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CQ5 WCM development skills are hot -- and scarce

6-Apr-2011

Tags: Web Content and Experience Management, European Marketplace, Implementation, Selecting Technology, Adobe CQ5

I've been getting a lot of emails and LinkedIn inmails lately with words “Day CQ” and “CQ5” confettied all over them. Logical conclusion: implementation skills for (now) Adobe's CQ5 Web CMS are in growing demand. According to job trending tools from Indeed.com, relative growth for CQ5 jobs spiked over 2,000% in January 2011.

adobe cq5 wcm job trends

The explanation is quite simple and has nothing to do with JCR dying, global warming, or rising cotton prices. If you remember, there was an excruciatingly long period of silence in Basel leading up to the release of CQ 5.1 in 2008. The jump from CQ4 to CQ5 brought a considerable improvement in the product, wrapped with an elitist bow - aiming to enchant not only techie geeks, but marketers as well. Since then, Day overhauled its upper management echelons, kept up an aggressive research and product development schedule, expanded sales and marketing activities globally and, particularly, in North America, prettied up enough to get acquired by Adobe. Result? The product is now officially popular.

But is that a good thing for you the customer?

History is repeating itself here, as waves of WCM vendors -- some fresh off the boat, others longstanding like Day/Adobe -- have experienced this popularity jag, balancing high demand with scarcity of resources to support growth. RedDot (now almost defunct), SDL Tridion, eZ Systems, and other WCM vendors we cover in our Web CMS research have all experienced mismatched levels of product demand versus product expertise.

Historically, Day relied mainly on its partner network to carry out many of its CQ5 WCM product implementations. We hear from customers, though, that not every partner is created equal, and some have had to replace partners mid-project. Given CQ's historical roots, the collective partner intelligence is higher in Europe; whereas in North America CQ-experienced SIs are harder to find. Some CQ5 partners are wisely reaching into Eastern Europe to ramp up skill bases, but that too takes time.

As with other vendors, Adobe's own Professional Services can get parachuted in to put out fires, but there are always limits here. It should be noted that Day's PS organization in the U.S. was kick-started seriously only a couple of years ago.

What current and future Adobe CQ5 customers should keep in mind is that developing on CRX and CQ5 WCM presents a steep learning curve: be it for your own in-house developers or Adobe's new implementation partners.  Look for extensive developer training and previous experience to get to the needed expertise. Whether your developers or others', that takes time, so you should choose carefully into whose pocket you put those hefty CMS implementation fees.

    Excerpt from the Adobe CQ5 Evaluation

    Web Content Management Report looks at... Reporting in Adobe Web Experience Management

    "The platform is light on built-in system reporting services, but provides fine-grained logging capability, which makes reporting a potentially tedious exercise in log-parsing..."
    (p. 303)

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