Moving to AEM as a Cloud Service | AEM Community Discussion

[kautuk_sahni]

Moving to AEM as a Cloud Service by Adobe

Abstract

Benefits of Moving to AEM as a Cloud Service
AEM as a Cloud Service provides a scalable, secure, and agile technology foundation for Experience Manager Sites and Assets, enabling marketers and IT to focus on delivering impactful experiences at scale.

With AEM as a Cloud Service, your teams can focus on innovating instead of planning for product upgrades. New product features are thoroughly tested and delivered to your teams without any interruption so that they always have access to the state-of-the art application.

Understanding the Transition to Cloud Service Process
The transition journey to Cloud Service involves three phases - Planning, Execution, and Post Go-live.
For a successful and smooth transition, you should ensure proper planning and adhere to best practices outlined in this Guide.
The figure below shows a pictorial representation of the recommended transition journey to Cloud Service.

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Moving to AEM as a Cloud Service

Q&A

Please use this thread to ask the related questions.

[chirag_satija]

Thanks @kautuk_sahni, for sharing the detailed information.

We are currently using cloud manager with AEM6.5.2 and now we are planning to migrate to AEM as a cloud service. So we were looking for the benefits which we will get. I was only able to find below two benefits when you are already on cloud manager.

1. Always on the latest version.

2. By using Asset Service you will increase the performance of asset uploads.

Could you please suggest us if we are missing anything.

[kautuk_sahni]

Value Added as a Cloud Service

• It is always on:
  • The entire service architecture has been revisited so that you do not experience any downtime; for neither the content management nor the content delivery capabilities.
• It is always at scale:
  • All instances of AEM as a Cloud Service are created equal; so the service architecture will automatically scale, up and down, depending on your needs.
• It is always current:
  • AEM as a Cloud Service implements a new, continuous delivery pipeline for the AEM codebase, with automated updates up to several times a month. This solves one of the main challenges of AEM applications, by keeping you current on the most recent version.
• It is always evolving:
  • AEM as a Cloud Service evolves on a daily basis, based on the projects implemented by our customers. Content, code and configurations are constantly reviewed and vetted against best practices, allowing us to guide you on how to achieve your business goals.

See: https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-cloud-service/overview/introduction.html

It helps is:

 1. Achieving a faster pace of innovation 

     Frictionless software updates
     Proactive protection
     Reactive auto-scaling

 2. Optimizing production processes in the Cloud

     Auto-deployments
     Improved code quality practices accelerate time to market
     Auto-provisioning

     Automatic backup and multimode disaster recovery models

 3. Boosting your business value with true cloudification

See:  https://www.netcentric.biz/insights/2020/01/aem-as-cloud-service-revolution-is-here.html 

AEM Cloud Service adopts all the benefits of modern cloud-based services:

• High availability: One of the key benefits of moving to AEM Cloud Service is the ability for all services to be always on, So that our customers never experience downtime. In the past, especially on the author's side, there was a need to periodically stop the service for different types of maintenance operations: updates, patches, upgrades, and some routine maintenance operations. No longer.
• Real-time scalability: All instances of the AEM Cloud Service are created equal with default sizing. AEM Cloud Service is based on an orchestration engine (Kubernetes) that constantly monitors the state of the service and dynamically scales up and down, depending on the needs of our customers without them having to worry about it, both vertically and horizontally. Scaling can be done manually or automatically based on customer requirements.
• The latest code base, always: This might be the most useful and most anticipated feature delivered by AEM Cloud Service to customers. With AEM Cloud Service, Adobe takes care of updating all running instances to the latest codebase. Updates will be pushed silently without any downtime.
• Self-sustaining and always learning: AEM Cloud Service keeps on learning and evolving itself based on the projects implemented by our customers. Content, code, and configurations are constantly reviewed and vetted against best practices, which helps in guiding our customers on how to achieve their business goals. Various components in AEM Cloud Service equipped with health checks and are self-healing.

