Adobe, Acquia, Optimizely Top Latest Forrester Wave for Content Management Systems
Adobe, Acquia, and Optimizely are Leaders in the latest Forrester Wave: Content Management Systems, Q3 2023 – a quarterly report published by one of the most prestigious and respected analyst firms in the technology industry.
The report, published today, provides a glimpse of where CMS platforms are positioned. Forrester ranks companies on a visual graph across several concentric strata: Challengers, Contenders, Strong Performers, and Leaders. A CMS platform’s position is then determined based on criteria reflecting its offering strength, strategy, and market presence.
Leading the CMS category
According to a press release from Acquia – one of the three platforms in the Leader category – the Q3 Forrester Wave report evaluated 10 CMS providers based on 26 criteria, focusing on the aforementioned criteria.
The report cited that “Acquia performs the strongest in low-code/no-code, translations for global content deliveries, and back-end extensibility – all supported by strong practitioner and developer programs.” The company earned the highest possible scores in the architecture (extensibility and configuration), practitioner and developer communities, partner ecosystem, and global delivery strategy criteria.
Optimizely, another Leader, also issued a press release about its position. The Forrester report stated that the platform "performs very well in personalization, A/B testing, and translation and localizations."
Additionally, the report indicated Optimizely's CMS "excels at depth of content and audience analytics off the shelf (no additional licensing) and a strong ability to scale content delivery through its partnership with Microsoft Azure and its cloud-native architecture."
Contentstack drives strong performance
While the Leader category remains the domain of large enterprise DXPs, headless CMS players are gaining ground. Case in point: Contentstack.
Buoyed by its MACH (Microservices, APIs, Cloud-native SaaS, Headless) focus and composable approach – along with best-in-class, turnkey, no-code integrations – the company is leading the Strong Performer category in the Forrester Wave report.
According to an article on the Contentstack website, the report stated that “Contentstack performs well in several categories but shines in its ease of back-end extensibility through turnkey integrations, coupled with global deployments.”
Along with its MACH posture, the report also noted that “as a founding member of the MACH Alliance, it excels in innovation, global delivery, and a straightforward pricing model.”
Contentful, another headless platform, also scored as a Strong Performer in the report.
A broad CMS field from headless to open source
While a presumed crop of DXPs dominated the top of the mountain, headless players and managed open source platforms like WordPress VIP provided some variance in the landscape.
As the downstream vendors look to contend and challenge the market, it’s clear that composable is becoming a more important part of the mix – and helping to propel those CMSes to the front of the line.