Last week Forrester published their first Wave on Digital Experience Platforms. I was at the IBM Digital Experience Conference and it sounded like IBM was expecting good news from Forrester in this wave. In fact, Stephen Powers from Forrester was the Keynote speaker at the conference and one of the principal authors of the Wave. 
Much to every one’s surprise, the Wave came out with nobody listed as a Leader. Adobe, hybris (SAP), IBM and Sitecore came out as the Strong Performers followed by many others in the Contender category. Nobody was listed as a Risky Bet.
So what gives? Really no Leaders? Dom Nicastro wrote a story last week about this development: Forrester Wave: No Leaders in Digital Experience Delivery.
Forrester considers a Digital Experience Platform a full end-to-end delivery platform and most vendors fell short in the completeness of their offerings. Each vendor seemed to shine in one or more areas, but nobody stood out as having all the components needed to be a Digital Experience Leader.
For me, part of the issue stems from how Forrester defined the market. hybris from SAP is strong in Commerce, while Adobe and Sitecore are more known for their Web Content and Marketing capabilities. So the companies included in the wave are really all over the map, in my opinion.
Is it fair to compare commerce systems with WCM systems? Yes and no. If you need commerce in your digital experience, then you want to know who has commerce capabilities. If commerce isn’t important, then no and the analysis gets skewed.
There is a lot of interesting information in the Forrester report, so I encourage you to read it yourself.
