Dries Buytaert

Today Acquia was named a leader in the The Forrester Wave: Web Content Management Systems, Q1 2017. This report is especially exciting because for the first time ever Acquia was recognized as the leader for strategy and vision, ahead of every other vendor including Adobe and Sitecore.

I take great pride in Acquia's vision and strategy. As I wrote in my 2016 retrospective, I believe that the powerful combination of open source and cloud has finally crossed the chasm, and will continue to drive change in our industry.

Today, cloud is the starting point for any modern digital experience project, but this wasn't always the case. Acquia was one of the first organizations to explore Amazon Web Services in 2008 and to to launch a commercial cloud product in 2009. At the time that was a bold move, but we have always seen the cloud as the best way to provide our customers with the necessary tools to build, deploy and manage Drupal.

Since its founding, Acquia has helped set the standard for cloud-based delivery of web content management. This year's Forrester report shows that many of our competitors are only now introducing a cloud delivery platform. Acquia's eight year commitment to the cloud is one of the reasons why we were deemed the leading vendor for strategy.

Second, organizations can no longer afford to ignore open source software. Acquia is the only open source leader in both the Forrester Wave and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management. There are a lot of inherent benefits to open source software, including speed of innovation, cost, quality, security and more. But the thing that really sets open source apart is freedom. This extends to many different users: for developers freedom means there are no limitations on integrations; for designers that means creative freedom, and for organizations that means freedom from vendor lock-in.

In addition to our commitment to open source and cloud, Forrester also highlighted Acquia's focus on APIs. This includes our many contributions to Drupal 8's API-first initiative, but it also includes our APIs for Acquia Cloud, Acquia Cloud Site Factory and Acquia Lift. APIs are important because they enable organizations to build more ambitious digital experiences. With Open APIs, organizations can use our software in the way they choose and integrate with different technology solutions.

This is why Acquia's solution — using open source, cloud, and open APIs — is so powerful: it prepares organizations for the current and evolving demands of digital experience delivery by allowing them to innovate faster than traditional solutions.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this result! It's another great milestone for Acquia and Drupal.