For: Application Development & Delivery Professionals Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms by Mark Grannan, Anjali Yakkundi, and Ted Schadler, December 8, 2014 Key Takeaways A Diversity Of Digital Experience Software Is Still The Norm In Enterprises Enterprises leverage numerous software tools in support of cross-channel digital customer experiences. However, market fragmentation and integration challenges have opened the door to integrated platforms. Emerging Digital Experience Platforms Balance Convergence And Integration Software vendors have bought and/or built a range of foundational capabilities for on-site digital experiences and have pushed integration with other tools, enabling enterprises to establish flexible, heterogeneous platforms that address their requirements. Identify Next-Generation Requirements To Better Prepare For Digital Experience Investments Digital customer experience delivery platforms are emerging. No vendor currently offers an end-to-end solution, and given existing investments, most enterprises can t source from a single vendor. Establish your requirements to set the stage for making a smart decision at investment time. Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA Tel: +1 617.613.6000 Fax: +1 617.613.5000 www.forrester.com
December 8, 2014 Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms A Range Of Software Vendors Tackle The Multichannel Experience Mandate by Mark Grannan, Anjali Yakkundi, and Ted Schadler with Stephen Powers, Peter Sheldon, Cory Munchbach, and Steven Kesler Why Read This Report Businesses need an array of software technology to support digital customer experiences, but they struggle to understand and leverage the tools necessary to create and manage unified, multichannel digital customer experiences across multiple touchpoints. Application development and delivery (AD&D) professionals must evaluate, implement, integrate and build front-end experiences on-top of this fragmented landscape. Technology vendors try to help by bringing more complete digital customer experience portfolios to the market, although hopes for a homogenous environment are unrealistic at this point. In this report, we define the emerging digital customer experience delivery platform, explore the vendors delivering these solutions, and provide insight into the approaches these vendors take to integrate with the technologies in which their customers have already invested. This report was originally published on November 26, 2013; Forrester reviews and updates it periodically for continued relevance and accuracy. Table Of Contents 2 7 9 12 25 Firms Struggle To Leverage Digital Experience Technologies The Digital Customer Experience Platform Is Evolving Quickly Integration Is The Litmus Test Of The Digital Experience Platform Vendor Heritage Influences Platform Approach recommendations Find The Right Balance Between Vendor Loyalty And Vendor Lock-In Notes & Resources Forrester surveyed and interviewed 19 companies, including Acquia, Adobe, Bridgeline Digital, Demandware, Digital River, Ektron, HP, HubSpot, hybris, IBM, OpenText, Oracle, salesforce.com, SDL, and Sitecore. Related Research Documents Assess Your Digital Experience Delivery Maturity October 14, 2014 The Forrester Wave : Digital Experience Delivery Platforms, Q3 2014 July 22, 2014 TechRadar For AD&D Pros: Digital Customer Experience Technologies, Q3 2013 September 3, 2013 2014, Forrester Research, Inc. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited. Information is based on best available resources. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester, Technographics, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. To purchase reprints of this document, please email clientsupport@forrester.com. For additional information, go to www.forrester.com.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 2 Firms Struggle To Leverage Digital Experience Technologies An embarrassment of riches is the phrase that may best describe the abundance of software tools available to companies that need to create, manage, and measure cross-channel digital customer experiences. Unfortunately, many firms have not been able to unify their software solutions to extract maximum value from them and deliver comprehensive cross-channel experiences. Forrester s Q1 2014 Digital Experience Delivery survey found that organizations struggle with digital experience delivery initiatives because (see Figure 1): Digital initiatives lack a clear division of roles and suffer from skills shortages. Topping the list of role-centric pain points for delivering digital experiences, dividing roles among marketing/it/and the business was the top option with 60%, and a skills shortage was a close second with 58%. 