Thanks @yuhuisg for the thoughtful response. The tradeoffs you
highlighted are exactly what I was looking for. In the end, we have to
go with the decision that works best for our AEM implementation. The key
thing you mention are custom components, which inevitably our site will
use to meet the needs of our customers. At this point, I'd rather invest
the time deploying a custom implementation on the AA side rather than
trying to closely couple AA and AEM. But as you say, we need to weigh
the pros...