IPO-Bound Small Finance Bank Reduces Digital Infrastructure Costs by 58% and Exits Adobe AEM 6.5 in 14 Weeks with Publive

The bank's legacy stack combined Adobe AEM 6.5 licence overhead, a Big 4 managed services contract, and a third-party infrastructure and DevOps layer. The AEM 6.5 end-of-life announcement in August 2026 turned a slow-burning cost problem into a time-boxed decision.

Key pain points with the AEM 6.5 + Big 4 managed setup

Escalating agency and licence costs

• Big 4 consulting retainer at ₹2.8 Cr annually, with a 15% year-on-year escalation clause.
• Adobe AEM 6.5 licence costs running at ₹1.9 Cr per annum, due to grow further under AEM Cloud.
• Managed services and infrastructure layer adding another ₹3.8 Cr through a third vendor.

Vendor lock-in and zero internal ownership

• Zero in-house AEM expertise, creating permanent dependency on the managed partner.
• Every content or template change required a Big 4 change request, billed separately.
• Platform documentation held by the vendor, not the bank, limiting exit optionality.

The AEM 6.5 end-of-life cliff

• Adobe's August 2026 EOL forced a decision between an ₹12 to 18 Cr AEM Cloud migration or a platform alternative.
• Continuing on AEM 6.5 post-EOL flagged as an audit exposure under RBI's IT Risk and Cyber Security Framework.
• With the DRHP window active, an unresolved AEM 6.5 exposure was a material disclosure risk.

Three vendors, three contracts, three escalations

• Separate commercial relationships with Big 4 partner, Adobe, and managed services vendor.
• No single accountability for uptime, publishing velocity, or cost control.
• Budget discussions happened three times a year across three account teams.

Net effect: the bank was carrying ₹8.5 Cr of annual digital infrastructure spend across three vendors, with no direct control, rising costs, and a fixed-date regulatory cliff approaching.

By migrating from AEM 6.5 + Big 4 managed to Publive, the bank consolidated three vendor relationships into one, eliminated the recurring Big 4 retainer entirely, and exited the Adobe licence regime ahead of the August 2026 cliff.

What changed with Publive

1. Vendor consolidation

• Three separate commercial relationships (Big 4 + Adobe + managed services) collapsed into a single Publive contract.
• One SLA covering platform, uptime, support, and BFSI-specific features, with no hidden change-request costs.

2. Big 4 retainer eliminated

• ₹2.8 Cr annual retainer eliminated on day one of Publive go-live.
• Platform ownership fully transferred in-house, with Publive as the SaaS vendor, not a managed partner.

3. Adobe licence exit ahead of AEM 6.5 EOL

• AEM 6.5 licence cost of ₹1.9 Cr per annum eliminated, 8+ months ahead of August 2026.
• Avoided the ₹12 to 18 Cr AEM Cloud migration project entirely.

4. Managed services layer absorbed

• Third-party infrastructure and DevOps overhead of ₹3.8 Cr consolidated into the Publive contract.
• 99.995% uptime SLA contracted directly, with managed WAF and DDoS protection included.

5. Flat-rate, no-escalation contract

• No licence escalation clauses, no version-upgrade charges, no future Adobe-style forced migrations.
• Predictable three-year TCO for CFO and board planning purposes.

6. 14-week migration, on budget

• 280+ customer-facing pages and 6,200+ regulatory PDFs migrated with full URL, metadata, and schema integrity.
• Zero-downtime cutover with parallel-run period, avoiding any programme overrun costs.

7. Break-even inside year two

• Migration investment recovered through operational savings in 1.8 years.
• Remaining term of the contract runs at a fraction of the previous annual spend.

The outcome: the bank moved from a permanently escalating, three-vendor cost structure to a single-vendor, flat-rate model with ₹4.9 Cr of recurring annual savings and a hardened exit posture ahead of the AEM 6.5 EOL.