Acquia: Experience Digital Freedom

Drupal has changed the web. It is undoubtedly the best content management system in the world which helps global enterprises, governments, and educational institutions all alike. It has revolutionized web content management and made it easier for content editors to put their content online. But after creating Drupal, Dries Buytaert wanted to start a cloud hosting service which would leverage the power of Drupal to help many more. This is how Acquia came into being.

Founded in 2007, by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson, Acquia is a leading digital experience company which has been providing digital solutions to the world’s most ambitious brands. The company stands apart in the industry because of its outlook that focuses on community and empowers its customers to build their futures on their own terms. With the founder of Drupal onboard as one of the founders and doubling up as the CTO of the company, the company has the best expertise in the digital experience space.

A company with a human culture

Located across the U.S. and around the world, Acquia’s solutions are helping over 4,000 organizations. Some of the world’s best brands like Twitter, Warner Music Group and Mercedes Benz use Acquia’s solutions to succeed. The company has over 800 people on its payroll who work in a highly collaborative environment from the state-of-the-art offices towards the common goal of delivering the best digital experience for its customer.

Moreover, the company ticks all the right boxes when it comes to caring for its employees. From offering a transition program to new parents to offsetting the cost of legal adoption fees, Acquia does not pull its punches when it comes to showing that it is a company that cares. The company was also recognized as one of the best places to work for women by one of the leading job portals in 2018.

Recognition

Acquia was recognized as the fastest growing private technology company in North America by Deloitte in 2013. And it has continued reeling in numerous awards over the years since then. Last year, the company was named in the Forbes 2018 Cloud 100. It was the third consecutive time Acquia was recognized as a leader in Cloud by Forbes.

In 2018, the company was also recognized for its leadership in WCM by Gartner and Forrester. While Gartner placed Acquia in its 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management report for a fifth consecutive year, Forrester Wave gave it the top marks for its WCM strategy.

The company’s leadership was also recognized as the company’s CEO Michael Sullivan was named in Comparably’s top 50 Best CEOs in 2018. His enterprising presence has helped the company increase its R&D capacity by 90% and has helped the company bring hundreds of global brands aboard as new customers in a short amount of time. Michael Sullivan rubbed shoulders with the likes of Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai and Reed Hastings with this recognition.

Leading from the Front

Michael Sullivan, CEO

Mr. Sullivan came to Acquia in 2017.  Before Acquia he served at Micro Focus. He played an important role in the merger between Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s software business. Post-merger the combined company was the world’s seventh largest pure-play software company. It was also the largest UK technology firm listed on the London SE. He was responsible for information management and governance product portfolio both at HP and Micro Focus. Prior to HP, he was at Autonomy where he led the Protect business unit.

He was a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2000 and 2004. He holds a degree in computer information systems from the Bentley University.

Helping South Dakota State University (SDSU)

South Dakota State University (SDSU) is one of the premier institutions in the country. It is the largest higher-education institution in South Dakota and hosts students from every state of the country and also students from 83 foreign countries.

The content editors across the campus of SDSU were faced with a challenge of providing updated information to current and potential students, staff, parents, and even the alumni. But the outdated CMS system was weighing them down. Additionally, the marketing team also required constant assistance from the IT department to effectively update the CMS system. This put particular stress on the university’s outreach efforts.

The university needed to move away from the university’s existing CMS platform. The team was determined to find a solution that would be easy to use. Eventually, they decided on going with Drupal. Acquia became the natural choice, considering their expertise with Drupal.

SDSU chose Acquia Cloud which helped them harness the power of Drupal and enabled them to manage many digital experiences through a single platform. Acquia Cloud also allowed the team to increase their presence online without having to worry about additional staffing. SDSU also chose to take the help of Acquia Lift to provide personalized digital experiences to students.

With Acquia on board, SDSU has seen its mobile traffic increase from 19% to 39.3%. The Bounce rate has seen a drop from 46% in 2015/16 to 35% in 2018/2019.

“With our platform, you are unbounded by the technical and design limitations of legacy content management systems.”

“Empower your teams to do what they do best, which is build the digital experiences people really want and need.”

“Acquia is the open source digital experience company that empowers the world’s most ambitious brands to embrace innovation and create customer moments that matter.”