Acquia is a technology company that offers cloud-based solutions for web content management and digital experience. Founded in 2007, Acquia focuses on the open-source software Drupal and provides an enterprise cloud platform for content management, digital marketing, eCommerce, and other web solutions.
Acquia's platform enables customers to create and manage websites, online stores, and mobile applications, as well as implement digital marketing strategies and content personalization to enhance the user experience.
It also offers analytics and monitoring tools to optimize the performance of websites and applications.
Acquia’s DXP allows you to create the entire digital experience for your users from start to finish across all your channels.
What is a DXP?
Acquia is considered a Digital Experience Platform (DXP), meaning it’s a collection of products that work together to manage and optimize the user's digital experience.
It’s an open-source DXP that provides a digital experience platform based on Drupal. Let’s take a closer look to understand this better:
According to Gartner, a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) is an integrated set of core technologies that support the composition, management, delivery, and optimization of contextualized digital experiences.
DXPs place a strong emphasis on interoperability and continuity across channels throughout the buyer journey. Their purpose is to serve as the central technology foundation for a digital business's customer experience.
Have you struggled to keep up with demand and need a more powerful and robust website platform? As business challenges evolve, having a DXP is very useful.
When a company reconsiders its end-to-end digital strategy to execute, operate, compete, and differentiate in the digital world, it must implement a new and flexible digital architecture.
This architecture should include modular services to quickly develop and deploy new types of applications and experiences to engage customers and help them achieve their goals.
A DXP provides that architectural foundation and modular services for developers, marketers, and professionals to create, organize, and optimize digital journeys at scale, driving loyalty and new business outcomes across owned and third-party channels.
DXP and Content
The foundation of a DXP is content and data, as content guides the customer on their journey. In fact, content represents 70% of digital marketing spending.
Data is what guides the content and the experience to deliver it at any time. This way, you’ll know what content to produce, which to show, when, and to whom.
Machine Learning for Scaling
Around content and data, DXPs need machine learning to scale the delivery of individual content, experiences, and journeys without having a large team doing the manual work.
AI and ML expand the way content and data are mobilized to deliver those individual experiences.
Experiences Everywhere to Generate More Revenue
"One-to-one" experiences aren’t limited to visiting a website or opening an email; they’re about orchestrating the customer process where they first learn about your company, research, and finally click to buy.
That click relates to organizations having new revenue streams, new business models, and new digital products.
All of this enables companies to make a complete shift to a digital model through advanced commerce and marketing.
What is Drupal?
Organizations use DXP to create, deploy, and enhance websites, portals, mobile devices, and other digital experiences.
Among other things, they combine and coordinate applications, including content management, search and navigation, personalization, integration, workflow, analytics, mobile support, and multichannel support.
Acquia is one of the leading players in this field and the only one designed exclusively for Drupal.
Acquia co-founder Dries Buytaert was a graduate student when he created the first Drupal content management framework.
Buytaert and Jay Batson then established Acquia in 2007 to provide infrastructure, support, and services to enterprise organizations using Drupal.
Drupal is one of the leading open-source content management systems (CMS) and one of the largest open-source communities in the world.
Founded in 2000 by Dries Buytaert as a chat platform for university students, today it’s one of the most flexible and adaptable systems on the market, allowing anyone or any company to create advanced websites and applications.
Statistics indicate that 38% of Fortune 50 companies and over 23,000 developers use Drupal daily to power the websites we interact with regularly.
To recap, Acquia offers a cloud-based digital experience platform built on Drupal, enabling organizations to create experiences that scale their results.
Acquia allows brands to embrace innovation and create moments that truly matter to their customers. Additionally, it provides certification programs that enable developers to validate and promote their Drupal skills year after year.
Acquia Solutions
Acquia provides five solutions:
Acquia Cloud
A powerful cloud-native web hosting platform for building and managing Drupal-based websites.
Acquia Cloud Site Factory
Provides digital teams with the fastest way to build, update, and centralize hundreds of Drupal websites on a global scale.
Acquia Lightning
Offers an open-source Drupal 8 distribution with pre-selected modules and configuration to help developers build better sites faster and run them on Acquia Cloud.
Acquia Digital Asset Manager
Allows you to keep your images, logos, videos, PDFs, and more in one easy-to-update place. Acquia DAM is a cloud-based digital asset management tool and a central library for all your Drupal sites.
Acquia Commerce Manager
Provides the most secure and flexible platform for content-rich experiential commerce.
Who Should Consider Acquia?
Acquia is a good choice for enterprise-level and government businesses that need a comprehensive and powerful platform to optimize the user experience and integrate data from multiple sources for decision-making.
Organizations that deploy and manage multiple websites will also find Acquia particularly useful.
Unlike many of its competitors, Acquia allows customers to purchase resources and features individually rather than buying complete prepackaged solutions.
For eCommerce website owners, Acquia provides solutions that can easily scale to accommodate extensive product catalogs, large transaction volumes, and traffic spikes.
Acquia’s Commerce Manager integrates different content, commerce, and user interfaces, allowing you to deliver seamless experiences to your customers through a single system.
Who Should Not Consider Acquia?
Acquia is suitable for organizations that have both the need for a powerful toolset and the development expertise to implement and manage it easily.
Beginners and small businesses that lack the necessary programming and Drupal knowledge are likely better off with a different provider.
Those developing their website through an agency should ensure that the company has developers experienced with Drupal 8 on their team. If you’re developing internally, make sure your developers are familiar with it.
One drawback of Acquia’s power could be its cost, as its price may put it out of reach for small and medium-sized businesses.
Tips for Deciding on Acquia
As with any other major investment, the best choice for your organization will depend on your goals and needs, as well as those of your customers. Keep these points in mind to assess whether Acquia meets your requirements:
Determine your desired business outcome: Think about what you’re looking for in terms of improving your business. What does each DXP offer, and which features could you leverage the most?
Document your current technology architecture: What do you have, who uses it, for what, and how is it connected?
Determine the use cases: Who will use that technology, and how will they make it productive?
Prepare your staff: Your team plays a very important role in assembling your digital experience technology stack. Don’t waste time or money on a platform that doesn’t fit what you want or that you won’t use to its full potential.
By conducting a thorough assessment of your organization’s needs, capabilities, and objectives, you can determine whether Acquia is the best option to help you deliver a valuable digital experience for your audience.
