What Is Adobe Experience Manager: How to Setup & Deploy AEM?

Today, the online market is becoming highly competitive, which demands extra effort to stand uniquely and stay ahead of the curve. In that case, the business websites need to offer an improved user experience to engage more customers and increase sales. A content management system may appear as a solution to attain this. 

In online marketplaces, various CMSs are widely-used, among which Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is leading the globe, which arrives with a plethora of functionalities and features.

This post will help you learn about Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), its working, business requirements, and steps to install and deploy it. 

We can assure you by the end of this post, you will uncover varied benefits of AEM that you can leverage in your business to improve your customer experience and lead to increased sales. 

What is AEM (Adobe Experience Manager)?

Developed on Adobe Cloud Technology, a content and digital asset management application, Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) permits organizations to build, manage, and deliver content across all digital touchpoints. 

Among the giants, AEM is a popular choice that’s widely recognized for its flexibility and scalability. This content management platform allows businesses to manage their content and publish it, customize customer experience, and integrate it with other systems. 

Developers find it an essential tool to create access and reutilize content elements across other customer interfaces and projects. In contrast, designers take it as a robust, user-friendly, and feature-packed system. 

And marketers use it as a better content management and optimization tool with no external dependencies. 

AEM is a complete content management solution that makes the content assets management process seamless. The users can manage images, PDFs, videos, online forms, documents, and more easily. Whether you are devising to develop mobile apps or websites, Adobe Experience Manager is a perfect choice for automating your content approach to develop engaging, consistent customer experiences that attract growth. 

Besides, this CMS lets the users access and use their assets easily from anywhere to back their digital experience with no issue with networking protocols. Adobe Experience Manager improves the way we operate online. Besides, it offers a cluster of features that you can use to craft, publish and deliver your digital content efficiently and faster. 

Also, AEM helps in publishing a customer-facing site, a blog where the visitors can find a treasure of content relevant to their business, or a social page on which customers can interact with your brand.  

How Does Adobe Experience Manager Work?

A content management system, Adobe Experience Manager, allows companies to build, manage, and offer personalized digital experiences across many channels and devices. Also, it uses a web-based interface that lets the users create and manage content easily, like videos, text, images, etc. and publish it to mobile apps, websites, and other digital channels. 

AEM was built to work with the Adobe Marketing Cloud product suite, embracing Adobe Target, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Commerce Cloud, Adobe Audience Manager, and Marketo Engage. 

Furthermore, AEM integrates with other Adobe solutions, like Adobe Target and Adobe Analytics, to offer targeted content recommendations and data-driven insights. Also, it holds in-built capabilities for version control, multilingual support, and user permission management. 

AEM assists customers in getting insights into their visitors and enhancing their website’s user experience using advanced digital marketing tools. Besides, this CMS is best for tracking conversion rates, discovering the ads that are attracting the most traffic, and personalizing pages and content. 

The sales team also reaps the benefits of AEM in managing customer relationships, delivering better multimedia experiences, and performing targeted marketing. 

Websites with large amounts of content can get the below services from AEM:

• An open-source system developed on Java for flexibility.
• Tag management, image generation, marketing campaigns, and APIs for analytics.
• User-friendly online tools for Authors that simplifies the content creation process.
• Asset and page replication to ensure faster end-user access by separating AEM Publish servers.  

Requirements for Adobe Experience Manager

Prerequisites

Below are the minimum requirements for Adobe Experience Manager installation:

• A modern web browser, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Safari
• Installed Standard Edition JDK, Java Platform, or other supported Java Virtual Machines (JVM). 
• Experience Manager Quickstart file (Web-application development WAR or Stand-alone JAR)
• Apache Maven version 3.3 or higher
• Linux Machine (Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, and Centos)v
• A compatible database, such as MySQL or MongoDB.
• Java Development Kit (JDK) version 8 or higher Java v11.0
• A valid Adobe Experience Manager license.
• A server to host the Adobe Experience Manager application, such as Apache Tomcat or Adobe Experience Manager itself
• An Adobe account to access Adobe Experience Manager and its related services and support.
• The minimum requirements for running AEM are 2GB memory and 5GB free space in the installation directory. 

Steps to Setup Adobe Experience Manager

• Download and install the Adobe Experience Manager software on your server.

• Create a new database and set the essential user permissions to configure the database for the AEM instance.

• By configuring the necessary settings, set up the AEM instance with the license key, server name, and port number.

• Make a new user account for the AEM instance and arrange the necessary permissions for this user.

• Start the AEM instance and use the new user account to log in.

• Build a new website or project within the AEM instance, and add and configure content and assets.

• Test the AEM’s instance functionality by developing and publishing content and checking the user experience on the site’s front end.

