During the MAX 2010 conference, it was clear that Adobe was shifting its focus from Flash Player to HTML producing tools. At that conference, the announcement about the acquisition of Day Software was made without much fanfare. Oh well, it’s just another Content Management System (CMS).  But after seeing an impressive demo of the release today of CQ5 (a part of Customer Experience Management Platform), I can attest - this is not yet another CMS. It really puts the marketing department of your organization in the driver’s seat when it comes to creating a Web site for promoting your products.

I’ll get down to the essence of this Web Content Management Suite (WCMS), which is based on CQ5 and is a tool for end users who can put together the Web site from such building blocks as text boxes, images, charts, or Flash-based inserts (SWF files). Just drag a text box or a SWF file onto your Web page. Of course, the SWF has to be prepared by developers or designers. Marketing people don’t need to know programming – they put the content right into the Web site. This tool generates code fragments in JavaScript to keep all the pieces (legos/portlets) together.



All modification made by the marketing people are saved in a NO SQL database and software developers supporting this Web site use another tool giving them a different view and editing tools for the content of this Web site.  



Many times I’ve heard that with “this visual tool” the end users will be able to minimize the involvement of IT department.  This applies not only to the UX tools, but to BPM’s as well. If Adobe’s Flash Catalyst is more of a prototyping tool for Flash-based applications or widgets, CQ5 will get you further. Non-programmers should be able to create multi-page Web sites of mixed HTML/Flash content. Besides adding text boxes or images to the Web page, you can easily add membership-based user forums and publish events for your marketing campaign.

Being closely familiar with Wordpress – a popular, simple, and powerful tool for bloggers -  I’d say that CQ5 can become  a Wordpress for Enterprises. This tool is also cloud-ready. With Wordpress, bloggers have a choice – either host blogs at wordpress.org or download and install the Wordpress on their servers. The cloud model can work for businesses using CQ5 to bring the cost of ownership down.
Another useful feature of CQ5 is its ability to test (and adjust) the newly created Web site on a variety of emulators of mobile devices as shown below.

I believe that with CQ5 Adobe found the middle ground between the completely automated and manual tools - the end users will play an active role in improving their own Web experience. 

Omniture is also hooked up to CQ5 to give the end users valuable analytical information about the Web site users and their behavioral  patterns.



I’m not easily impressed, but it seems that CQ5 can become Adobe’s most interesting product of 2011.
The official text of the CQ5 press release is below.


Press/ Analyst Contacts
Sandra Lo
Adobe Systems Incorporated
415-832-2309
sandralo@adobe.com
Paul Lesinski
Edelman
503-293-8949
paul.lesinski@edelman.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Adobe Transforms Customer Experience with New Solution for the Digital Enterprise
New Web Experience Management Solution Enables Businesses to Deliver Targeted Digital Experiences and Optimized Marketing Campaigns Across E-mail, Web, Mobile and Print

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Feb. 22, 2011 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the immediate availability of its new Web experience management solution, a significant milestone in delivering a Customer Experience Management (CEM) platform that powers immersive, multi-channel experiences, transforming how enterprises engage, sell and service their customers. The launch is evidence of rapid integration of the Day Software acquisition and highlights strong momentum in delivering fully unified solutions that enable customers to better integrate their Web presence with business applications and unlock the value of multi-channel communications.

A key component of the CEM platform, the Web experience management solution from Adobe enables businesses to leverage new mobile devices and social communities to extend marketing reach, drive brand engagement, and increase conversion rates of today’s digital consumer. It incorporates new product enhancements to CQ5 from Adobe, including new modules for mobile and marketing campaign management as well as new integration with Adobe® Online Marketing Suite.
Pioneering Customer Experience with New Solutions for the Mobile, Social Web
CQ5 is the only unified suite of content management tools including Web content management (WCM), mobile, social collaboration, marketing campaign management (MCM) and digital asset management (DAM) applications. CQ5 adds the capabilities of Online Marketing Suite, allowing businesses to deliver more targeted content to identified segments and transform a website from a general communications platform into a focused vehicle for lead generation and revenue acceleration.

New CQ5 modules:
• CQ5 Mobile – extends the capabilities of CQ5 WCM and lets businesses easily customize and repurpose existing content for optimal display across screens and devices. In addition to Web application development, CQ5 Mobile is currently the only solution in the market that allows marketers to easily edit content for native applications. Businesses can seamlessly integrate mobile into multi-channel marketing efforts, reduce costs, connect with “on-the-go” customers and increase revenue.
• CQ5 Marketing Campaign Management (MCM) – a unified marketing automation system that allows marketers to effectively plan and roll out multi-channel marketing campaigns by orchestrating campaigns across Web, mobile, mobile apps, social communities, social media and more. By ensuring brand consistency and campaign effectiveness, CQ5 MCM helps increase sales via better conversion rates and brand loyalty.

