Adobe Experience Platform vs. Azure App Service

I think AEP is ahead of its competitors when it comes to hosting customer data for various use cases. It’s seamless integration with other Adobe products like AJO or CJA make it a very compelling overall package.

It may not be very applicable for smaller or medium sized businesses. There could be an opportunity for Adobe to bring in a trimmed down version for such customers.

Incentivized

Azure App Service is well suited in our case :

• Our website is developed by our tech partner in a full Microsoft Azure cloud based environment.
• We gave them specific access rights and the CI / CD integration helped a lot for updates and improvements deployment.
• Most of the infra issues we had with our website weren't coming from App Service

Incentivized

• Host online/offline data with common IDs
• Ease of profile activation to destinations
• Flexibility around how many sources and destinations can be used to move data

Incentivized

• Super quick & easy to deploy new apps in visual studio
• Easy scaling to help reduce costs during off-hours
• The powerful Azure ecosystem offers a lot of functionality that ties in well with Azure App Service

Incentivized

• You need to be well trained and resourced to use the product
• Features and integration work but often times you need to pay Adobe consultants for help
• Not transparent in their pricing per customer

Incentivized

• Abstraction of computing resources like Heroku does with dynos.
• Azure Portal overall is pretty bloated and that affects managing Azure App Service applications.

Incentivized

It is useful when executed properly

Incentivized

AEP works very well with the entire Adobe suite of products and services making it a must-have product from a marketing standpoint. The fact that you are able to understand the customer and have a better impact with the customer journey is really helpful. We have also used AEP data to cross sell products to our customers through email campaigns/ offers m/ advertising etc but to have all this data stored in a single place makes it very convenient.

Incentivized

I enjoy the fact that Azure App Service can be managed by the Azure portal and a fully graphical user interface, as well as from two different flavors of command-line interface, i.e. Azure CLI and Azure Powershell. By utilizing the Azure Cloud Shell, we are able to switch between Azure Bash (CLI) and Powershell at any given moment and manage the Azure App Service settings from devices of any form-factor (Web based management).

Incentivized

Adobe has support at all levels and for each product but beyond tool questions you'll often be told they can help but it requires some paid consulting hours. So you either hire Adobe consultants or find 3rd part consultants who know their products well.

Incentivized

We had an issue where we deployed too large of a resource and didn't notice until the bill came through. They were very understanding and saw we weren't utilizing the resources so they issued a generous refund in about 4 hours. Very fast, friendly, and understanding support reps from my experience.

Incentivized

In most cases we have found Adobe products to be harder to use but offer a lot more capabilities. In some cases Adobe products are missing key, basic functions. Adobe does offer a more holistic toolset rather than buying pieces of the puzzle and having to integrate on your own but that results in paying for a higher price tag.

Incentivized

In terms of deploying your apps, Azure App Service provides a solid foundation. You may use either the Azure command-line interface or the Web Portal to administer these apps. As a whole, I find You may easily deploy your apps to Azure App Service to be a really difficult platform for novices to get their feet wet. First and foremost, I'd look at Heroku's user interface and the way it abstracts compute units.

Incentivized

• The platform has allowed us to mature into digital spaces we couldn't otherwise have experienced
• Contract pricing went up yearly on some products by 200%
• We were able to consolidate email tools to save on yearly contract expenses

Incentivized

• Download time is reduced because of auto scaling feature.
• Insight tool helps in finding issues quickly.
• CI/CD has helped in automation.

Incentivized