Articles - Page 54

Brightspot Illuminates the Future of CMS with Human-Controlled, AI-Powered Storytelling 

matt-garrepy

Upland Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: UPLD), a leader in cloud-based Enterprise Work Management software, today announced it has acquired Adestra Ltd., a leading provider of enterprise-grade email marketing, transaction and automation software. Adestra's cloud solution enables over 400 leading brands to understand and engage individual customers with relevant, timely, and effective communications. Adestra will be combined with Upland's mobile messaging, customer engagement, and knowledge management solutions to create a powerful product suite serving the $5.9 billion CXM market which is forecast to grow 23% per year to $16.9 billion by 2022.1 The acquisition adds approximately $18 million in annualized revenues and will be immediately accretive to Upland's Adjusted EBITDA per share.
The acquisition of Adestra adds a fundamental component to Upland's CXM Solution Suite, which now includes multi-channel messaging and email, automated mobile conversations via SMS, MMS, and RCS, mobile wallet functionality, Voice of Customer (VOC) and Voice of Employee (VOE) solutions, advanced knowledge management, and marketing automation and personalization. Upland will continue to buy, build, and integrate additional components to this CXM offering in order to enable more personalized customer experience, enhanced multi-channel engagement across the customer journey, deeper process automation, sophisticated analytics and reporting, and coordinated services delivery with CXM expertise.
“Adestra broadens Upland's product portfolio, strengthens our CXM solution suite, and builds our sales capacity and footprint,” said Jack McDonald, chairman and CEO of Upland Software. “Moreover, the transaction is immediately and meaningfully accretive to Adjusted EBITDA per share and takes Upland to an approximate $190 million annualized revenue run rate,” he added. “As this transaction demonstrates, our acquisition pipeline is robust, and we are actively pursuing additional opportunities.”
“Sophisticated enterprises need multiple intelligent, inter-connected communications channels that integrate with key platforms to meaningfully engage across the entire customer journey at scale,” said Jed Alpert, SVP of Customer Experience Management Solutions at Upland Software. “Adestra's established presence in restaurant and retail, travel, media and publishing, and nonprofits, enhances our existing strengths in these industries, and the addition of their technology to Upland's Customer Experience Management suite will enable our customers to deliver consistently personalized, multi-channel experiences across their entire customer lifecycle.”
The purchase price paid for Adestra was $56.0 million in cash at closing, net of cash acquired, and a $4.2 million cash holdback payable in 12 months (subject to indemnification claims). Upland expects the acquisition to generate annual revenue of approximately $18 million, of which approximately $16.7 million is recurring, subject to reductions for a deferred revenue discount as a result of GAAP purchase accounting, estimated at $0.1 million for the remaining half of December 2018. The acquisition is within Upland's target range of 5-8x pro forma Adjusted EBITDA and will generate at least $8.0 million in Adjusted EBITDA annually once fully integrated. The acquisition will be immediately accretive to Upland's Adjusted EBITDA per share.
In connection with the acquisition of Adestra, Upland amended and expanded its credit facility from $358.9 million to $400 million. Specifically, $61.1 million of new term debt was drawn, taking Upland's gross debt outstanding from $223.9 million to $285.0 million with debt, net of cash on hand, now at approximately $265 million at a maximum interest rate of LIBOR + 400 basis points (currently at approximately 6.3%). Further details regarding the transaction can be obtained in the Form 8-K filed on December 13, 2018.
Business Outlook
Upland today also announced that it has raised its full year 2018 guidance to reflect the Adestra acquisition, raising revenue, recurring revenue, and Adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges. The increase in 2018 revenue guidance below is net of an estimated $0.1 million reduction for a deferred revenue discount as a result of GAAP purchase accounting and all guidance adjustments are prorated for a closing date of December 12, 2018.
For the quarter ending December 31, 2018, Upland expects reported total revenue to be between $42.5 and $44.5 million, including subscription and support revenue between $39.4 and $40.6 million, for growth in recurring revenue of 62% at the mid-point over the quarter-ended December 31, 2017. Fourth quarter 2018 Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $15.6 and $16.4 million, for an Adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 37% at the mid-point, representing growth of 64% at the mid-point over the quarter-ended December 31, 2017
For the full year ending December 31, 2018, Upland expects reported total revenue to be between $147.2 and $149.2 million, including subscription and support revenue between $134.2 and $135.4 million, for growth in recurring revenue of 58% at the mid-point over the year ended December 31, 2017. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $52.0 and $52.8 million, representing growth of 73% at the mid-point over the year ended December 31, 2017. The transaction will be immediately accretive to Upland's Adjusted EBITDA per share.
About Upland Software
Upland Software (Nasdaq: UPLD) is a leading provider of cloud-based Enterprise Work Management software. Our family of applications enables users to manage their projects, professional workforce and IT investments; automate document-intensive business processes; and effectively engage with their customers, prospects and community via the web and mobile technologies. With more than 4,000 customers and over 450,000 users around the world, Upland Software solutions help customers run their operations smoothly, adapt to change quickly, and achieve better results every day. To learn more, visit <a href="http://www.uplandsoftware.com/" target="_blank">www.uplandsoftware.com</a>.

