Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
Adobe Experience Manager Evolves Franklin, Launches Next-Gen Composability Feature
CMS Critic Staff
3 mins
Benjamin Franklin, the revolutionary American statesman who helped architect the fledgling U.S. republic (and flew a kite during a thunderstorm), once said, "Look before, or you'll find yourself behind."
When it comes to the future of CMS, that same observation applies – but with another Franklin that dared to look ahead.
Recently, Adobe – the Gartner MQ Leader for DXPs – introduced a new feature in its Experience Manager suite called Next-Gen Composability, the new mantle for its AEM "Project Franklin" initiative.
A bit of background on the skunkworks: Franklin was introduced in January as a lightweight CMS architecture designed to launch new sites faster and accelerate page performance. It also provided a more intuitive way to create and publish content using simple tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Word for authoring.
The news was officially announced last month at Adobe Summit 2023, but Adobe is already experiencing success with a pilot customer (keep reading for more details).
What is Next-Gen Composability?
Content management jargon can take on many forms, with enough variations to make any head spin. With Next-Gen Composability, Adobe is attempting to make things simple. Really simple.
When implementing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) in the past, developers and marketers would be tasked with learning new publishing tools, workflows, and more – often requiring several different learned processes across multiple channels. With Next-Gen Composability, AEM can now leverage commonly used tools like Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace and implement content built from those tools directly into the experience manager.
Producing and editing content in channels that marketers are already familiar with can reduce the back and forth that plagues many enterprise CMSes. With these hurdles now removed from the equation, building websites and producing content should become faster and more reliable – and further reduce dependence on technical support teams. It should also reduce the overall friction with implementing AEM.
Lightning-fast pages with high Google Lighthouse scores
The cloud-native infrastructure behind Next-Gen Composability is designed for speed. The tools built into the program require each web page to render a Google Lighthouse score of 100 on live pages – made possible by fast caching and an edge delivery engine.
Along with enhanced page performance, content can be built quickly with Next-Gen composability because teams can use tools they already know – and all with a few clicks. For content creators, this should eliminate many obstacles throughout the publishing workflow, giving them greater speed and agility.
Supercharged forms
Forms continue to be one of a website's most important engagement tools. They're also a huge pain for content creators.
According to Adobe's website, with Next Gen Composability, users across an enterprise can create forms using their preferred tools, such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets – without extensive training on new UI workflows.
What’s more, Next Gen Composability is designed to load forms with unmatched speed, achieving a near-perfect Google Lighthouse score on live pages, practically guaranteeing top performance and user experience.
Tried, Tested, and Approved
The first to implement Next-Gen Composability within AEM was Adobe partner Cognizant Netcentric. They used the new feature to produce cognizantnetcentric.com – drafting their content in Google Workspace.
In a blog article reflecting the project’s success, Katrin Weissenborn, a commercial marketing manager at Cognizant Netcentric, commented on the ease of use and overall satisfaction with Next-Gen Composability:
“Next-Gen Composability has completely transformed the way we work, our web publishing has never been that fast and easy before. Whenever I spot something on the website that I want to change, I just do it myself in record time, no need to brief content editors. As soon as the change is live, I just tag my content editing colleagues directly in the content repository so the change will also be done in other languages to ensure a consistent user experience throughout.”