms of regulatory compliance, this level of circumvention of security can be invaluable. AEM traditional enables businesses to take the necessary steps to guard their information at the fullest extent permitted by their internal security measures.
Albeit this sort of control comes with a price, companies are expected to spend on constant manpower to ensure continuous evaluation of the system for possible breaches, to implement rolling upgrades, and to ensure compliance within certain standards. On the other hand, AEMaaCS, as an example, provides built-in cloud security features and compliance certification, which is more than enough for many businesses and thus do not require highly skilled internal security teams.
Real-Life Example:
A global financial services provider employed more sophisticated cybersecurity solutions based on traditional AEM, owing to the nature of regulations they had to operate under and the strict guidelines regarding their data. The company had to take charge of the entire security management system to ensure robust security measures and that all operations are completed working under the framework of international financial regulations. In addition, it required a very sophisticated and tailored platform in order to facilitate its custom-made digital campaigns, complex workflows, and use of in-house developed tools.
In the case of this company, the decision to outsource was out of the question, as control over every element of their platform, and in particular security and infrastructure, was imperative. It did, however, imply investing considerable amounts in system upkeep and the manual administration of infrastructure and updates. The financial firm had control and flexibility, but it came at a cost as the IT teams had to cope with the challenges of a highly distributed and large-scale system, hosted on-premises for that reason.
AEMaaCS vs. Traditional AEM: Key Differences
Cost Comparison
For firms looking forward to accelerating their digital acceleration through the integration of AEM online commerce and CMS tools, one of the key considerations lies in the opposition of AEMaaCS and AEM. Most of the time, the company has to take the hefty initial cost as a significant metric. Simply because there is no purchasing, setup, or maintaining physical equipment needed, AEMaaCS usually tends to have a much lower starting cost. Since the AEMaaCS is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offer, firms would only pay for what they actually utilize, the software and the related cloud resources. Hence, there is no need to make continuous expenditure in the form of servers, storage, and IT persons for taking care of infrastructure.
On the other hand, traditional AEM calls for considerable hardware and software procurements alongside a computer system with an adequate workforce to deal with the maintenance, software updates, maintenance of the system, and scaling challenges. Additionally, on-premise infrastructure, along with the IT managers and physical management systems acquired in spite of having an integrated infrastructure, tends to accumulate costs. Over a period of time, these costs tend to be overly CAPEX, especially with firms that expand and have wider infrastructure.
Scalability and Flexibility
Scalability is the other most significant thing developed in comparison to the traditional AEM. Companies grow, so with AEMaaCS, they can simply scale across the tiers (Author, Publisher, and Dispatcher) in which they specialize. Because AEMMAAS is cloud-based, scaling up is simply a matter of clicking a button. If your organization faces a sharp increase in the number of users or needs additional computing resources, then AEMaaCS will do this for you and allocate the needed computing and storage resources automatically.
In the case of businesses that continue using traditional AEM, scaling often means the physical upgrading of its infrastructure, such as buying more servers or increasing their data storage capabilities. These structural setups can be a process that is time-consuming and costly. Because of these factors, there is limited ability to adapt or shift the classical AEM because it has a fixed physical structure.
Updates and Maintenance
The process ensures that the updates are undertaken and the AEMaaCS approach is granted more priority than the traditional AEM. Unlike the traditional AEM model, AEMaaCs has a CI/CD pipeline integration. Security patches are automatically applied, and new features are deployed without having to manually update the software. This happens with replications of the pipeline to ensure zero downtime. This makes updates for businesses that use AEMaaCS automated since they are always using the up-to-date version.
On the other hand, traditional AEM should be regularly updated manually, which could lead to major interruptions in the daily business functions. The IT departments are responsible for such updates, verifying if a certain customization remains intact, as well as ensuring that all the critical operations remain unaffected.
Security and Compliance
Although businesses might embrace the fact that AEMaaCS has a range of integrated security features to ensure compliance with a number of regulations, more specifically, businesses that operate in a heavily regulated business might appreciate the fact that AEM has complete system control. Here, security features are put in place by organizations together with appropriate features that meet particular compliance needs. That being said, this has associated problems because it means that businesses need to be dedicated to constantly monitoring their data, and efforts are needed to be in line with compliance issues.
Availability
Compared to AEMaaCS, the availability of AEM is much lower because the IT system guarantees at least 99.99 percent or even higher uptime, meaning that system failure is absolutely rare. In comparison to AEMaaCS, AEM features slightly lower system reliability. However, downtime experienced by AEM is not at all shocking considering that an adequate backup and recovery system has been incorporated.