Upland Software Acquires Adestra

mike-johnston

When you launch a site, you will find that most bloggers and marketers will recommend you to use the WordPress Content Management System (CMS).
Although WordPress is the most widely used CMS it might not be the best option for you. There are several other systems like Joomla, <a href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a>, SquareSpace or Drupal that might be better suited for you.
So, to help you make the right decision I have written this simple guide that will help you determine if WordPress is the best CMS for you…
Your skill level:
The first thing you must assess while choosing a CMS is your skill level. If you haven’t got much experience with design or coding, <a href="https://wordpress.com/">WordPress</a> is probably the best option for you as it makes it easy to manage sites with easy to use themes and plugins. They are even third-party tools like <a href="https://coschedule.com/">CoSchedule</a> that let you manage your site better.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/wordpress-best-cms-for-you-1_okkejl.png" />
But the problem with WordPress is that all these short cuts through the use of plugins and easy to use themes will limit the amount of custom modifications you can make. Also, using too many plugins can affect the loading time of your site. Plugins can also lead to more security risks.
This is why if you have some experience with developing and are looking for a platform that makes it easy to create a custom site, <a href="https://www.drupal.org/">Drupal</a> would be a better option. This is because you develop Drupal sites with blocks. They let you create any type of site. Also, it offers better security than WordPress.
If you are looking for a platform that is in between WordPress and Drupal in terms of ease of use <a href="https://www.joomla.org/">Joomla</a> would be a better option. And if you are looking for a CMS that is even more easy to use than WordPress, <a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">SquareSpace</a> would be a better option.
But when you use a platform like SquareSpace, the number of customisations you can make will be more limited than on WordPress.
Your budget:
Another factor you should take into account while choosing your CMS is your budget. If you have a small budget WordPress is the more affordable option.
<a name="_GoBack"></a> For example, if you decide on running your site on WordPress and are looking for the <a href="https://hostadvice.com/hosting-services/wordpress/">best web hosting for WordPress</a>, it is going to be very affordable even if you choose a managed hosting or a dedicated server. This is because it is a popular open source CMS and many hosting services are battling it out to offer the most affordable service.
But on the other hand if you were looking for managed hosting for a site that runs on Drupal or Joomla it can work out expensive as fewer companies offer it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wordpress-best-cms-for-you-2-1024x469.png" />
The popularity of the WordPress CMS also makes it easy and affordable to find developers and virtual assistants to help run your site. You can also make many more modifications easily with the use of free and premium plugins.
On the other hand finding people to help modify your Drupal site can cost you more as there are fewer experienced Drupal developers. But they will be able to customise your site a lot better than a WordPress site.
So, if your budget is tight and you need a simple website, WordPress would be the best option. But if you want something unique and you have a high budget it would be better to choose Drupal.
The purpose of your website:
WordPress is a great option for running a simple basic site or blog. But it is not the best option for creating something more sophisticated like an ecommerce store or social media site or news site.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/wordpress-best-cms-for-you-3_yr07mb.png" />
<a href="/choosing-the-best-cms-as-the-foundation-for-your-e-commerce-site/">For creating an ecommerce store</a> it would be better to use a CMS like <a href="/shopify/">Shopify</a> or <a href="/bigcommerce/">BigCommerce</a> as they have been specifically created for this purpose. And they provide access to dozens of apps that can make setting up and running your ecommerce site a lot simpler.
For creating a social media site a better CMS would be Drupal and for creating a more sophisticated commercial blog or news site <a href="https://www.rebelmouse.com/">Rebel Mouse</a> would work best.
Now choose your best CMS. It doesn’t have to always be WordPress
WordPress might seem like the best CMS in the world because it is so widely used and is recommended by some of the top bloggers. But as you can see in this post it isn’t the best option for everyone. If you plan to set up a simple site or blog, WordPress can work well for you, but if you want to create something more sophisticated there are better content management systems.

Is WordPress the Best CMS for You?

Content management system provider introduces its new cloud-based container CMS on the newly launched AWS Marketplace for Containers, accelerating website and application deployment for as little as $1 per hour per container
Solodev, an industry-leading website content management system (CMS) built for Amazon Web Services (AWS), recently launched a new Solodev CMS Enterprise for Docker and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). The availability of this product came on the heels of AWS’s introduction of the brand new AWS Marketplace for Containers, announced at AWS re:Invent 2018 in Las Vegas.
AWS customers can now use the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) console and AWS Marketplace for Containers to discover, produce, and deploy container solutions – including Solodev CMS Enterprise for Docker. With today’s release, AWS Marketplace has extended its existing benefits and features to container products, with a rich discovery and search experience offering access to a curated catalog of trusted software from reputable vendors. From day one, AWS customers can quickly find and deploy Solodev CMS Enterprise for Docker through AWS Marketplace for Containers.
Solodev’s new container product changes the way CMS is purchased and provisioned, allowing individuals and organizations to deploy, manage and scale enterprise-grade websites and applications faster than ever. Solodev containers can be easily set up and launched through AWS Marketplace for Containers[MOU1] for as little as $1 per hour per container with no long-term contracts. Built from the ground up for AWS, Solodev is a trusted platform for creating advanced websites and digital experiences in the cloud with proven security, scalability, and redundancy. Now with containers, Solodev users can build custom applications and deploy continuously – leveraging a complete set of container-ready technologies including Apache, Mongo, PHP, Redis, SQL, and more.
“We are happy to welcome Solodev and their new CMS Enterprise for Docker to the new AWS Marketplace for Containers, which will help over 200,000 AWS customers find, buy, and deploy solutions specific to their container environment,” said Garth Fort, Director, AWS Marketplace, Amazon Web Services, Inc.
According to 451 Research, the application container market is expected to quadruple from $759 million in 2016 to more than $3.4 billion in 2021. With companies embracing this technology at an accelerated rate, the AWS Marketplace for Containers is meeting the demand of its customers and offering a trusted ecosystem for container services – where other AWS Partner Network (APN) Advanced Technology Partners like Solodev have been fully vetted.
“There’s no question; containers are the future, and CMS has been the missing piece,” said Shawn Moore, Chief Technology Officer, Solodev. “At a time when advanced web solutions can cost millions, Solodev’s pioneering use of container technology can significantly reduce costs and eliminate the friction in building websites, setting up servers and everything in between. Just like the cloud before it, containers are changing the way enterprise organizations create and build IT infrastructures, and we’re excited to be on the ground floor of container transformation with AWS,” he said.
For more information about Solodev, visit <a href="http://www.solodev.com/">www.solodev.com</a>.
Learn more about Solodev Enterprise for Docker on the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B07K6TRSMP/ref=_ptnr_solodev_cmscritic-content_pressrelease">AWS Marketplace</a>.

