Bridging Open Source & Enterprise - AEM, Composability, and the Future of DXPs

I've spent over 13 years implementing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) solutions for some of the world's most recognised brands. As Technical Design Authority for EE's AEM implementation, I led the creation of an 8,000-page help website and trained over 150 stakeholders in AEM usage. At DigitasLBi, I led a team of 30 global architects on the UK's largest AEM implementation for the Nissan/Renault Alliance, eventually targeting over 200 websites in 30 languages across five brands.

My work with MediaMonks brought me to projects for Twitter, Genesis USA, and McLaren, where we pushed beyond traditional AEM frameworks to create richer experiences. At Cognizant Netcentric, I advised on headless AEM implementations for Ford, and at Inspired Thinking Group, I consulted on Jaguar Land Rover's migration to AEM from Tridion CMS.

Then onto Ford Motor Company with Netcentric, where I architected a completely headless AEM implementation using React.

Latest endeavours include investigating Adobe  Edge Delivery Services (Franklin), a high-performance document-based authoring system with a modern build system, that is being integrated into AEM.

Throughout these experiences, I've witnessed first-hand how AEM has evolved from its open-source foundations to a comprehensive enterprise platform, and I'd like to share insights on where it's headed in an increasingly composable future.

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Ibexa Summit 25: What a difference a year makes

With some 300 participants mostly from Europe, Ibexa and their DXP community took to Barcelona at the end of January for their annual kickoff and it was a quite different experience compared to last year.

Unlike last year, where it was 200 participants and partners-only, this year customers also participated at Ibexa Summit 25 and that was far from the only substantial change. Where the 2024 program looked much more inwards, or if you prefer, was more partner-community focused, this time Ibexa curated an experience that set sight on the broader marketplace, bigger customer problems and even touching on industry challenges as faced by AI and the erosion in trust.

In brief: Ibexa is growing, now also with a North American footprint and importantly, the combination of DXP (digital experience platform), CDP (customer data platform) and PIM (Product Information Management) is setting them apart in a marketplace that is as confusing as ever.

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What might 2024 bring?

What happens when you bring together leaders from different industries who are working on different fields?

Yesterday our digital transformation friends at diconium in Hamburg hosted our sold out annual Christmas member's meeting, where we had an afternoon of learning and networking across the different fields we cover incl design leadership, employee experience, digital strategy and product management.

As the legendary advisor and influential consultant Ram Charan famously said:

"Listening isn't just hearing; it requires the willingness to entertain other viewpoints - especially opposing ones"

Like a miniature version of our 3-day Aarhus conference, we made it through 10 lightning talks in a packed afternoon with quite some thought provoking perspectives. In between we had a bit time for reflections and the conversation continued over some good food.

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What’s the real story about digital experience composition?

You might have noticed that there’s a new buzzword in town: Digital Experience Composition, also known as DXC. Several niche vendors are getting together around the term, sharing their somewhat similar definitions and also their messaging on how DXC can help you solve your digital problems. Or actually, for some of them only your web problems. 

If you follow the wider digital experience industry or like me have worked with CMS for decades, and sometimes try to decipher vendor marketing, you might think that Digital Experience Composition (DXC) is the new big thing. Perhaps even the new trend after headless? 

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Kontent.ai: From headless CMS onwards to a modular content platform

The real problem in most organisations is that they are dealing with busy developers and a marketing team that are finding it too complex to design, develop and deliver experiences that look and feel great.

It doesn’t help that the content management systems of the past have not really been designed for content collaboration, so you need to look elsewhere to sort out that problem. Also, while headless CMS has become the defacto standard, it further complicates the picture with more pieces in the puzzle.

Untangling this complexity and addressing the big challenges faced by large, complex organisations, is what Kontent.ai is focused on. They call their next level CMS a modular content platform.

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A new grand compromise in content management

What can we do to ensure that no persona gets left behind in content management, especially as we begin to discuss requirements surrounding digital experience management?

In a recent member conference call, Preston So from Oracle looked to fields as diverse as geology and motivational psychology and expanded our sights to dimensions beyond the static web to forge a new grand compromise between content editors and marketers and their engineering counterparts to foster a bright future for the CMS — and how we can create and contribute to initiatives to support it.

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