• Monitor and maintain the AEM instance to ensure it is running smoothly and efficiently.

Real-time Screenshots of AEM setup:

1) We have to download the JAR file from the given URL, which we have received in our mail:

2) Double-click on that jar file, or you can run this jar file from the command line and set the admin password:

3) It will Redirect you to its URL for Installation and complete the process:

4) Accept the License agreement and fill in the required details like Customer Name & License Key:

5) Now take login with the details which we have set earlier:

6) Here is your dashboard:

What Are the Benefits of Adobe Experience Manager?

AEM arrives with various exceptional features that assist businesses to stand uniquely, boost productivity, attract efficiencies, and increase revenue. 

Some of the chief benefits of AEM are:

1. Enhanced Search

Adobe Experience Manager permits users to search for their improved media content easily without wasting their time in finding the exact file. Besides, it makes the searches faster ahead and makes the teams more efficient. The tags applied are the biggest contributor to this; they are based on the user’s specifications, not assigned automatically per the set parameters. 

2. Visual Media Conversion

This is important for all marketers; whether you are a content curator or content creator, you should publish your video in the best working formats exactly on the platforms that your audiences mostly use.

AEM arrives with in-built support that assists in transforming cloud files into varied formats and frameworks to drive outcomes across devices and channels. This way, marketers’ and content creators’ various needs get addressed easily. 

Adobe Experience Manager also aids users in creating and managing their business content. Also, it adapts across different screen sizes, channels, and formats to offer expected experiences from images to video. 

3. Improved Task Management

AEM is crafted to offer users improved task management and better analytics abilities. It permits the team to perform various projects in a focused environment with no overload included. 

With the expansion of your projects, AEM assists in reducing the clutter so that users may stay targeted on their ongoing tasks. Besides, this tool can offer separate workspaces for multiple projects. This caliber of performing different projects at the same time assists teams in staying productive and leads to exceptional results. 

This software is also known for managing the entire project lifecycle. Users just need to build a team workspace, organize multimedia assets, host conversions, and monitor the progress of every task easily. Additionally, it incorporates the capabilities of real-time file sharing with colleagues across various devices, scheduling tasks, and getting feedback as annotations and comments. 

4. Personalized Content

AEM allows you to deliver a personalized experience to your customers. Its content appears to be customizable and flexible, which permits users to showcase a one-of-a-kind experience to the target audience with your branded media. 

While it’s essential to offer a better user experience with a personalized touch, AEM facilitates the development of such a digital experience. 

Moreover, it assists users in staying uniquely in the crowd and driving more traffic, which results in improved conversion rates. 

5. Easy-to-Use CMS

To boost the productivity of your marketing team, you should start with an easy-to-use, familiar CMS. You can choose AEM, which allows users to create digital assets, publish, track, and report them quickly. 

AEM is a robust and easy-to-use CMS that allows the marketing team to handle mobile and web content from a single platform. It includes drag-and-drop and editing functionality into an advanced interface that eases the creation and deployment of content faster. 

6. Flexibility

You can experience flexible publishing, robust workflows, and consistent management of your web content with Adobe Experience Manager. 

Furthermore, it eases the creation and distribution of content through a central platform, which simplifies content to let users understand easily. 

AEM assists by putting content at the user’s fingertips and lets you engage and meet your users, customers, and visitors’ requirements on all the screens. AEM makes website management easy across multiple sites.      

7. Simple Add-on Functionality

The AEM holds an add-on function that permits users to utilize add-ons from 3rd-parties. This trait of AEM contributes to making it a well-recognized CMS. This functionality facilitates users to integrate your eCommerce website with a plethora of services. 

Let’s take an example. Suppose on your website, you are looking to enable social media sharing buttons to ease sharing of products for customers on Facebook or Twitter. 

You can attain this by appending the related Add-on module. You can build an online store with this software that may suit your business perfectly. AEM’s extensive functionality allows users to craft solutions for their stores. 

8. Better Customer Insights

Adobe Experience Manager offers insights and data of valuable clients, permitting businesses to enhance their marketing efforts by making informed decisions. 

9. Increased Collaboration 

AEM provides a wide range of collaboration with advanced tools, features, and functionalities, facilitating teams to perform together flawlessly on varied campaigns and projects. 

10. Improved Scalability

An advanced CMS, AEM is a scalable platform that permits businesses to adapt to the transforming market conditions and customers’ requirements. 

11. Enhanced Security

Adobe Experience Manager arrives with strong security features that ensure the customer’s sensitive information and data stay protected entirely.  

How to Deploy & Maintaining AEM?

Steps to Deploy AEM

Install and configure the required hardware and software needs for Adobe Experience Manager, including a supported web server and database.