Solodev Launches New Enterprise Container Content Management System for Docker on Amazon Web Services

Design agencies are in high demand, as just about everyone needs to maximize their digital footprints these days. But not everyone possesses the technical skills or composition know-how to create a visually stunning, intuitive, and search-visible site. This is where agencies come into play.
Fortunately for agencies and their clients, there are several web design platforms that make the task straightforward, efficient, and even (gasp) a good time.
The right site builder must also give agencies the flexibility to build and scale over time as well. So that limits the playing field.
WordPress is often the first tool that comes to mind. However, this platform can be unnecessarily complex, buggy and expensive. 
What most agencies need is a feature-rich, easy-to-use, powerful yet intuitive platform to work with. Choose one with too few features, and you’ll soon hit growth limitations; too many, and you’ll get dragged down by undue chaos and confusion. So let’s stick to the middle of the road.
To help you separate wheat from chaff, we are going to analyze three of today’s best website creation platforms. Hopefully, this will help you identify the one best suited for your growing agency’s needs.
<h2>Duda</h2>
Like many site creation suites, <a href="https://www.duda.co/">Duda</a> is a platform for creating fully optimized multi-screen websites. <a href="/duda-website-builder">Duda</a> is well-suited for small and medium-sized businesses, as this is their primary audience.
<a href="/duda-website-builder">Duda</a> offers a myriad of beautifully-designed templates, a drag-and-drop interface, eCommerce options, and a plethora of elements for design agencies to work with for budding brands. And using Duda helps streamline site development. As the site puts it, “digital publishers on Duda average more than a 50% drop in website build times.”
This is a bold claim for agencies looking to optimize production and site turnaround times. And Duda has a lot to offer in this realm.
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/286281912?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Firstly, Duda’s white label options enable agencies to create a fully immersive, customized experience that screams of professionalism. This includes compelling options for custom login screens, custom color and logo implementation features, and other branding options. Duda also offers user migration and “content injection” options to help migrate existing sites over to its platform. It also features one-of-a-kind templates that can be automatically pre-populated with clients’ business information.
On the communications front, Duda’s white label features provide automatic email generation components that present clients with site stats, analytics, and onboarding instructions for their accounts. Additionally, the content collection form makes it easy to send clients data sheets that include instructions on how they can send exactly what is required to build a stunning website.
What helps makes Duda a premier option for agencies is its rich team collaboration and client management options. Through this builder, users can generate unique dashboards for clients, enabling varying roles and permission levels based on their technical prowess; this includes potential access to publishing and editing permissions, eCommerce enablement, developer access, and more.
<a name="_GoBack"></a> What is particularly outstanding is that Duda supplies agencies with a custom widget builder. This enables brands to not only integrate third-party services, but to build unique, native widgets for clients. This feature can help agencies provide massive customization value to client builds.
And of course, Duda has developer capabilities for HTML/CSS/JavaScript integration, automatic SSL certification (for white label dashboards), and gives a remarkable amount freedom of freedom for SEO optimization.
<h2>Squarespace</h2>
<a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">Squarespace</a> is one of the more popular website builders on the market today, and with good reason.
Like Duda, Squarespace features stunning, mobile-responsive templates that are eye-catching and polished. 
This platform gives users various styling options to help customize websites and give them a more branded look. Like the previous platform, Squarespace enables users to tailor their site’s appearance without having to dive into coding languages; this greatly simplifies the processes for designers. Though, if a client requires it, coding can be applied for a more customized destination.
When compared to Duda, however, Squarespace is less intuitive; this can slow things down and cause frustration. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/squarespace_zlovtc.png" />
Squarespace is lacking in scalability, and SEO is minimal too. Furthermore, integration features for Google Analytics and Search Console, Facebook retargeting, and other necessary marketing elements are hidden within the platform’s Advanced Settings and need to be added using the Code Injector tool. This isn’t exactly client or novice coder-friendly, but at least these features do exist.
When a brand expands their offerings, clients are likely to request the implementation a variety of third-party apps or extensions to enhance functionality. This is where the platform falls epically short of the mark as new features must be rolled out by Squarespace.
Another drawback for Squarespace is its responsiveness. While the site claims to tout fully responsive designs, the site’s contents can often shift when viewed on mobile devices. This means that users are likely to not have complete control over their sites’ appearance, which can certainly be problematic for agencies, as clients demand certain levels of uniformity and professionalism.
But Squarespace has a solid audience for many legitimate reasons. Functional, beautiful sites can be built in a small fraction of time, and updates, articles, images, videos and blogs are a synch to create and publish. 
The tool makes integration with other platforms like MailChimp, Gmail, Facebook, and oodles more marketing and social interfaces a snap – they know how to play well with others. It’s a very, very good option if ease and speed are your agency’s priorities.
<h2>Wix</h2>
<a href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a> is another popular option, but it has its own set of pros and cons too.
This platform boasts over 500 templates done by professional designers, making custom designs a breeze. These come pre-populated with content, meaning that designers merely need to replace the existing assets with their own materials. 
The platform’s drag-and-drop builder makes site assembly a snap. Wix also features a new AI-based system that will automatically create the first draft of a site for its users. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wix-1024x610.png" />
On the downside, Wix makes switching site designs a significant effort. If you opt for another design later down the road, you will need to re-insert your content all over again. It’s essential to feel certain about a template before diving in. This can be quite problematic for agencies seeking to optimize their efficiency as clients may want to apply a different template later in the process, ultimately creating a massive slow-down in production.
This also doesn’t lend to simplicity when a brand scales and needs to re-format a customer’s offerings. 
Wix is also not all that SEO friendly. This is the single most prevalent issue brought up by Wix users; there are many observations that SEO is not a strong suit, so it requires you have your own SEO expertise to ensure you are not forgotten by Google’s algorithms. Again, this can create significant problems for less technically-inclined clients. 
If you have your own SEO expertise, however, Wix can be a stellar option for newly-minted businesses and those who need a stunning site with intuitive versatility. 
The Verdict
You know what your agency really needs to get a sophisticated and impressive site up and running. Narrow your focus to these three excellent offerings and find the one that fulfills most of your business’s needs. 
Choose the one that will enable your company to turn professional websites around the fastest, and that will allow you to scale with minimal issues.

