Here's a brief update on Communique 5's delivery: we are in excellent shape and the quality gated approach is paying of for our customers.

As it was laid out in a previous post there are two iterations we need to go through before we release CQ5: the tech preview phase and the beta program. I am very happy to report that the tech preview has been successfully completed. By now, the beta program has started. I'm excited to see the shine in the developers eyes when they are allowed to take this baby into their hands.

The customer who completed the tech preview with us is now in production with CQ5. There are about 80 editors producing content already. This number is expected to increase into several hundred very soon. This is a fantastic success, but there are also other ("softer") factors that we have experienced during the tech preview project. Both, the editors as well as the developers perceive working with CQ5 to be very pleasant and exciting compared to the competing products they knew. I am extremely happy about this feedback as it goes to show that our efforts on user experience and software architecture were well invested.

There is also another interesting by-product of the beta program: by the time the program is finished most of our service and support team will have real-life experience with CQ5 from real-life customers in production. So from day one of the product launch there will be experienced service and support resources available from Day.