[chirag_satija]

Thanks @kautuk_sahni for the quick response. Could you please help me identify what is already there in cloud manager and what new we get. We have to explain business only about the latest features in AEM as a cloud service.  Please confirm our understanding on the highlighted below points 

Value Added as a Cloud Service

• It is always on: 
  • The entire service architecture has been revisited so that you do not experience any downtime; for neither the content management nor the content delivery capabilities. [It is already there in AMS with cloud manager model ]
• It is always at scale:
  • All instances of AEM as a Cloud Service are created equal; so the service architecture will automatically scale, up and down, depending on your needs.[It is already there in AMS with cloud manager model ]
• It is always current:
  • AEM as a Cloud Service implements a new, continuous delivery pipeline for the AEM codebase, with automated updates up to several times a month. This solves one of the main challenges of AEM applications, by keeping you current on the most recent version.[This is something new which we will get]
• It is always evolving:
  • AEM as a Cloud Service evolves on a daily basis, based on the projects implemented by our customers. Content, code and configurations are constantly reviewed and vetted against best practices, allowing us to guide you on how to achieve your business goals.
    [This is something new which we will get]

See: https://docs.adobe.com/content/help/en/experience-manager-cloud-service/overview/introduction.html

It helps is:

 1. Achieving a faster pace of innovation 

     Frictionless software updates
     Proactive protection   -- [Already there with cloud manager]
     Reactive auto-scaling -- [Already there with cloud manager]

 2. Optimizing production processes in the Cloud

     Auto-deployments      -- [Already there with cloud manager]
     Improved code quality practices accelerate time to market -- [Already there with cloud manager]
     Auto-provisioning -- [Already there with cloud manager]

     Automatic backup and multimode disaster recovery models -- [Already there with cloud manager]

 3. Boosting your business value with true cloudification

See:  https://www.netcentric.biz/insights/2020/01/aem-as-cloud-service-revolution-is-here.html 

AEM Cloud Service adopts all the benefits of modern cloud-based services:

• High availability: One of the key benefits of moving to AEM Cloud Service is the ability for all services to be always on, So that our customers never experience downtime. In the past, especially on the author's side, there was a need to periodically stop the service for different types of maintenance operations: updates, patches, upgrades, and some routine maintenance operations. No longer. 
• Real-time scalability: All instances of the AEM Cloud Service are created equal with default sizing. AEM Cloud Service is based on an orchestration engine (Kubernetes) that constantly monitors the state of the service and dynamically scales up and down, depending on the needs of our customers without them having to worry about it, both vertically and horizontally. Scaling can be done manually or automatically based on customer requirements. [Already there with cloud manager]
• The latest code base, always: This might be the most useful and most anticipated feature delivered by AEM Cloud Service to customers. With AEM Cloud Service, Adobe takes care of updating all running instances to the latest codebase. Updates will be pushed silently without any downtime.
• Self-sustaining and always learning: AEM Cloud Service keeps on learning and evolving itself based on the projects implemented by our customers. Content, code, and configurations are constantly reviewed and vetted against best practices, which helps in guiding our customers on how to achieve their business goals. Various components in AEM Cloud Service equipped with health checks and are self-healing.

[kautuk_sahni]

The best to answer is the Sales team. 

But, here are some good pointers for you:

HTH

[chirag_satija]

Thank you so much @kautuk_sahni , This helps.

[chirag_satija]

Hi @kautuk_sahni ,

Just want to know if migrating to cloud service is the only option or in future we can expect AEM 6.6 as well.

I am asking this because we have couple of clients who are still on-premises setup.

[kautuk_sahni]

See this Thread: What is the roadmap for AEM after AEM 6.5

Adobe has decided not to use the major version vehicle in 2020 to ship a new AEM version. Instead, we can ship the new features, improvements as part of Service Packs on top of AEM 6.5. The main reason is that we want customers to adopt features quicker, and the best way to do that is to avoid a major release that is harder to update, and instead of shipping it as incremental Service Packs, that get much quicker adoption. We understand that this might confuse, as it breaks the release schedule that we had for years.

A question I get a lot is: How are you folks able to ship these features via Service Pack and don't need a major release? Over the years we have made improvements to the Service Pack installer, which allows us to update nearly all parts of AEM during the installation. Further, based on the same AEM code-base - AEM as a Cloud Service - is getting daily updates. So we are developing changes in the product incremental and with full backward compatibility in mind.

So what you will see for AEM 6.5 is continued steam of Service Packs every quarter (4x per year).

The next question that I get is: What about the EOL dates? Correct - they will need to change. We will update the EOL page soon https://helpx.adobe.com/support/programs/eol-matrix.html#AB to represent AEM 6.5 with that change in release strategy.

I hope this helps to understand the roadmap.