How to Choose the Best Website Building Platform for Your Agency

The latest beta of the upcoming WordPress 5.0 release is now available for testing.
The upcoming 5.0 release brings with it the terrible Gutenberg editor that Automattic feels they need to try to cram down the throats of WordPress users everywhere.
<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-3_nn5asp.png" /><figcaption>Fear the Gutenberg!</figcaption></figure>
This editor basically takes normal tasks that were / have been easy to perform and adds unnecessary extra steps in an attempt to make WordPress' editor look more like that of Squarespace (not that theirs is terrible but it's definitely not as easy as the existing WP one.
If you want to hear real world experiences with Gutenberg, just look at how many bad reviews are coming in daily over at the WordPress plugin database: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/#reviews" target="_blank">https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/#reviews</a>
In a nutshell, it's full of bugs and really ticking off users:
<blockquote>If you type, you have to wait for ages just to see it appear on screen. 
If you delete, you have to wait at least 2 seconds for it to go away. 
If you highlight, you have to hold your mouse button down for like 5 seconds at the place you want to highlight to until the highlight actually appears so you can release.</blockquote>
The response from the Gutenberg team to this review was “it's a known bug” however this is just ONE of a huge number of complaints about the editor.
To perform a simple task such as using bold, what was once a single click process has been turned into a two to three click one, reducing productivity of users by a large margin for what should be a simple task.
To give you an idea, here's how the editor looks when editing a post:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/screenshot_20181128_092915_mgn8wq.png" />
In the above example, I wanted to show you the process to get to bold. It shows up like this with a bunch of expandable categories and a search. Want to bold your text? Well to make that intuitive, we've made it harder for you to find the bold button! Now you get to search for it in a menu instead of just clicking on it.
Sense my annoyance in this post? That's the intention. I don't understand how a company so focused on ease of use and intuitiveness can stray so far from them.
<h2>Can you keep the classic editor?</h2>
Yes, you can. Thankfully the WP team is smart enough to include it as an installable plugin so that you don't have to be forced to use Gutenberg and for those who are currently on WordPress, I'd recommend installing and activating it now to prevent Gutenberg from taking over when WordPress 5.0 comes along.
For those who want to try this beast out, you can actually install the Gutenberg editor on your blog now (as a plugin) but I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. The best bet, test it in a dev environment  first and make your decision. Fortunately, you can still use the classic editor even when this 5.0 release hits so you won't be stranded in a desert full of frustration.
Wanna learn more? Go here: https://wordpress.org/news/2018/11/wordpress-5-0-release-candidate/
For those who are tired of this and want to just be able to write a blog post without the mess, try one of these great WordPress alternatives instead:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://write.as/">https://write.as/</a></li>
<li><a href="https://withknown.com/">https://withknown.com/</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ghost.org/">https://ghost.org/</a></li>
<li></li>
</ul>
Good luck out there!
~Mike

The first release candidate for WordPress 5.0 is now available (and sadly it brings Gutenberg with it).

Picture this: you’re online, wanting to order groceries from Amazon Fresh for convenience. You select a delivery time on the app with ease, scheduling the groceries to arrive at your door moments after you get home from work.
The experience is simple, streamlined and efficient.
But that<a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40555815/what-its-like-to-be-a-blind-software-engineer-at-amazon"> exact experience</a> was frustrating for one blind Seattle user. For a period of time, the Amazon Fresh app had a bug for users with vision loss. They couldn’t select a deliver time if they were using a screen reader — technology on which nearly all visually-impaired users rely.
Amazon — prioritizing the customer experience — remedied the issue for its visually-impaired users.
Making sure anyone can access your website shouldn’t just be a priority of a Fortune 500 company. Having an accessible website is also so low-cost that no business has an excuse as to why it’s not a priority.
But what is ADA compliance? Is it really enforced for websites? And what are the steps to make sure a website is on the road to being ADA compliant?
We sat down with <a href="https://www.solodev.com/">Solodev’s</a> Director of Web Development and ADA liaison Scott Madara to get answers.
Q1: What are the rules about ADA compliance with business websites?
The general compliance for your website is directly proportional to your legal obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. These responsibilities and specific rules vary depending on the style of private businesses compared to government entities to nonprofits organizations – so it will differ depending on your organizational needs.
However, regardless of your website’s standings or target audiences, your website must be compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 standards. At bare minimum, your website must be A-level compliant. It shouldn’t have any issues within that designated category. Business websites ultimately should strive to meet AA compliance. If you serve in a highly public nature (government contractor or do business with the government) you should strive to be AAA compliant. It all depends on the nature of your business.
Q2: What happens to websites if they fail to be ADA compliant?
There are the obvious legal penalties — fines, courtroom costs. Businesses like Five Guys’ and Target have already undergone the financial headache of paying for relatively simple fixes.
There’s also the negative publicity associated with not being ADA compliant. There’s a loss of brand trust due to that negative publicity as well for not being inclusive of all customers.
There’s also the penalty of lost business. By not prioritizing ADA compliance, your business is losing out on a certain percentage of a customer base. Roughly 19 million people in the US alone live with disabilities. Over 3.4 million Americans over the age of 40 qualify as either legally blind or visually impaired. And, as a population ages, those disabilities make using websites or online services more difficult if those websites don’t accommodate for those users.
Q3: How can complying with the ADA actually help businesses?
<a name="_GoBack"></a>You mean other than the knowledge of doing the right thing? There are several benefits to ADA compliance. It keeps your business out of legal trouble and the PR nightmare of being drawn into the courts system. Compliance also builds up trust among your website visitors because you’re making an intentional effort to be accessible to everyone.
Fundamentally, a website that is ADA compliant will be more accessible to a variety of technologies. Screen readers aren’t just for the disabled, and we anticipate a variety of applications based around these things as IoT grows. If your website is accessible to these types of devices, you’re one step ahead in the evolutionary growth if Internet of Things technologies.
Sites that are ADA compliant offer better UX experiences. From what we’ve seen anecdotally websites that prioritize compliance are standardized and simplified.
Q4: What are some common challenges businesses face when working toward ADA compliance?
There’s a ‘retraining’ of a company that happens to make everyone more aware of ADA and accessibility needs. Everyone involved needs to understand the importance of making a website accessible to all potential website visitors who could have a variety of disability struggles.
Challenges often pop up within your existing infrastructure (aka content management system) and automation/third party tools which many use to have a fully functional digital presence. Some of these platforms have inherent problems with compliance. At Solodev, we ensure that our websites are primed with ADA in mind. That’s how we built our <a href="https://www.solodev.com/">CMS</a>.
With plugin after plugin, your common content creator is at the mercy of the plugin author to make the ADA updates. Conversely, you’re forced to shell out more money for developers who can fix those issues for you.
There can also be challenges in understanding the fundamental roles of the legislation and rules. You have to read through them and work through them often in order to get an appreciation for each specific rule element and resolve potential issues.
Staying proactive is another issue. It’s not a one-and-done reactionary process. Small business owners often get a legal notice or see the issues and try to immediately resolve a small issue. They think ADA only applies to larger companies — especially those heavy in the digital space. They don’t see it as an ongoing evolution for their website or perpetual change to the workflow and production schedule. There must be a change in mindset company wide to making sure that ADA compliance is proactively sought rather than something done in the 11th hour.
Q5: What are the downsides to being ADA compliant?
There are moments when your might have an incredibly clever idea, cool design, or color scheme, but if it’s not ADA compliant, you can’t run it. But those moments stem from not having ADA in a place of priority in the first place.
There are also some associated costs in order to become compliant. Those costs aren’t prohibitive, but they need to be built into the underlying infrastructure costs. ADA compliance is a lot of work — and it can feel frustrating when you have a large website with pages. However, the work is worth the time.
Q6: What are the best ADA compliance tools?
We use so many resources to help entrepreneurs work toward ADA compliance. We recommend the <a href="https://fae.disability.illinois.edu/anonymous/?Anonymous%20Report=/">Functional Accessibility Evaluator</a> (FAE) that evaluates a website or a single webpage against the WCAG 2.0. <a href="https://siteimprove.com/en-us/core-platform/integrations/browser-extensions/">Siteimprove</a> has a chrome extension so you can check each page individually. The Chrome extension as a dev is a dream for this issue. <a href="https://monsido.com/features/web-accessibility">Monsido </a>is another excellent resource.
There are a lot of tools available, but one thing remains critical; you must use those tools before making a page or content live.
—————-
Solodev is a leading enterprise website Content Management System (CMS) that empowers organizations to create amazing websites and engaging digital experiences in the cloud – all with total design freedom and control. Built from the ground up for Amazon Web Services (AWS), Solodev provides unparalleled security, scalability, and redundancy with 24/7/365 U.S. based support. Solodev has been listed as one of Inc. 5000’s fastest growing companies for the last three years and recognized as a High Performing leader on the user-driven G2 Crowd Grid. Winners of the 2017 AWS “City on a Cloud” Innovation Challenge, Solodev is an AWS Advanced Technology Partner with competencies in Education, Government, and Marketing &amp; Commerce. Solodev’s self-service CMS can be purchased on demand in the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b">AWS Marketplace</a> or through the GSA Contract. Learn more at <a href="http://www.solodev.com/">www.solodev.com</a>.