1 This suggests a fragmented technology usage scenario that is reinforcing divisions and silos, instead of fostering collaboration and bootstrapping skillsets. Tech budgets often lack a center of gravity. Supporting our earlier hypothesis, technology budgets are heavily fragmented. Technology management remains the leader in terms of budget control, but shares this power with corporate marketing, lines of business, and others. Anecdotally, this fragmentation correlates to diminished overall spending effectiveness and limited potential synergies of unified planning and technology purchasing. Implementation sits on technology management and partner shoulders. While marketing and the business pitch in heavily during requirements gathering phases, technology management teams and their services partners definitively own implementation and integration efforts. In this waterfall model, projects often suffer from disjointed business requirements and integration constraints. Poor integration with back-end systems is a big hurdle. Technology teams may feel the heat when the biggest technical barrier to delivering customer facing systems is inadequate integration with back-office-systems by a wide margin. However, this is certainly not all IT s fault. When we asked which areas third-party partners need to improve upon, 31% the second highest choice selected integration between software and/or platforms.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 3 Figure 1 Digital Experience Delivery Faces A Broad Array Of Challenges 1-1 Digital experience delivery faces a broad array of challenges When it comes to roles for digital experience projects, which have been the biggest pain points? (select the top three) Dividing Roles/responsibilities among marketing, IT, and the business 60% Shortage of appropriate skillsets 58% Funding/budget 51% Finding the right third party 31% Dividing roles/responsibilities between internal groups and third parties 30% Hiring the right candidate (e.g., cultural fit) 14% Training 6% Other (Please Specify) 5% Base: 148 digital customer experience decision-makers Source: Forrester s Digital Experience Delivery Survey, Q1 2014
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 4 Figure 1 Digital Experience Delivery Faces A Broad Array Of Challenges (Cont.) 1-2 Digital experience delivery faces a broad array of challenges What portion of the digital experience technology and services budget do these groups own? Sales 8% Business 25% IT 35% Marketing 32% Base: 148 Digital customer experience decision-makers Source: Forrester s Digital Experience Delivery Survey, Q1 2014
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 5 Figure 1 Digital Experience Delivery Faces A Broad Array Of Challenges (Cont.) 1-3 Digital experience delivery faces a broad array of challenges Development and implementation services Which organizations perform the following IT-oriented tasks? (select all groups that apply) IT Marketing Business Sales Third party 91% NA/Don t know 16% 15% 1% 51% 3% Application development 80% 11% 12% 1% 57% 2% Web development 77% 26% 13% 2% 53% 2% Infrastructure 91% 3% 4% 0% 30% 3% Testing and QA 85% 30% 35% 5% 37% 3% UX development/design 57% 49% 26% 3% 46% 4% Business and/or IT requirements gathering Software or platform implementation Integration between software and/or platforms Managed services (e.g., IT day-to-day services) 80% 45% 63% 9% 24% 2% 93% 10% 7% 1% 46% 2% 93% 7% 5% 1% 45% 3% 92% 3% 5% 0% 39% 3% Base: 148 digital customer experience decision-makers Source: Forrester s Digital Experience Delivery Survey, Q1 2014
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 6 Figure 1 Digital Experience Delivery Faces A Broad Array Of Challenges (Cont.) 1-4 Digital experience delivery faces a broad array of challenges What are the biggest technical barriers to creative effective customer-facing systems? (select up to three) Inadequate integration with back-office systems 60% Inadequate master data management 38% Inadequate customer data management practices 37% Inadequate content management 27% Lack of skills 25% Inadequate project governance 16% Inadequate security 16% Inability to scale to meet demands 13% Slow or unpredictable performance 13% Lack of management visibility 11% Other, please specify 5% No challenges 3% Base: 148 digital customer experience decision-makers Source: Forrester s Digital Experience Delivery Survey, Q1 2014
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 7 The Digital Customer Experience Platform Is Evolving Quickly As more phases of the customer life cycle pivot to a digital medium, the urgency to manage digital holistically increases. 2 This has resulted in technology teams transitioning from an operational, IT-centric view to a business technology (BT) agenda. 3 Enterprises need to better understand and support these digital touchpoints under a common umbrella (e.g., teams, systems, and processes) because they collectively impact a significant and growing percentage of business key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. This has resulted in the emergence and expansion of the digital experience delivery platform to support four of the six phases of the customer life cycle (see Figure 2). Forrester defines digital experience delivery platforms as: Software to manage, deliver, and optimize experiences consistently across every digital touchpoint. Figure 2 The Digital Experience Delivery Platform Tackles More Of The Customer Life Cycle Engage Discover Ask Explore Use Buy Commerce and WCM core is expanding Vendors Vie To Support Digital Experience Delivery Needs With Four Tactics Vendors have been rushing to meet the digital experience delivery mandate. Vendors are taking the following actions to extend their offerings: 1. Acquiring new capabilities. Vendors are moving aggressively into new or adjacent areas. As evidenced by the large number of merger and acquisition announcements, this (mid-2014) vendor landscape looks much different than just a year ago (see Figure 3).
