From a managed service to the cloud

E.ON is one of Europe’s largest energy network and infrastructure operators and a provider of innovative customer solutions for over 50 million customers. The group has its headquarters in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia and plays a key role in Europe’s transition to environmentally friendly energy while remaining committed to sustainability and climate protection for the future of our planet.

To provide services and information to customers in 14 European countries, including Germany, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Hungary, Austria and the United Kingdom, E.ON operates over 70 websites, which are accessed more than 20 million times a month.

E.ON has already been using Adobe for over a decade – the company initially used CQ5 and then Adobe Experience Manager in the on-premises version, operating it within their own infrastructure. At the time however, there were only two websites to manage.

The on-premises version of Adobe Experience Manager seamlessly accompanied the organic growth of the websites. “We’ve been very happy with it, but we knew the day would come when we would have to move to the cloud to keep up with the latest developments,” remembers Tim Scheipers, Team Lead Customer Experience Platforms at E.ON. The company ultimately switched from a managed service to the public cloud and to Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service. Since then, E.ON has benefited from a range of additional features that help build on their technological progress:

• Manual updates are no longer required, as Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service is automatically updated and patched by the provider – several times a month if necessary – ensuring user companies always have access to the latest version without having to do anything.
• Round-the-clock availability: Adobe has redesigned the platform to ensure there is virtually no downtime – neither for content management nor for the content-providing functions.
• The platform scales automatically. All instances of Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service are created equal, so the service architecture scales automatically depending on your requirements.
• Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service offers integrated security. Adobe guarantees the security of the platform with industry-recognised standards to ensure the privacy and protection of all data and content.
• Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service continues to use its customers’ projects as a basis for development. Content, code and configurations are continually monitored and compared against best practices to ensure Adobe is able to help its customers implement their business objectives.

“These are all good reasons for the switch. Our top priority was to always be up to date and have the latest features. Scalability was also very important to us,” says Tim Scheipers. High availability, which was already within an acceptable range in the on-premises version of Adobe Experience Manager, including auto scaling in the event of unforeseeable peaks in traffic, was also essential. However, one of the key reasons for choosing the cloud service was the security of the platform, for example when it comes to defending against DDoS attacks. The integrated platform security services in Adobe Experience Cloud ensure business continuity even if hackers try to shut down a company’s websites with a large number of requests – an issue that has become increasingly critical for E.ON, especially during the ongoing energy crisis.

Compliance and data protection guaranteed

E.ON began the platform switch from an on-premises version of a managed service in 2022, with smaller services being tested on static websites. The actual migration began in early 2023 and was scheduled for completion by the middle of the year.

The preparations also included use of the Adobe Best Practices Analyzer, which helped E.ON to analyse the individual websites and prepare for the migration. This involved going through and acting on each individual insight gained from the Analyzer to ensure the actual migration could proceed as smoothly as possible.

The platform now includes over 70 websites in the 14 countries in which E.ON is an active provider. The aim is to be able to offer more content for internal and external communication, press relations and the annual stakeholder meetings via the company’s main website, eon.com. However, the customer portals of the national companies and regional network providers who manage the networks on behalf of E.ON will also benefit. They all use one of the eight Adobe Experience Manager cloud service infrastructures licensed and then clustered for the partners by E.ON. This means E.ON can now distribute major releases largely independently and flexibly and without the need for time-consuming testing.

Because the backend systems are only loosely coupled to the websites, E.ON had no problems with data protection or compliance issues during the migration: since the Adobe Experience Manager only contains the websites and does not process any customer or other sensitive data, compliance with all regulations and legal standards is guaranteed.

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