Why Your Website Has to Be Just as ADA Compliant as Your Office Building

CMS Kickoff 26

Find out at CMS Kickoff 26, January 13 - 14, St. Pete FL

What's the future of CMS in the AI era?

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More and more ecommerce stores are springing up online. One of the main reasons for this is that more people are buying products online. <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mark-hillary/customers-now-prefer-shop_b_10752822.html">67% of millennials</a> and 56% of generation x prefer to shop online.
Another important reason for the rise in online stores is that it is so easy to launch one. There are tools like Shopify with which you can launch a new store <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/laura-inamedinova/2016/05/16/how-to-launch-your-ecommerce-store-in-a-day/#7726778c3916">in a day</a>.
On top of that, there are solutions like drop shipping which make running a store much easier.
Dropshipping is when you don’t handle most of the time-consuming aspects of running an ecommerce store. These include making the products, storing them in a warehouse, packing and shipping them. These are handled by a separate manufacturer. All you do here is add the products to the store and promote them.
It’s a low-risk, and lucrative method, and lots of people are having success with it. For example, Ray Bridges dropshipped phone cases and made <a href="https://www.oberlo.com/blog/how-i-made-4500-in-9-weeks-selling-phone-cases">$4,558.03 in 9 weeks</a>.
And the best part is that you can add the products to your store in minutes as there are several apps in the Shopify app store that can help you do this.
Filtering out which of these is the best can take you a while. Therefore, I have gone through the trouble and reviewed two popular Shopify dropshipping apps, Oberlo and Dropified side by side here. Read my review and pick the one that suits you best…
2022 Update: Oberlo app was shut down on June 30, 2022. The Oberlo app is completely removed from the Shopify store. Dropified is still around though. 
If you're interested in learning about print-on-demand dropshipping, check out <a href="https://www.printful.com/blog/what-is-dropshipping/" target="_blank">this comprehensive article</a> on dropshipping and selling without inventory.
Using Oberlo for Dropshipping
Oberlo was launched in 2015. Since then it has become one of the most popular dropshipping apps on Shopify. It currently sits at the number one spot in the <a href="https://apps.shopify.com/browse/finding-and-adding-products-dropshipping">Dropshipping</a> and <a href="https://apps.shopify.com/browse/finding-and-adding-products">Finding and Adding Products</a> app categories on Shopify.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/top-shopify-dropshipping-apps_ixjb8h.png" />
Oberlo has got a stellar rating of 4.8 out of 5 from 2,198 reviews. They are definitely doing something right.
It is a very easy to use app. To install it all you have to do is go to the Oberlo app page on Shopify and click on the ‘Add app’ button and then add it to the ecommerce store you would like to sell dropshipped products on.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/oberlo-products-catalogue_fw1pln.png" />
As soon as you do this the app will be installed, and a catalogue of products will appear right in your Shopify dashboard. There will be hundreds of them.
You can browse through these, add your selling price and easily display them on your ecommerce store with a few clicks. Oberlo will calculate how much profit you will make with each sale and even automatically add the description, title, and images.
You don’t have to conduct any due diligence for these products and their suppliers as Oberlo have already done that for you. The suppliers’ warehouses, working conditions, documentations and many more details have been verified by Oberlo.
If you want to go beyond this catalogue and add products from other sites, you can take advantage of Oberlo’s chrome extension for <a href="https://www.aliexpress.com/">AliExpress</a>. After you install the extension, an Oberlo icon will appear on the product pages on the AliExpress website. You can click on this and quickly import products into your store.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/add-aliexpress-products-to-oberlo_hnbwvg.png" />
These products haven’t yet been verified by Oberlo. So, you will need to conduct your own research to make sure they are up to the mark. You can do this by reading product and supplier reviews.
The best part about using Oberlo is that they run a freemium model. You can install them on your Shopify store for free. With the free plan you can add up to 500 product to your store and fulfil up to 50 orders.
If you want to fulfill more than 50 you can upgrade to the basic plan which costs $29.90/month. This increases the limit to 500 orders. They also have a Pro plan at $79.90/month that has no order limit (unlimited).
Using Dropified for Dropshipping
Dropified is another dropshipping app. It is slightly younger than Oberlo. It isn’t as popular as Oberlo as it sits at the number six position in the dropshipping apps chart on Shopify. It has a decent rating of 4.2 from 9 reviews.
Just like Oberlo, it is easy to install. You go to the <a href="https://apps.shopify.com/shopified-app">Dropified app</a> page and click on the ‘Add app’ button. Then you select the store you would like to add it to and follow through the steps it guides you through.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/dropified-dashboard_mefbah.png" />
But adding products isn’t straightforward. They do not instantly appear in your dashboard like with the Oberlo app. To add products you must first install the dropified extension on your browser. Then visit sites like AliExpress and use the extension to edit the title and price and add the products.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/shopified-for-shopify_s3yw92.png" />
This way you can add products from other sites like Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and more. But you need to conduct your own due diligence on each of these products and their suppliers as Dropified hasn’t done it for you.
Dropified has no free plan, but they do offer a 14-day trial. You can only access this trial if you sign up for one of their paid plans though. The smaller plan costs $47/month and lets you add 15,000 products and fulfill 1,000 orders a month. While the bigger plan costs $97/month and lets you fulfill 20,000 orders a month.
Which should you use: Oberlo or Dropified?
As you can see from the detailed review above, both of them are great apps that can be installed with a few clicks. Both also make it easy to add products to your Shopify stores.
But if you are looking for the most convenient option, Oberlo beats Dropified easily as you don’t have to go through the process of browsing a third-party site (although Oberlo also has this feature) and spending a lot of time finding reputable suppliers and products. Oberlo instantly provides access to hundreds of products from verified suppliers right in their dashboard. And you can add them with a few clicks right away.
Oberlo also works out cheaper as they have a free plan. Also, their paid plans cost a lot less than Dropified’s paid plans. Dropified’s paid plans cost $47/month and $97/month and Oberlo’s cost $29.90/month and $79.90/month only.
The only place where Dropified beats Oberlo is that it lets you import products from sites other than AliExpress like Amazon and Walmart. But for most people Oberlo’s catalogue and the millions of products listed in AliExpress should be sufficient.
<a name="_GoBack"></a> You only need Dropified if you have a favourite product listed exclusively on another ecommerce site that you badly want to dropship.
Do you run an ecommerce store? Which app do you use for dropshipping? Please leave your comments below.

