Adobe Edge Delivery Services (previously Next-Gen Composability or Project Franklin) is a relatively new offering from Adobe that accelerates content velocity, delivers high-impact experiences at a high performance, and greatly reduces time-to-market.
The idea behind the technology is relatively straightforward: empower users where they are, and they don’t need to worry about the usual concerns with publishing their content via additional tools. By allowing them quick edit and publishing tools in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, they can skip the process of having to learn the interfaces and processes behind copying and pasting into components of a traditional CMS (Content Management System).
To clarify, Edge Delivery Services is not intended to be a replacement for AEM, but rather a complementary integrated tool with AEM. In fact, content from AEM can be rendered on a page delivered by Edge Delivery Services via blocks, and content delivered on Edge Delivery Services can be rendered in AEM via an Edge Delivery Services Component. In this way, AEM can be treated as a Hybrid CMS. Adobe demonstrated the capabilities of Edge Delivery Services, where websites created using Edge Delivery Services have a Google Lighthouse score of above 99.
Key Features and Benefits of Adobe Edge Delivery Services
1. Content Authoring
The traditional CMS products provide in-context authoring within the products. They provide unique authoring features, which means marketers and content authors need to be trained in the product. With Edge Delivery Services, this requirement is eliminated. Edge Delivery Services is integrated with day-to-day office product tools like Google Docs and Microsoft SharePoint. This unique feature makes onboarding marketers easier, enabling them to create and publish content with little to no training.
2. Content Publishing
Edge Delivery Services is very lightweight, as it is serverless. It does not have a complex user interface. Adobe has created a browser plugin called AEM Sidekick. This tool can be installed on modern browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Once the content is created with this plugin, content authors can preview the content and publish the content to the live site, vastly improving content velocity. Combined with a workflow tool such as Adobe Workfront, customers can have simplified content approval and publishing.
3. Developers
The Edge Delivery Services architecture has made developers’ lives easy. Developers do not have to learn an advanced programming language. Edge Delivery Services applications can be developed using basic HTML, JavaScript (JS), and Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). In Edge Delivery Services, developers create reusable pieces of HTML, JS, and CSS called Blocks. Developers will use GitHub to promote their custom application code. Once it is uploaded, an Edge Delivery Services Bot listens for code changes to newly created content. In a traditional CMS, developers create UI components for authoring which render the content as per the logic present in the backend programming language. Edge Delivery Services assembles the content to the browser-compatible code to the edge delivery network for content delivery.
To speed up the Edge Delivery Services setup, Adobe has provided boilerplate code equivalent to the AEM Archetype, and Edge Delivery Services UI Blocks similar to the AEM WCM Core Components. This makes developer onboarding very fast.
4. Architecture
Content running on Edge Delivery Services is rendered on a CDN via Edge computing. Several delivery stacks are available for rendering content including AWS and Cloudflare. The content is delivered via a Content Bus, where Authoring is done using Google Docs or Word online and, the content is then delivered via the Experience Composition Service. See the official documentation at Edge Delivery Services’ architecture site.
5. Additional Features
One nice feature about managing content with Edge Delivery Services is its ability to manage various types of content. Typically, landing pages and marketing copy would be a perfect example of content managed in Edge Delivery Services, but it can also be used to manage redirects and product catalog data.
Use Cases for Edge Delivery Services
There are several considerations for having your site run on Edge Delivery Services. It’s great if you have marketing copy, landing pages, or blogs that need to be greatly optimized for web consumption. This type of content is often sourced in Word Docs or Google Docs, so it makes sense to meet the author there and provide them editing and publishing capabilities. This eliminates the need for yet another system that users need to be trained on and go into for managing web content.
This makes it much easier to assemble authored content quickly for sites to be delivered at a global level, particularly when sourced documents aren’t being managed in something like AEM’s Multi-site Manager.
Because of the focus on performance, there is less of a concern about infrastructure since the delivery is intended to be cloud-native. As such, cost is minimized by maintaining it, which may be beneficial to customers who are incurring high infrastructure costs, particularly when maintaining largely static sites.
If you have users that are greatly distributed across many time zones, then you may increase your content velocity for those users when content needs to be created and published quickly.
Why should a client invest in Adobe Edge Delivery Services?
If you have a need for a greatly optimized site with pages having a Google Lighthouse score close to or at 100, then you may want to consider delivering your site(s) by Edge Delivery Services.
Maybe you have a high amount of costs when building and delivering a simple site from a traditional CMS. You might consider Edge Delivery Services.
If you have users that are greatly distributed across many time zones, then you may increase your content velocity for those users when content needs to be created and published quickly.
Are you ready to migrate a site to Edge Delivery Services?
Have a site that you’re looking to migrate to Edge Delivery Services? Consider us as your partner of choice.
Perficient is a Platinum Partner for Adobe in Adobe Experience Cloud with specialization in Adobe Marketing Cloud, Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Commerce, and Marketo Engage. Perficient provides strategic innovation in ever-changing digital marketing trends. We have over 500+ Adobe-certified technical consultants working with worldwide brands providing exceptional experiences to their customers. Check out Adobe Platinum Partner / Perficient, Inc. for more information about Perficient’s services and capabilities.