• Create a new Adobe Experience Manager instance by downloading the Adobe website’s latest version and following the installation instructions.

• Configure the Adobe Experience Manager instance with the right settings, like the server hostname, database connection details, and port number. 
• Import any existing templates, content, and assets into the AEM instance using the offered import tools.
• Set up and configure any required 3rd-party integrations, like marketing automation or analytics platforms.
• Create and assign the roles and permissions to users who will be managing and accessing the Adobe Experience Manager instance.
• Perform QA and testing on the Adobe Experience Manager instance to make sure it’s functioning as expected and fulfills business requirements.
• Publish the Adobe Experience Manager instance to the live environment and make it accessible to end users.
• Observe and manage the Adobe Experience Manager instance regularly to ensure it stays stable and secure.

Types of Deployment

1) On-premise

When AEM is deployed and managed in a corporate environment, it’s on-premise deployment. Typical installation instances incorporate:

• Development,
• Testing, and
• Publishing environments. 

2) Managed Services using Cloud Manager

AEM Managed Services is a comprehensive solution for Digital Experience Management that offers the advantages of experiencing delivery solutions in the cloud while reaping the benefits of all the security, control, and customization of an on-premise deployment. 

Besides, these services permit the customers to roll out faster by sticking to best Adobe practices and support and also by deploying on the cloud.

Businesses and organizations can attract more customers faster, drive huge market chink, and target crafting innovative marketing campaigns while diminishing the workload on IT. 

Features of Adobe Experience Manager

1. Cloud Service

AEM arrives with a Cloud-native content management system that allows you to handle websites at scale securely and with no need for costly upgrades. So, you can use this service to develop your site so that customers would love to get engaged. 

2. Exceptional Technology

Regardless of the edition, you are using, AEM is always available with the core components that you can install and use directly in your company. Such components ensure that users get the latest technologies, whatever edition they use. 

3. Digital Enrollment and Forms

To enable seamless two-way data exchange, forms include valuable information. Also, it arrives with an easy-to-use and intuitive Digital Enrollment solution that allows users to get customer information directly into forms to make the enrollment process flawless. 

4. Content Management System

With the climbing content volume of your company, it becomes essential to offer personalized information, optimized search results, and relevant products to every customer. 

AEM facilitates customers to easily handle your brand assets and online content across varied channels and devices. You can develop websites with pre-built templates easily and quickly for responsive web experiences. 

5. Digital Asset Management

AEM Assets assists users in catching up with immersive content experiences across channels and audiences. Also, Assets allow sourcing content from a wide range of sources utilizing automated workflows. 

Besides, you can use the new Management Console for centralizing search and asset management and use the smart tools to quickly adapt and offer assets to the right users at the right time. 

6. Project Dashboard

It offers a swift overview of your existing project. A distinct unit of work for defining particular activities, objectives, and business results.

Moreover, you can use it to check out the project’s core components, embracing project details and status on real and planned resource usage. 

Besides, the project dashboard provides instant access to relevant assets, like connections and team members. 

How Is AEM Better Than Other Content Management System Solutions?

AEM offers a number of benefits over other content management system solutions, including:

• A robust digital platform, AEM, is one of the best ways to customize your brand that delivers the latest content management system (CMS) functionality for digital businesses. 
• Being a leading solution for organizations, Adobe Experience Manager is crafted to build custom digital experiences for users. 
• Additionally, this software offers a comprehensive cluster of powers that allow enterprises to be extra competitive on the web. 
• AEM offers all-inclusive control to users over showcasing content in digital channels, such as mobile apps, web, and social media. 
• Using this open platform, a wide range of industry-specific solutions, and digital asset management (DAM) caliber, AEM eases the creation of integrated digital content management. 
• Besides website management, this software provides solutions for eCommerce, marketing automation, and engagement platforms. 
• The comprehensive set of features of this software may already incorporate what you want; in case not, it’s crafted to scale up easily through the open development structure for particular business requirements. 
• Apart from that, AEM is an all-in-one platform to strengthen your enterprise digital marketing, merging content, analytics, social, experience, and insights in one spot. 

So, whether you are looking to craft, share, or handle rich-media assets for advertising or marketing campaigns, AEM easies it for you. 

Conclusion

After reading the post, you might have understood how useful Adobe Experience Manager is and how it strengthens various websites worldwide, being a well-recognized content management system. 

You can include dynamic web content and integrate it with your social sites to empower your website visitors to publish their content. 

It’s an all-in-one platform that holds the caliber to handle every aspect of your online business identity. 

If you face any issues or have any confusion converting to Adobe Experience Manager, you should hire an AEM consultant at Adobe Experience Manager integration company, who can help with what you need.