How To Choose Between Oberlo and Dropified Apps

If you’re a church leader, you might be familiar with the classic, hair-pulling madness of trying to get a well functioning website working for your church.
There are so many factors to consider! How is it going to look? How will it be laid out?
What information should you even put up there once you have a site? Upcoming events? Audio of your sermons? Videos of your sermons? A live stream of your Sunday service? The possibilities are endless …but so is that headache, right?
If you feel like you just need a hand getting everything done so you can get back to your sermon prep, you’re not alone. There are literally thousands of pastors and church leaders out there looking for a quick and easy way to streamline the online part of their church …while still keeping it relevant.
After all, we practically live online these days, don’t we? After all you probably hopped onto Google and typed in a few search terms to find this post in the first place, right?
And if any potential future congregants are ever going to find your church, chances are higher than ever that they’re going to do so in a very similar way.
Fortunately, there are quite a few church website builders out there that are specifically devoted to supporting church websites with their specific needs.
<h3>Finding a good church website builder</h3>
When searching for a Faith-based CMS provider (that’s basically the shorthand for a website builder) for your church, you’re going to want to look for more than just the tools they offer.
For example, you’re also going to want a provider that can cater to the specific needs of your church with of course the most important need being easily-available support for non technical users.
With that in mind, we’ve gone ahead and organized a list of our top CMS providers that have met three criteria:
<ol>
<li>They’re popular <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/">church website builders</a></li>
<li>They provide good service</li>
<li>They’ve demonstrated an understanding of the needs of the church</li>
</ol>
Here is the list, ranked in order of companies considered to provide the best <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/">church websites</a>.
IMPORTANT NOTE: There’s one more bit of additional information that we want to include that can be helpful in the decision-making process. Currently, in the church technology space, the market of individual, stand-alone companies are being rapidly consolidated by a “big fish,” so to speak. We’ve gone ahead and included a handful of the companies that have been purchased by this larger “big fish” company in the list after the two independent ones at the top because some of these subsidiary companies still provide their own, unique website builders. However, be aware that often quick acquisitions and employee consolidation of companies with decent products can lead to a lack of technical support, (which is one of our three major criteria!).
Alright, on to the website builders!
<a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/" target="_blank">Ministry Designs</a>:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-1_iipqzm.png" alt="Ministry Designs " />
The number one solution, head and shoulders above the rest, is Ministry Designs. Ministry Designs not only has the most intuitive and comprehensive <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/" target="_blank">church website builder</a> (CMS) but they also have all of the features you need to make sure that your website stays up to date. One of the amazing things that they do, that is really outside of the norm for this industry, is roll out monthly updates. They do this to ensure that you’ll never have to buy another website. Additionally, when working with the folks at Ministry Designs, they assign you a customer success representative who will share their screen with you and teach you how to use their tools. When shopping for your new website for your church, you would be making a mistake not considering Ministry Designs first.
FaithConnector:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-2_tshm3u.png" alt="Faith Connector" />
Our second choice is FaithConnector. Along with Ministry Designs, this is one of the few remaining website builders that is still standing on its own, and for that, we give them both a round of applause.
FaithConnector is another solid company with excellent support and another slew of features that usually means they can get you the site that you’re looking for. Their website builder is good, though their editor is a bit out of date, which is why they land second on our list.
With good support, a solid product, and a host of features, FaithConnector remains one of the few viable options if you’re looking for an independent company that provides good, focused support.
Nucleus:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-3_nchkjn.png" alt="Nucleus" />
Nucleus is a relative newcomer to the conversation but has gained some popularity, in large part to some excellent marketing. After reviewing the website editor, I’ve found it bit limited next someone of the other companies on the list. Nucleus has positioned and priced itself as a church “hub,” but the facts are after reviewing it, it's missing some critical flexibility and options that the featured companies on this list offer. Plus, at $99 a month it’s pretty expensive.
Note: The remainder of the list is made up of companies that have been bought out in recent years. While they are now subsidiaries of a larger organization, these candidates have managed to retain at least a portion of their website building capabilities, though long-term technical support has become a concern.
Sharefaith:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-4_e99uhx.png" alt="Sharefaith" />
toward helping churches build their websites. But — and this is a big but — they’ve built their tools to be an overlay of WordPress. 
While this might not be an issue for a tech-savvy website builder, if you’re from a church that lacks those “technical gurus,” this can present a whole bunch of problems. A system built on top of another system is always a bit nerve-racking, and with the potential to lose good customer support in the future, the ShareFaith website builder has become a bit suspect at this point.
Clover Site: 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-5_rnhe09.png" alt="Clover Site" />
You’ve got to give credit where credit is due, and in this case, it’s honoring an industry pioneer.
Clover was at one point was the leader in the church-specific CMS industry.
Unfortunately, though, that day of prominence has come and gone. At this point, Clover lacks the flexibility needed to really personalize and customize your website. That, in addition to the whole selling out to a larger company bit, has landed them further down the list.
Ekklesia360: 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/06/best-church-website-builders-6_oyj7bk.png" alt="Ekklesia360" />
company’s willingness to make changes to their CMS, literally customizing the features they offered on a case by case basis for their customers.
This might sound good on the surface, but before you start jumping for joy, the problem in connection to this adaptability that we found quickly presents itself is affordability. Changes on the kind of scale we’re talking about aren’t minor, and that extra cost puts them out of reach for most church’s budgets.
In addition, we found that their website editor is sadly out of date, a bit clunky, and difficult to work with.
Thrive CMS:
If you're wondering what Thrive CMS is, you're not alone.
Thrive is the website editor solution that the a larger consolidation company created as their own website builder. It has been pushing most of its brands to use this new CMS, and Bridge Element, Site Organic, and Ezekiel are now all selling the Thrive CMS solution.
One question that we couldn’t manage to answer was why it was priced differently across those brands.
Pricing aside, from what we could tell, the solution is limited and a bit hard to work with; however, it does seem to be a bit better than what these established brands had before.
A final note:
Although this list of the best church website companies isn’t comprehensive, we felt like the options listed above were the best in the market that target churches.
While <a href="https://ministrywebsitedesigns.com/">Ministry Designs</a> clearly topped the list with their high-end website builder, impressive features, and excellent customer service, the truth is there really are still quite a few choices out there, so take your time and look into each option to find the one that works best for you.
Whatever you do end up choosing to go with, we always recommend not just researching, but actually demoing any of these CMS solutions before signing up in order to see which one meets the specific needs of your church the best.