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 8 2. Partnering to broaden appeal and (maybe) ease integration pains. Almost every vendor has extended their ecosystem via partnerships. However, partnership can mean a number of things, including one-off field integrations, repeatable integration frameworks or connectors, co-marketing, co-development, reseller agreements, shared services support, cross-certification, and full-blown original equipment manufacturing. 3. Rebranding and repackaging new or existing offerings. The number of rebranding/ repackaging announcements over the past several years indicates many vendors find it necessary to message the value proposition of broader set of capabilities (see Figure 4). While many customers no longer recognize the names of the products they ve invested in, product portfolio alignment is a positive direction for many large vendors. 4. Organically developing new features and capabilities and bridge product gaps. Some vendors have established cross-functional development teams to incubate new product lines to help fill gaps in the portfolio, or simply restructure the entire core platform between major release cycles. Figure 3 Vendors Are Aggressively Adding Capabilities To Their Portfolio Via Acquisitions LiveContent Calamares Pectora 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 This figure is meant to be a representative of the digital experience delivery acquisitions over the past five years. Acquisitions made outside core digital experience delivery are not shown.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 9 Figure 4 Spring 2014 Was Busy For Rebranding Announcements May 13, 2014 IBM ExperienceOne April 30, 2014 Oracle Marketing Cloud June 20, 2013 ebay Enterprise April 9, 2014 OpenText Experience Suite June 12, 2014 Autonomy Marketing Cloud 2012 2013 2014 October 24, 2012 Adobe Marketing Cloud November 20, 2013 Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud April 30, 2014 Sitecore Experience Platform January 27, 2014 SDL Customer Experience Cloud Integration Is The Litmus Test Of The Digital Experience Platform Integrating disparate technologies to support digital customer experiences is a mammoth architectural and technical challenge. Without the right integration strategy and execution, your digital business design aspirations will falter. 4 The overall digital experience platform design allows AD&D teams to understand how technical integration efficiencies and capabilities, robust data management platforms, and easy-to-use business user interfaces and workflows fit together.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 10 Four Tiers Of Integrated Capabilities Support Great User Experiences Digital experience delivery architecture should provide a core delivery backbone and maximum flexibility to pull data from multiple sources and publish it across digital touchpoints. The platform s four tiers allow discrete capabilities to work in concert via a strong feedback loop of insights and extensibility enables customization and access to other systems and repositories (see Figure 5): The orchestration layer aggregates assets, operations, and interactions into rich experiences. Content is the foundation of a good customer experience, and integrated operational engines (e.g., commerce, marketing) imbue that content with purpose. By leveraging user input via digital interactions (e.g., communities), the content and operations fuel a two-way relationship. The contextual delivery layer builds a bespoke experience at run-time. Testing allows marketers and merchandisers to refine and optimize the content, messaging, targeting, and promotions to maximize KPIs all within milliseconds of the request. The contextual delivery layer optimizes relevance in the moment using profile, historical, and situational data. 5 The customer data layer is the source of truth for authentication and targeting efforts. Understanding the customer requires a wealth of data points aggregated into a common view. By combining internal customer information with external data (e.g., Facebook profile), segmentation and targeting efforts become easier and more accurate. The insights feedback loop injects intelligence into the platform. Aggregating usage data across an audience into useful dashboards allows product leaders and marketers to better understand customers. Over time, companies will harness this insight to drive more relevant content to users via testing/optimization capabilities.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 11 Figure 5 The Digital Experience Delivery Platform Architecture Touchpoints Digital interface (Kiosk, POS terminal, etc.) Core, branded experience (Web, mobile) Direct outreach channels (Email, social, SMS) Platform Extensibility APIs Integration frameworks Data extractions Developer environment Personalization Testing Search Optimization Assets Marketing content Product content Advertising content Social content Rich media Third-party (e.g., maps, feeds) Contextual delivery Rendering Resources & Orchestration Interactions Communities Feedback Ratings/reviews Forms Business operations Marketing Advertising Commerce Order fulfillment Service Globalization/ Localization Insights Data capture Dashboard Analytics Machine learning Predictive analytics Customer data Master profile Customer data Segmentations Preferences Audiences External data
