Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service
AEM as a Cloud Service, sometimes shortened to AEMaaCS, is Adobe’s latest cloud-native version of AEM. This is a true Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that can scale up and down seamlessly to your organization’s needs. Unlike some SaaS solutions, AEM as a Cloud Service retains extremely extensible and customizable–this is true enterprise software operating on a cloud deployment.
Speak with an Adobe Experience Manager Expert
- Speak with an AEM specialist who has led successful migrations from AEM 6.5 to AEM as a Cloud Service.
- Understand the key architectural, code, and deployment differences that impact migration timelines and cost.
- Learn how Northern helps organizations reduce risk, modernize their AEM stack, and adopt Cloud Service best practices.
AEM as a Cloud Service: Strategic Advantages of Cloud Adoption
If you are an existing AEM customer on a non-cloud version of AEM, Adobe has doubtlessly evangelized the benefits of moving to AEM as a Cloud Service. These benefits are real. Below is a short list of just some reasons a move to cloud is likely to benefit your business:
- Always Current: AEM as a Cloud Service receives automatic updates of new features and maintenance fixes without the need to coordinate service packs.
- No Release Downtime: AEM as a Cloud Service uses an approach known as blue-green deployments to seamlessly push releases without ever impacting customer or author experience.
- New Features: Many of Adobe’s newest cutting-edge features–from Edge Delivery to Content Hub to Dynamic Media Templates–are only available in Cloud Service.
- VIP Programs: The flexibility of Adobe’s cloud infrastructure allows for a radical new way of developing and optimizing product features. If 3 to 5 customers express a strong interest in a new feature, Adobe can create a VIP program to develop and deploy that new feature just for those customers. Adobe engineers work with the VIP participants until the feature is working in production for those customers. This development approach ensures that the new feature is suitable for productive use in a way that a pre-production beta release can never do.
All in all, the benefits of a Move to Cloud are significant and getting more so with every new release.
Why Organizations Are Making the Move Now
As we explained on this blog post, AEM 6.5 is moving to end of life as soon as September 2026. This hard deadline means that customers cannot stay with the AEM 6.5 status quo. Current AEM 6.5 customers must migrate to either AEM Long Term Support (LTS) or AEM as a Cloud Service within the upcoming year.
Smart leaders should consider whether this crisis opens the opportunity to push their organizations into Adobe’s long-term platform of the future–AEM as a Cloud Service.
Migration Challenges and How Northern Can Help
Moving to AEM as a Cloud Service is not as easy as pushing a button. The differences in fundamental architecture require some real changes to code and configuration from legacy versions of AEM.
Adobe can generate automated reports of potential issues for Adobe Managed Services customers, but this is a highly technical laundry list of repository paths that requires real expertise to interpret and remedy. On premises, AEM customers do not have this much guidance.
Northern has successfully moved many customers from AEM 6.5 to AEM as a Cloud Service. We have a standard methodology and materials we can share about what to expect as part of the migration.
Please contact us if you’d like to learn more or discuss a migration to AEM as a Cloud Service for your organization.
Recognized as an Adobe Gold Partner