The Best Church Website Builders

The winners for the 2018 CMS Critic Awards have been announced and are posted on the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/awards/">awards page</a>.
Congratulations to those who won. We'll be doing some heavy revamping of the awards next year. If you have input on how we can improve, suggestions for categories, etc, please drop us a line <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contact/">here</a>.
Thanks to all who participated in this years' awards. We had thousands of nominations and votes and it was a great success!

2018 Winners Announced

<a href="https://www.sap.com/index.html">SAP SE</a>(NYSE: SAP) and Qualtrics International Inc. (Qualtrics) today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which SAP SE intends to acquire Qualtrics, the global pioneer of the experience management (XM) software category that enables organizations to thrive in today’s experience economy.
<hr />
<ul>
<li>
<h2>Together, SAP and Qualtrics to accelerate the new XM category by combining experience data and operational data to power the experience economy</h2>
</li>
<li>
<h2>Creates a highly differentiated offering for businesses to deliver superior customer, employee, product, and brand experiences</h2>
</li>
<li>
<h2>Ryan Smith to continue to lead Qualtrics; Qualtrics to maintain dual headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Wash.</h2>
</li>
</ul>
<hr />
Under the terms of the agreement, SAP will acquire all outstanding shares of Qualtrics for US$8 billion in cash. SAP has secured financing in the amount of €7 billion to cover purchase price and acquisition-related costs. The purchase price includes unvested employee incentive compensation and cash on the balance sheet at close. Subject to customary closing conditions and attainment of regulatory clearances, the acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2019. The Boards of Directors of SAP and Qualtrics have approved the transaction. Qualtrics’ shareholders have also approved the transaction.
SAP CEO Bill McDermott said: “We continually seek out transformational opportunities – today’s announcement is exactly that. Together, SAP and Qualtrics represent a new paradigm, similar to market-making shifts in personal operating systems, smart devices and social networks. SAP already touches 77 percent of the world’s transactions. When you combine our operational data with Qualtrics’ experience data, we will accelerate the XM category with an end-to-end solution with immediate global scale. For Qualtrics, this introduces a dynamic new partner with the belief, passion and scale to bring experience management to millions of customers around the world.”
McDermott added: “The combination of Qualtrics and SAP reaffirms experience management as the groundbreaking new frontier for the technology industry. SAP and Qualtrics are seizing this opportunity as like-minded innovators, united in mission, strategy and culture. We share the belief that every human voice holds value, every experience matters and that the best-run businesses can make the world run better. We can’t wait to stand beside Ryan and his amazing colleagues for the next chapters in the experience management story. The best for Qualtrics and SAP is yet to come!”
Ryan Smith, CEO of Qualtrics, said: “Our mission is to help organizations deliver the experiences that turn their customers into fanatics, employees into ambassadors, products into obsessions and brands into religions. Supported by a global team of over 95,000, SAP will help us scale faster and achieve our mission on a broader stage. This will put the XM Platform everywhere overnight. We could not be more excited to join forces with Bill and the SAP team in this once-in-a-generation opportunity to power the experience economy.”
<h2>SAP and Qualtrics Will Together Deliver the Transformative Potential of Experience Data (X-Data) Combined with Operational Data (O-Data)</h2>
XM focuses on obtaining and tapping the value of outside-in customer, employee, product and brand feedback. Combining Qualtrics’ experience data and insights with SAP’s unparalleled operational data will enable customers to better manage supply chains, networks, employees and core processes. Together, SAP and Qualtrics will deliver a unique end-to-end experience and operational management system to power organizations.
<h2>SAP Will Accelerate Qualtrics’ Growth and Further Its Mission by Offering Global Scale, Reach and Resources</h2>
Leveraging SAP’s more than 413,000 customers and global salesforce of around 15,000, Qualtrics will be able to scale rapidly around the world. SAP has a strong track record of accelerating growth for the innovative companies it acquires, as exemplified by the rapid success of SAP’s recent acquisitions.
Qualtrics expects full-year 2018 revenue to exceed US$400 million and projects a forward growth rate of greater than 40 percent, not including potential synergies of being part of SAP.
Following the closing of the transaction, Qualtrics is expected to maintain its leadership, personnel, branding and culture, operating as an entity within SAP’s Cloud Business Group. Ryan Smith will continue to lead Qualtrics, and Qualtrics is expected to continue to maintain dual headquarters in Provo, Utah, and Seattle, Washington.