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 12 Underlying Attributes Deliver Process, Extensibility, And Scale The benefits of a platform approach extend beyond linked capabilities. By under and overlaying the platform with scale, extensibility and usability, the platform will drive considerable benefits: Streamlined workflows and unified user interfaces ramp users faster. Provisioning user access at a platform-level provides a basis for creating role-based workspaces that match the way users work. Extensibility adds features while optimized protocols improve experiences. Integration frameworks and application programming interfaces (APIs) alleviate burdens to push or pull data in new areas such as mobile apps, while lightweight asynchronous protocols over RESTful interfaces improve performance. Performant systems meet peak usage demands and security threats. Performant architectures include reliability, flexibility, and security to maintain up-times that rival any enterprise servicelevel agreements (SLAs). Vendor Heritage Influences Platform Approach The market for digital experience platforms shows that most vendors provide one foundational technology plus some adjacent capabilities that complement this core (see Figure 6). Additionally, vendors must articulate a strategy to enable third-party integrations with their core offerings. These range from formal, off-the-shelf integrations defined by vendor partnerships and co-development efforts to API strategies that provide the interfaces so AD&D pros can connect proprietary platforms to one or more third-party tools.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 13 Figure 6 Digital Experience Platform Matrix Core Peripheral WCM ecommerce Portal DAM PCM Web analytics Mobile analytics Testing & optimization Video Recommendation Email Marketing Content-centric Commerce-centric Social depth Site search Forms/onboarding Mobile app platform Web chat Acquia Adobe Bridgeline Digital Ektron EPiServer HP OpenText SDL Sitecore Telerik Demandware Digital River ebay Enterprise hybris IBM* Intershop Oracle* WCM ecom POR DAM PCM WA MA OPT VID REC = Proprietary, best-of-breed offering = Embedded platform capabilities = Partner, best-of-breed offering with demonstrable joint development = Standalone component available for purchase and operation independent of other technology adoption EM SD SS FORM APP CHAT *IBM and Oracle both have multiple platforms outside of their commerce-centric platforms. Those offerings have not been independently covered in this report.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 14 Web Content Management-Centric Platforms Predominate Many emerging digital experience platforms have built their offerings on a web content management (WCM) foundation. They provide core content management capabilities, including a repository for multiple content types and have historically owned the run-time environment for non-transactional sites. In addition, many vendors have added adjacent capabilities into their platform. Vendors in this category include Acquia, Adobe, Bridgeline Digital, Ektron, EPiServer, HP, OpenText, SDL, Sitecore, and Telerik (see Figure 7). Figure 7 Web Content Management-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles Acquia Burlington, Mass. $70 million 520 Acquia Platform Forrester Estimate: $70 million Forrester Estimate: 20 WCM Drupal 7 ecom Acquia Commerce DAM WA Nuxeo/Bynder* KISSmetrics PaaS, SaaS $100,000 PHP OPT VID SD Acquia Lift Brightcove/Ooyala* Acquia Commons Adobe Adobe Marketing Cloud Forrester Estimate: $1 billion Forrester Estimate: 200 WCM Experience Manager ecom hybris/elastic Path/Intershop* DAM PCM WA OPT Experience Manager hybris/elastic Path/Intershop* Analytics Target San Jose, Calif. $4 billion On Premises, SaaS, hosted cloud $350,000 Java EM SD Campaign Social 12,000 * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings)
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 15 Figure 7 Web Content Management-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) Bridgeline Digital iapps Platform $19 million Forrester Estimate: 10 WCM iapps Content Manager 5.1 ecom iapps Commerce 5.1 Burlington, Mass. SaaS, Perpetual License $250,000.NET $25 million 170 Ektron Ektron CMS $37 million Forrester Estimate: 20 WCM Ektron CMS OPT Ektron Marketing Suite REC Ektron Marketing Suite Nashua, N.H. $37 million On Premise, SaaS Forrester Estimate: $150,000.NET EM SD Digital Experience Hub Connectors Ektron Marketing Suite 200
