Tom Wentworth Returns to Acquia as New SVP of Product Marketing

By Gabriella Pirrone

April 3, 2019

Acquia, Acquia Engage, customer experience, CX, Digital Experience, Drupal, Growth, Growth Strategy, open source, WCM

2019 is off to a strong start for Acquia. With their mention in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms 2019, and a record year of growth in 2018 culminating in more than $200M in revenue, there’s no doubt that Acquia is set for a successful year ahead.

Most recently, Acquia has welcomed back Tom Wentworth as their new SVP of Product Marketing after working at the open source digital experience company for three years and even served as Acquia’s CMO during that time as well. Tom brings a wealth of marketing technology and web development to Acquia and has returned to the company amid its rapid growth into the digital experience space. Formerly, Tom served as CMO for three and a half years at RapidMiner, a data science platform company.

I’m sure many of you, like myself, are eager to hear why Tom decided to return to Acquia after so many years, and I was fortunate enough to connect with him to find out more. Not only that, but we also discussed the essential elements he intends to bring to his new role, as well as Acquia’s vision of success for 2019. Follow along for my exclusive interview below!

The Journey Back to Acquia

To start with, Tom mentioned that his journey back to Acquia felt like a homecoming to both the company he loved working for combined with a passion for web development for more than two decades. I asked Tom what were the other reasons why he decided to return to Acquia as their new SVP of Product Marketing?

“I’m excited to once again be working with Dries Buytaert. I think Dries is on a very short list of tech founders who have truly changed the world in a positive way. Since I left in 2015, Dries, Lynne Capozzi, and the rest of the Acquia executive team have done a fantastic job turning Acquia into a $200-plus million digital experience power-house. The company is now bigger, bolder, and better than ever.

I think that being an open source company built on an open digital experience platform puts Acquia in a unique position to help ambitious companies win with experience.”

Tom studied computer science at the University of Illinois back in the early ’90s which sparked his passion and experience in marketing technology and web development. This background brought up my next question for Tom; I wanted to know some other key elements he will be bringing to Acquia and what he is most excited about with his new role, and why?

“I’m really excited about marketing Acquia to developers. I think developers are the unsung heroes behind every great digital experience, and I want to make sure that developers working on ambitious projects choose to build on the Acquia Experience Platform. I’m a huge fan of what companies like Twilio and Atlassian have done, and how easy they make it for developers to get started on their platforms.

We’ll be unveiling a new suite of developer tools in just a couple of weeks at DrupalCon Seattle, and there’s much more to come in 2019.”

Acquia Achieves AWS Status

Earlier last month, Acquia announced that it had achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) Digital Customer Experience Competency status for Content Management, enabling it to deliver further value to customers through AWS standardized security, compliance, and scale configurations. Acquia was awarded the status for proving customer success as well as demonstrating technical proficiency in “simplifying and accelerating the creation of content-driven applications that stand up to the demands of digital audiences. APN Partners must possess deep AWS expertise and deliver solutions seamlessly on AWS.”
 
Amazon and AWS strongly support open source as a way to speed the rate of innovation, and as more companies embrace open source and have gone public, there’s a growing trend to move away from licenses like the General Public License (GPL). “AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology APN Partners with deep industry experience and expertise,” mentions Acquia in their press release.
 
I wanted to hear from Tom why so many companies are dropping the GPL, and what makes Acquia so pure in the open source space?
 
“As AWS continues to add support for more open source projects, they often compete directly with the vendors behind the projects; most notably commercial successes like MongoDB, Elastic, Redis, and Confluent. To fight back, some open source companies are creating new, “openish” licenses like the Server Side Public License (SSPL) that make it difficult for Amazon to deploy “their” open source project on AWS.
 
Drupal uses the highly permissive GNU General Public License (v2) which ensures that no vendor can impose limits on the project. Companies have the freedom to run their Drupal sites wherever they’d like, meaning Acquia has to continue to build the best platform for Drupal for us to continue to succeed.”

Ending Notes

There’s a question I’m always excited to ask when I have these types of opportunities. As we look toward 2019, the amount of technology and innovation that is increasingly gaining momentum is instrumental in the industry. I asked Tom what Acquia’s overall vision for success is this year?
 
“Acquia had a fantastic 2018, and 2019 is going to be bigger in each way. I honestly could not be more excited about our product roadmap. I’ve been involved with building websites since the mid-’90s, so I have some perspective on how the tools and platforms have evolved over the years. What we’re working on will fundamentally change how companies view digital experience platforms. I can’t wait to share more, later in the year.”
 
Make sure to mark your calendars for Acquia Engage Europe taking place June 17–18, 2019 in London, England, and Acquia Engage in New Orleans, November 11–13, 2019!

Gabriella Pirrone

Gabriella is the Digital Marketing Assistant for CMSC Media. She brings a wealth of knowledge from not only a CMS perspective but also content, SEO and eCommerce. She enjoys everything social media and staying ontop of the latest trends in the digital marketing world.