The flip side, however, is dependent on how much care goes into maintaining AEM. With sufficient management resources readily available, reliability does improve. but with traditional systems, there always remains the possibility of hardware failures and network interruptions, which usually take longer to fix in the case of AEM.
Real-Life Example:
A global video publishing company was having huge consequences with its conventional AEM installation. They had difficulties with downtimes during peak periods, which badly affected the UI and the speed of content delivery. Moreover, the amount of resources it took and the period of time consumed to scale up their system to cater to the demand was huge. Following the transition to AEMaaCS, the company witnessed astounding changes: The uptime of their system grew by 50%, and content delivery became much quicker and more effective to several locations. The transition powered them to broaden their scope from looking after the infrastructure set up to focusing on content and strategy, which helped them reach the goals of enhancing the positions of digital parameters for users across the globe.
Pros and Cons of AEMaaCS
Pros:
- Automated Maintenance: The primary benefit of AEMaaCS is the automated maintenance components. Keeping a firm’s AEM components up to date is time-consuming and requires periodic indexing, executing backups, security updates, and even updates to newer versions of AEM. For companies, it implies reducing the amount of time spent on day-to-day IT operations and investing more time in strategic tasks such as improving user experience or starting a new marketing campaign. This is the case because Adobe is responsible for the maintenance of the cloud infrastructure, thus enabling fewer chances of human error and making the system more reliable.
- Scalability: AEMaaCS is incredibly scalable. It accommodates increases in traffic flow or content without the need for major changes or extra infrastructure investment. Be it a business that is exploring new geographical regions or an organization that has a seasonal influx of users, AEMaaCS has the capability to allocate more resources as needed. This makes it ideal for companies that must meet demands as they arise, as their website will always operate in good order regardless of the circumstances.
- Faster Time-to-Market: AEMaaCS is also provided regular updates and is equipped with automated testing, which enables the organizations to integrate new features in a timely manner. Because the update and patch services are fully automated in the cloud, there are no concerns about software updates being delayed, and the company can concentrate on the more important tasks of product launches, interface improvements, and content development on a more aggressive timeline. For example, this is especially beneficial in those industries where competitiveness relies on speed.
Cons:
- Flexibility Issues: It’s true that AEMaaCS could prove to be a bit tight of a leash to businesses when compared to AEM’s traditional service. AEM’s conventional model allows for multiple integrations and workflows, which could be pivotal for niche businesses. For instance, obscenely complex integrations or stringent security requirements fall short of support with the base model that AEMaaCS follows. In other words, if a company requires multiple detailed settings that AEMaaCS doesn’t support, AEM’s regular flexibility could prove to be easier.
- Vendor Lock-in: AEM Cloud Service ties the user more towards the Adobe ecosystem, as this model requires the use of Adobe’s cloud structure. This can be an issue for companies that prefer to have the option of shifting between different services or platforms rather than sticking to one vendor. In the event an organization wishes to switch system providers in the future, shifting from the cloud could be problematic with high transition expenses and incompatibility risks.
Real-Life Example:
The e-commerce company that was rapidly expanding changed from basic AEM to AEMaaCS to reduce its expenses. After the switch, they experienced a major infrastructure cost decrease of more than 30%. There was no need for massive hardware investments on AEMAAACS. Still, there was a cost of using AEMAAACS in terms of control over the infrastructure. Other methods have not yet upgraded to AEMAAACS, especially when it comes to custom integrations with legacy systems, while traditional AEM still does. The company, however, reaped the rewards of lower overheads and quicker deployment.
Pros and Cons of Traditional AEM
Pros:
- Customization: Traditional AEM has an edge in customization, which a lot of businesses that do not have a problem with owning the end product and infrastructure prefer. Custom workflows, integrations, and other functionalities can be implemented as long as the system is hosted by the organization’s own infrastructure. For industries with complex needs, such as healthcare or finance, the ability to fine-tune the system to suit specific compliance or security requirements is a significant advantage.
- Security control: When it comes to conventional AEM, the level of security is purely determined by the business itself. The Sanitized can ask for tailored approaches to be designed and implemented, allowing the business to satisfy the requirements of highly regulated markets, such as sanitary, finance, and defense. Companies are able to implement business firewalls, encryption techniques, and other safeguards without violating their policies and compliance regulations.