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 16 Figure 7 Web Content Management-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) EPiServer EPiServer 7.5 (CMS or Commerce) $54 million Forrester Estimate: 15 WCM EPiServer 7.5 CMS ecom EPiServer 7.5 Commerce DAM PCM OPT Celum/Imageworks* Agility/Perfion/inRiver* EPiServer CMO Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. PaaS, On Premise $60,000 - $90,000.NET REC EM SD SS $54 million EPiServer Find* IBM Silverpop* EPiServer Social Reach EPiServer Find 221 HP HP Marketing Optimization Forrester Estimate: $500 million Forrester Estimate: 250 WCM HP TeamSite/LiveSite DAM HP MediaBin WA HP Digital Marketing Hub OPT HP Optimost Palo Alto, Calif $119 billion On Premises, SaaS, Hosted cloud $250,000 Java REC SS HP Digital Marketing Hub HP IDOL FORM HP Extream 340,000 * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings)
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 17 Figure 7 Web Content Management-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) OpenText OpenText Experience Suite Forrester Estimate: $400 million Forrester Estimate: 30 WCM Web Experience Management ecom hybris* POR DAM PCM WA OpenText Portal OpenText Media Management OpenText Information Exchange OpenText Web and Social Analytics Waterloo, Ontario $1.62 billion On Premises, Hosted cloud $325,000 Java REC EM SS Baynote Campaign Management Web Experience Management FORM OpenText Process Suite 8,200 SDL SDL Customer Experience Cloud Forrester Estimate: $100 million Forrester Estimate: 50 WCM SDL Web DAM North Plains* WA Webtrends* OPT SDL Optimization Maidenhead, UK $447 million Hosted Cloud, On Premise $350,000 Java,.NET EM SS SDL Campaigns SDL Web 2,700 * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings)
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 18 Figure 7 Web Content Management-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) Sitecore Sitecore Experience Platform Forrester Estimate: $100 million Forrester Estimate: 30 WCM Experience Platform ecom Experience Commerce DAM VID ADAM Software, others* Brightcove/Ooyala* Copenhagen, Denmark On Premise, PaaS $400,000.NET EM SS $100 million Experience Platform Coveo/Lucene/SOLR* 850 Telerik Sitefinity $60 million 171 WCM Sitefinity 7.1 MA OPT Telerik Platform App Analytics Optimizely* Sofia, Bulgaria Domain-based licensing $46,750.NET APP $75 million (est.) Telerik Platform 725 * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings)
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 19 Commerce-Based Platforms Aim To Expand On Transactional Foundations Some vendors in the world of digital experience platforms anchor their offering with best-of-breed ecommerce functionality. This includes core capabilities for managing product-centric content and commerce experiences. They have also historically owned the run-time environment for ecommerce sites. Over the past few years, some of them have begun building extended capabilities for broader digital customer experience. Vendors in this category include Demandware, Digital River, ebay Enterprise, hybris (an SAP company), IBM, Intershop, and Oracle (see Figure 8). Figure 8 Commerce-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles Demandware Demandware $130.2 million Forrester Estimate: 60 ecom Demandware Commerce PCM Demandware Commerce Burlington, Mass. SaaS $543,000 Java $103 million 535 Digital River Digital River Global Commerce $300 million Forrester Estimate: 200 ecom Global Commerce Minnetonka, Minn. $390 million 1,300 SaaS Forrester Estimate: $1,000,000 (revenue-sharing model) Java,.NET EM BlueHornet
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 20 Figure 8 Commerce-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) ebay Enterprise Magento Enterprise Edition Forrester Estimate: $60 million Forrester Estimate: 20 ecom Magento Enterprise Edition King of Prussia, Pa. On Premises Forrester Estimate: $200,000 PHP (Magento) $1.12 billion 33,420 hybris (SAP) hybris Commerce Suite 5.4 Forrester Estimate: $170 million Forrester Estimate: 300 ecom hybris Commerce Suite 5.4 DAM PCM WA OPT VID OpenText Media Management* hybris Commerce Suite 5.4 Jirafe KXEN OpenText Media Management Munich, Germany $18.5 billion On Premises, Hosted Cloud Forrester Estimate: $700,000 Java EM SeeWhy FORM Orbeon APP CHAT SAP SMP Live Person 65,500 * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings)