SAP drops $8 billion to buy Qualtrics

The latest beta for the upcoming WordPress 5.0 release is now available for testing. Note that this is a DEVELOPMENT release and not something to install on a production site unless you want to invoke the power of chaos.
“There are two ways to test the WordPress 5.0 Beta: try the <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-beta-tester/">WordPress Beta Tester</a> plugin (you’ll want “bleeding edge nightlies”), or you can <a href="https://wordpress.org/wordpress-5.0-beta3.zip">download the beta here</a> (zip).”
The actual production release of WordPress 5.0 is expected around November 19th, pending of course any major issues.
Here are some of the changes in beta 3:
<ul>
<li>The block editor has been updated to include all of the features and bug fixes from the upcoming <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2018/10/31/whats-new-in-gutenberg-31st-october-2/">Gutenberg 4.2 release</a>.</li>
<li>The Twenty Nineteen theme has been updated from GitHub</li>
</ul>
For more info on the upcoming WordPress 5.0 release which brings the dreaded Gutenberg editor into the mix, check out https://wordpress.org/news/

WordPress 5.0 Beta 3 Available

Recently, the founder of the popular Solus distribution of Linux, decided to take some time away from the project for personal reasons. Sadly, it appears as though he has also stopped replying to the members of the development team he helped form and has basically disappeared.
As a result, the <a href="https://www.patreon.com/solus">Patreon account</a> which numerous people have contributed to and that was, at one point, over $2000 monthly in contributions, has been unusable and inaccessible to the development team. The issue in question here is where has the money been going then?
The team recently <a href="https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail/">posted a call</a> to have those who are donating on Patreon revoke their donations in order to prevent the funds from being locked into an account they have no access to.
<blockquote>
Which brings me to <a href="https://www.patreon.com/solus" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Patreon</a>, arguably the most difficult for me to talk about. After multiple support tickets, they have repeatedly refused to provide access to the Solus account. At this moment, we have no way of accessing the funds many of you have graciously donated, nor are we fully aware of what funds are available via Patreon. I absolutely understand if you are frustrated with having financially contributed to the Patreon, with no way for us to utilize these funds for hardware purchases and paying for services, it’s frustrating for us too. Unfortunately, with Patreon’s refusal to assist us, our only option is to kindly request that you immediately cease your donations to it. My personal advice would be to additionally contact Patreon for refunds and express your frustration to them for their unwillingness to assist us. We can only hope that they decide to grant us access to the funds or account.
</blockquote>
Following this, we have several questions:
What happened to Ikey? Why have funds been locked into an inaccessible account and where has the money been going if not to the project that it's intended for?
We strongly recommend reaching out and revoking your contributions for now until these answers become clear. You can learn more about the team's struggle here: <a href="https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail/">https://getsol.us/2018/10/27/in-full-sail/</a>

Solus Founder Disappears - Team Loses Access to Patreon Funds

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IBM announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.
“The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. “IBM will become the world’s #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.
“Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs,” she said. “The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales.”
“Open source is the default choice for modern IT solutions, and I’m incredibly proud of the role Red Hat has played in making that a reality in the enterprise,” said Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO, Red Hat. “Joining forces with IBM will provide us with a greater level of scale, resources and capabilities to accelerate the impact of open source as the basis for digital transformation and bring Red Hat to an even wider audience – all while preserving our unique culture and unwavering commitment to open source innovation.”
This acquisition brings together the best-in-class hybrid cloud providers and will enable companies to securely move all business applications to the cloud. Companies today are already using multiple clouds. However, research shows that 80 percent of business workloads have yet to move to the cloud, held back by the proprietary nature of today’s cloud market. This prevents portability of data and applications across multiple clouds, data security in a multi-cloud environment and consistent cloud management.
IBM and Red Hat will be strongly positioned to address this issue and accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption. Together, they will help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management. In doing so, they will draw on their shared leadership in key technologies, such as Linux, containers, Kubernetes, multi-cloud management, and cloud management and automation.
IBM’s and Red Hat’s partnership has spanned 20 years, with IBM serving as an early supporter of Linux, collaborating with Red Hat to help develop and grow enterprise-grade Linux and more recently to bring enterprise Kubernetes and hybrid cloud solutions to customers. These innovations have become core technologies within IBM’s $19 billion hybrid cloud business. Between them, IBM and Red Hat have contributed more to the open source community than any other organization.
“Today’s announcement is the evolution of our long-standing partnership,” said Rometty. “This includes our joint Hybrid Cloud collaboration announcement in May, a key precursor in our journey to this day.”
With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat’s open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network.
IBM and Red Hat also will continue to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud. At the same time, Red Hat will benefit from IBM’s hybrid cloud and enterprise IT scale in helping expand their open source technology portfolio to businesses globally.
“IBM is committed to being an authentic multi-cloud provider, and we will prioritize the use of Red Hat technology across multiple clouds” said Arvind Krishna, Senior Vice President, IBM Hybrid Cloud. “In doing so, IBM will support open source technology wherever it runs, allowing it to scale significantly within commercial settings around the world.”
Upon closing of the acquisition, Red Hat will join IBM’s Hybrid Cloud team as a distinct unit, preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat’s open source development heritage and commitment, current product portfolio and go-to-market strategy, and unique development culture. Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and Red Hat’s current management team. Jim Whitehurst also will join IBM’s senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty. IBM intends to maintain Red Hat’s headquarters, facilities, brands and practices.
“IBM’s commitment to keeping the things that have made Red Hat successful – always thinking about the customer and the open source community first – make this a tremendous opportunity for not only Red Hat but also open source more broadly,” said Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies, Red Hat. “Since the day we decided to bring open source to the enterprise, our mission has remained unchanged. And now, one of the biggest enterprise technology companies on the planet has agreed to partner with us to scale and accelerate our efforts, bringing open source innovation to an even greater swath of the enterprise.”
Financial Details
The acquisition of Red Hat reinforces IBM’s high-value model. It will accelerate IBM’s revenue growth, gross margin and free cash flow within 12 months of closing. It also will support a solid and growing dividend.
The company will continue with a disciplined financial policy and is committed to maintaining strong investment grade credit ratings. The company will target a leverage profile consistent with a mid to high single A credit rating. The company intends to suspend its share repurchase program in 2020 and 2021.
At signing, the company has ample cash, credit and bridge lines to secure the transaction financing. The company intends to close the transaction through a combination of cash and debt.
The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both IBM and Red Hat. It is subject to Red Hat shareholder approval. It also is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the latter half of 2019.

IBM Acquiring Red Hat

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