- High maintenance costs: High maintenance costs are viewed as the bad part of conventional AEM. This is due to AEM aaCs, which takes away the need to bother with making requests for updating patches. AEM users employ separate IT teams to handle requests. This drives up operational expenses significantly as more and more skilled IT employees have to be hired or trained to keep everything functioning. Even hardware transfers and security together result in an additional expense that is recurrent.
- Cost and Time Inefficiency: With regard to businesses experiencing growth or traffic influx, additional hardware procurement, expansion of storage capacity, and hiring additional staff become essential. This shift is time-consuming as well as costly for a traditional AEM system, whereas AEMaaCS has the capacity for automatic scalability without the need to allocate additional resources. However, such self-sustaining systems have their own shortcomings, as incentives still tend to lack the autonomy to facilitate growth. Therefore, traditional AEM solutions pose a major drawback for businesses operating in competitive environments with higher pacing.
Case Study:
In order to ensure full compliance with regulations and ensure patient data protection, a healthcare organization mandated an engineering team to facilitate alteration of their data infrastructure. To ensure the protocol was at par with the industry standards, they resorted to customary alterations of their surveillance infrastructure. While the changes were crucial for the organization to resume operations, the expenses were overhead.
How To Decide Between AEMaaCS And Standard AEM
There are crucial issues to consider when selecting an AEM service provider, either AEMAAAS or a traditional AEM. They include:
- Scale: A business that expects a lot of traffic or is quickly growing may want to consider only AEMAAAS, because it is a lot more forgiving and does not force an organization to spend a lot of time and resources later during its rapid scaling. The platform has innate abilities to be tailored with little manual work. The automation is a massive booster for growing businesses because AEMAAAS can cover up its growth without appealing for significant investment in its infrastructure.
- Tailoring: Traditional AEM is ideal for businesses, especially relating to healthcare, finance, or government, that need thorough control over their integrations, workflows, and compliance measures. Therefore, in a case where AEMAAAS does not allow extensive customizing and a business needs a lot of it, then traditional AEM is the best suited to be used.
- Funds: It also needs to be considered that, in cases where extensive tailoring needs to be done or there is an apparent potential risk, the traditional AEM can allow for such high investment to be justifiable, but typically, Fusions has had lower initial and operational costs even in the long run, making it simple to incorporate.
Illustrative Cases:
A richly endowed and quickly growing technological startup made use of the primary AEM software as a service application that evolutionarily created enterprises with much application software solution, which allows for flexibility and scalability. Their IT overhead was therefore lowered, as with the transition to AMEaaCs, their operational costs reduced significantly. Resource management became much easier for the company. Their infrastructure appeared to be less complicated because of the new program, and when compared to AEMaaCS, they expanded their place faster. Under this method, however, they had to go through the anguish of restructuring their business processes to meet the AEMAACS’s fewer customization possibilities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it feasible to transition from the traditional AEM to AEMAA CS?
A migration between AEM and AEMaa CS is possible, but it would require careful consideration and planning to change the integrations and the workflows so that the migration is smooth.
What are the major differences in the security of AEMaaCs compared to the traditional AEM high-security enclosure?
The key distinction is in the management of the security systems and comprehensively defined processes. AEM objects offer businesses an extensive pre-configured feature that is secure by standards, which is absent in AEMaaCS.
For a company looking to grow, which is better for the business, AEM or AEMaaCs?
AEMaa CS is fairly cheaper for a growing company compared to AEM because it necessitates less spending on maintenance and infrastructure. There is no appreciable cash investment directed towards hardware and the IT teams.
What is the difference in time needed to set up AEMaaCS versus a more classical version of aided exclusion management AEM?
Because there is no requirement for an infrastructure setup when applying AEMaaCS, the implementation is done faster relative to the classical version. On the other hand, classical AEM stands to be time-consuming because servers, security, and workflows have to be set up in the first place.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, the selection between AEMaaCS and classical AEM comes down to the specific needs, growth pattern, and resources of the business. AEMaaCS offers cloud readiness features of automatic updates, traveling along with technology’s growth and lower maintenance costs, which make it perfect for businesses where flexibility and cost-effective solutions are needed. On the other hand, more control over customizations and the infrastructure is allowed in classical AEM, a solution best suited for a business operating in a regulated industry or with specific requirements.
Before arriving at a decision, consider the goals of the business, the amount of customization likely to be needed, the rate of growth expected, and the budget given. All these factors put together will give you insights into the best solution for the company’s needs.