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 21 Figure 8 Commerce-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) IBM IBM WebSphere Commerce Forrester Estimate: $25 million Forrester Estimate: 700 WCM Web Content Manager ecom WebSphere Commerce POR WebSphere Portal DAM Rich Media Edition PCM IBM InfoSphere WA IBM Digital Analytics MA IBM Tealeaf OPT IBM Interact Intershop Communications Intershop Commerce Suite $72.3 million Forrester Estimate: 35 ecom Intershop Commerce Suite WA Intershop Commerce Insight Armonk, NY On Premises, Hosted cloud $250,000 Java EM SD SS Jena, Germany $72.3 million On Premises, Hosted cloud, SaaS $138,000 Java SD Scoobox* $104.5 billion IBM Silverpop IBM Connections IBM Watson Content Analytics FORM IBM Forms Experience Builder APP CHAT IBM Worklight IBM SameTime 400,000 530 * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings)
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 22 Figure 8 Commerce-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles (Cont.) Oracle Oracle Commerce Forrester Estimate: $100 million Forrester Estimate: 500+ WCM WebCenter Suite Plus ecom Oracle Commerce POR PCM WA OPT WebCenter Suite Plus Oracle Commerce Hyperion Web Analysis Oracle Real-Time Decisions Redwood Shores, Calif. $37 billion On Premises, Hosted cloud Forrester Estimate: $250,000 Java REC EM SD * = Partner integration available (sometimes in addition to proprietary offerings) = Oracle ATG, Endeca Experience Manager, and Search SS CHAT Cross-Channel Marketing Solutions Oracle SRM, Oracle RightNow Oracle Commerce Oracle RightNow 120,000 Recommendations Multichannel On Demand Enterprise Marketing Vendors Build On Marketing-Centric Capabilities Marketing vendors outside of traditional WCM and ecommerce also support aspects of multichannel digital customer experience management. These vendors run the gamut on size and breadth of offerings, ranging from a testing/ optimization specialist like Qubit up to a very large customer relationship management (CRM) platform like Saleforce (see Figure 9). These vendors put tools in the hands of marketers to create and drive experiences to engage customers and prospects, often as a supplement to a client s core WCM or ecommerce platform. Salesforce.com is a subtle exception as some customers have built basic websites and microsites using its site.com solution (see Figure 10). Other vendors enterprise marketing software suites (EMSS) include Marketo, SAS Institute, Teradata; and large content and commerce vendors also sell marketing-centric offerings alongside or within their broader portfolio, including Adobe, IBM, Oracle and SAP. 6
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 23 Figure 9 Enterprise Marketing-Centric Vendor Matrix Core Peripheral WCM ecommerce Portal DAM PCM Web Analytics Mobile Analytics Testing & Optimization Video Recommendation Email Marketing Social Depth Site Search Forms/Onboarding Mobile App Platform Web Chat Qubit Salesforce.com WCM ecom POR DAM PCM WA MA OPT VID REC EM SD SS FORM APP CHAT This list of providers is not meant to be comprehensive, rather representative of those vendors who are competing in the Digital Experience Delivery Platform arena but do not own or sell core, web site delivery capabilities However, these vendors are able to manage and optimize content and inject it into other digital touchpoints. = Proprietary, best-of-breed offering = Embedded platform capabilities = Partner, best-of-breed offering with demonstrable joint development = Standalone component available for purchase and operation independent of other technology adoption
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 24 Figure 10 Enterprise Marketing-Centric Platform Vendor Profiles Qubit Qubit $5.4 million Forrester Estimate: 50 London, England $5.4 million 130 SaaS $100,000 Java, others WA MA OPT Decipher v1 Decipher v1 Discover v2 & Deliver v2 Salesforce Salesforce Marketing Cloud Forrester Estimate: $200 million Forrester Estimate: 100 San Francisco, Calif $4.07 billion SaaS Forrester Estimate: $250,000 Java 15,000 WA OPT REC EM Salesforce Marketing Cloud Salesforce Marketing Cloud Salesforce Marketing Cloud Salesforce Marketing Cloud FORM Sales Cloud APP Salesforce1 CHAT Service Cloud Service Provider PaaS Offerings Show Value In Services Many digital agencies and service integrators (SIs) sell digital experience delivery platform capabilities as-a-service (see Figure 11). These platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings or sometimes called technology-in-a-box commonly include technical hosting, integration, maintenance, and customization services, and often add creative, design, and strategic services to these technical capabilities. Many enterprise buyers struggle to understand how to compare these PaaS offerings with their technology foundations or the services from dedicated hosted providers (e.g., Rackspace). Furthering the confusion, the technology-in-a-box moniker runs counter to the need to integrate these solutions with an existing enterprise stack. Forrester has found that the secret sauce lies not in the technology but rather the services for connectors, accelerators, managed services, and vertical-specific blueprints. 7
