Adobe I/O: The Future of Integrations

Adobe I/O merges integrations and analytics to make life easier for developers. Find out how it works and how to make the most of it in this article.

Adobe I/O provides a hub for partners and developers to access Adobe's APIs of Creative Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Document Cloud products. For developers, Adobe I/O provides a useful place to learn about integrating with Adobe as well as extending or creating apps and experiences based on these technologies. We’ll take a look at how it works and how it can be leveraged for maximum results.

The API gateway

For developers, Adobe I/O makes it easier to access APIs since there's a single entry point for all development documentation. This includes all products of the Marketing Cloud, Creative Cloud, Document Cloud as well as cross-cutting solutions such as User Management. In the past, some documentation was better than others, but with Adobe I/O this is set to change with improved documentation, examples and tutorials to come for all products. It's at an early stage at the moment, and the documentation is continually being improved.

The I/O console

When working within Adobe I/O, you’ll be able to manage your integrations from the I/O console. This central interface makes it easy to access integrations, whether they’re apps for end-users or technical integrations. The console also enables you to find analytics around your integration: charts give you insights on how your app or integration was used.

Services and Events

The best thing about Adobe I/O is that it makes it very easy to produce solutions based on Adobe products. To use a licensed product like Adobe Analytics or Adobe Campaign in your solution, you simply plug the service into your integration. You are then able to use Adobe I/O as a gateway to access product features while details like API authentication are handled in the same way for all of those services. You can also register your integration for events that take place in certain Adobe solutions. This allows you to create reactive integrations since applications are notified as soon as changes take place. There are currently two types of events: Creative Cloud and AEM Assets, but there are more event sources to come in the future.

So that's a snapshot of the current features of Adobe I/O. But the journey has just started, constant improvements are being made and new features are on the horizon:

Adobe Sensei and Adobe Runtime.

Adobe Sensei

Adobe Sensei is being developed to meet creative and marketing needs and will make machine learning capabilities available for your solutions. Adobe trains this Artificial Intelligence with huge amounts of anonymous data collected from its various products. This is then used to create real-world features for Adobe's product range. For example, it enables Adobe Experience Manager to shrink pieces of text by removing redundant parts. Sensei will also enable services like image recognition or natural language processing. Adobe aims to provide the Adobe Sensei technology in ready-to-use services. With Adobe I/O, you will be able to easily integrate these features into your solution.

Adobe Runtime

Adobe Runtime will be a serverless platform, hosted in the Adobe cloud. Serverless means that instead of running big monolithic applications, you are able to compose your applications out of functions. Those functions can be implemented by you or provided by Adobe to give you access to their platform functionality, for example, the Adobe Sensei based features mentioned above. Adobe Runtime is based on Apache Openwhisk, a new Open Source project that Adobe is actively contributing to along with other big players like IBM. The goal of the Adobe Runtime serverless platform is zero maintenance and easy scaling, which is advantageous to teams that need to scale up or down agilely.

The benefits of Adobe I/O

Adobe I/O makes it very easy to build powerful solutions based on Adobe products. It gives developers a centralised place to learn how to use the products and incorporate their features into their own solutions. And while Adobe I/O is improving, there are already plenty of features to build on. One use case would be the potential for staying up to date with AEM Assets. Assets can easily be shared with partners and once they are shared or updated, a notification could be sent automatically. This ensures a much smoother communication process between customers and agencies. Another case could be A/B testing in transactional emails. You could use the integration with Adobe Target and Adobe Campaign to send out personalised offer receipts or appointment confirmations along with customised offers. Moreover, you can use the platform’s console to study the analytics of what's working and what isn't, in order to optimise your offering to clients.

A promising future

Adobe I/O is still in development. However, it already enables developers to streamline their integration process to provide better and faster solutions to their customers. With steady improvements and the addition of other functionalities, Adobe I/O stands to become increasingly beneficial to developers looking to build solutions efficiently in the coming years.