Updated CQ5 modules:
• CQ5 Social Collaboration – provides online marketers with new tools to build media-rich, interactive online communities that increase site repeat visits, build customer brand identification and loyalty, and facilitate greater customer insight for continuous optimization of new campaigns. With a new Forums capability, users can also exchange

Adobe Transforms Customer Experience with New Solution for the Digital Enterprise and connect information within and beyond the organization to employees, vendors, customers, prospects and other stakeholders.
• CQ Targeting – a seamless unification of CQ5 and Online Marketing Suite empowers organizations to gain real-time marketing agility to drive higher rates of customer acquisition and return on campaign spend.
o Pre-built integration with Adobe SiteCatalyst®, powered by Omniture® enables digital marketers to measure and analyze customer interactions across channels for real-time updates to targeting rules to drive greater relevancy and brand engagement for outbound marketing efforts.
o Pre-built integration with Adobe Test&Target™, powered by Omniture allows digital marketers to analyze customer interactions and behavioral observations across channels to boost online conversion rates and drive increases in sales pipeline and company revenue.

Adobe continues to push product integration and innovation to deliver the most comprehensive Web experience management solution in the market.

Quotes
Rob Tarkoff, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Enterprise Solutions, Adobe
• “The pressure is high for businesses to become more social, personalized and interactive while maintaining greater revenue at a lower cost. This careful balancing act of effectiveness, improved customer experiences, and multi-channel optimization can only be achieved through an end-to-end Web experience management solution. CQ5 from Adobe, combined with the capabilities of Adobe Online Marketing Suite, gives business leaders unrivaled intelligence and agility to bolster their company brand and incite greater customer loyalty.”
Melissa Webster, Program Vice President, Content & Digital Media Technologies, IDC

• “With the dramatic growth of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices, and the huge adoption of social networks, online marketers must be able to engage their customers across very diverse channels, including Web, mobile and social. Marketers need an integrated platform that lets them create and deliver a compelling and relevant experience – one that's tailored to the particular customer in the context of their interaction. IDC believes it will be critical for customer experience vendors to provide an integrated suite of tools that is designed to deliver specific content to specific customers in context – at any time, on any device – and that provides actionable insight to help marketers optimize that content.”
Hal L. Danziger, Chief Technology Officer, New York Media

• “As consumers use an increasing variety of devices, platforms and channels to access mobile content, it becomes more challenging to deliver a consistently high-quality experience for every user. The rollout of CQ5 from Adobe will make it much easier to create and maintain mobile Web presences and apps that reflect the full richness of our website, with an optimized mobile experience no matter how readers choose to access our content. In this way, we can help meet the needs and preferences of every reader and leverage our strong customer relationships to compete against other media companies across all platforms. We’ve seen from Adobe a continual evolution in the way businesses can create, manage and use content, from simple features like annotation to the ability to publish video without having to worry about formats. It shows an ongoing commitment by the company to provide customers like us with more feature-rich tools for developing content across every platform our readers use.”
Dan Barnicle, Vice President, Content Management and Collaboration, SapientNitro

• “With the continued explosion of mobile devices and increased adoption of social media, marketers need to deliver campaigns that reach today’s savvy, on-the-go consumer in a way that is both authentic and adaptable. SapientNitro and Adobe share a vision for providing marketers, businesses and IT professionals with the tools for delivering more collaborative and dynamic customer experiences to organizations across industries and devices. Today’s launch of CQ5 from Adobe raises the bar on Customer Experience Management for deploying optimized multi-channel campaigns across mobile and social collaboration platforms.”
Andy Peebler, Senior Vice President, Acquity Group

• “Most of our clients, CMOs and technology organizations inside Global 1000 brands, have already invested in their Web, social, mobile and campaign infrastructures, and face a real challenge today maintaining consistency across all these different customer touch-points. Historically, maintaining that consistency has meant a lot of systems integration work to focus on the plumbing of customer experience management versus the time spent understanding customer needs and developing actual content and campaigns. Adobe’s new CQ5 release will allow us as an agency to spend less time on the plumbing and more time listening to customer needs and developing compelling user experiences and campaigns to optimize our clients’ relationships with their customers.”

Helpful Links
• Q&A with Kevin Cochrane, Vice President, Enterprise Marketing, Adobe
• Adobe Experience Delivers Blog
• Adobe Enterprise
• Day Software Online Documentation Portal
• Day Software Developer Center
• Introducing Web Experience Management Solution Webinar

Availability
The Web experience management solution is immediately available worldwide.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
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© 2010 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe, the Adobe logo, Day Software, CQ5 from Adobe, Adobe Online Marketing Suite, SiteCatalyst, Omniture and Test&Target, are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.