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 25 Figure 11 Service Provider PaaS Ecosystem Is Heavily Focused On Adobe Today Services vendor Avanade PaaS offering Digital Marketing Solution Technology foundation Sitecore Capgemini OCommerce Oracle Deloitte Infosys Razorfish SapientNitro Tahzoo Wipro MarketMix BrandEdge Fluent Engaged Now cxminthecloud Reach Adobe Xaxis + others Adobe Adobe and SDL SDL Oracle and IBM recommendations Find The Right Balance Between Vendor Loyalty And Vendor Lock-In We expect that digital experience delivery technologies will further converge and that the key technology decision-makers will become less siloed but this process will take years. In the meantime, AD&D pros should examine vendors that offer multiple digital experience components. At the same time, be wary of buying into vendors promises of an end-to-end solution and instead give preference to vendors that invite customers legacy tool vendors to the party and offer them a pathway to integration. Specifically, you should: Understand which technologies are foundational to digital customer experiences. To be effective at digital customer experiences, you must understand which technology components and capabilities such as WCM and ecommerce can serve as the foundation upon which you can raise the timbers of a dozen or more supplementary digital experience-centric tools and capabilities that will provide form and structure. Consider your strategy and technical requirements for the next several years. Rationalize your current portfolio of digital experience tools in the context of your strategy and software requirements for the next three to five years. Consider how potential vendors address the digital experience platform requirements we spell out in this report. Determine whether, based on your platform shortlist, it will be easy or hard to keep your preferred digital experience components in service and integrate them easily into your future WCM or ecommerce platform.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 26 Use the digital experience issue to build bridges across your organization. Consider the growth of the digital experience delivery platform to be a chance to spur dialogue across your organization. This is especially important if your company tends to operate in silos. Use the discussion about next-generation digital experience platform to spur change in the organization. Get teams to work together, define common requirements and standards, rationalize what s likely a diverse software portfolio, and determine what will best address your digital experience needs going forward. Companies Interviewed For This Report Acquia Adobe Bridgeline Digital Demandware Digital River ebay Enterprise Ektron EPiServer HP IBM Intershop OpenText Oracle Qubit salesforce.com SDL Sitecore Telerik hybris Endnotes 1 In Q1 2014, Forrester surveyed 148 digital experience delivery decision-makers about their views on digital experience technology tools and strategies. Respondents were those who played a key role in evaluating, specifying, and/or administering solutions that support digital experience delivery, including both the decision-makers and their close third-party partners. 2 Forrester defines the customer life cycle as: The enterprise s view of the phases that a customer passes through in the course of an ongoing relationship with that company. See the July 29, 2014, Top Technologies For Your BT Agenda report. 3 Unlike IT investments, which may focus on internal users and operations, BT delivers business impact. Forrester defines BT as: technology, systems, and processes to win, serve, and retain customers.
Market Overview: Digital Customer Experience Delivery Platforms 27 4 Forrester defines digital business design as: a business-centered approach to solution architecture, implementation, and integration that brings business and technology design together by placing design priority on user roles, business transactions, processes, canonical information, events, and other business aspects that embody a complete definition of a business. See the November 8, 2012, Digital Business Design Is The New Integration report. 5 To read more about how Forrester defines data usage for contextualization see the January 13, 2014, Advance To Next-Generation Personalization report 6 See Forrester s in-depth evaluation of the enterprise marketing software suites in our October 21, 2014 The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Marketing Software Suites, Q4 2014 report. (118581) 7 Services firms will tell customers that these platforms provide more functionality than just the typical services they provide. Is there really a secret sauce that separates this offering from when you re typically working with a services firm? See the April 21 2014, Digital Experience Platforms From Agencies And SIs: What s The Secret Sauce? report.
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