Articles - Page 163

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

<p>Today, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/out/bigcommerce">Bigcommerce</a> announced the launch of Bigcommerce Next, a release that supplements the popular platform with over 20 new features.</p><p>For the 50,000 merchants currently using the Bigcommerce platform, Bigcommerce Next brings about brand new responsive themes, store management apps for iOS and Android, Stripe payments integration, and much more.</p><p>Before I delve into exactly what's new, take a look at the Bigcommerce Next introduction video below.</p><h2>Beauty, Brawn &amp; Brains</h2><p>The beauty of Bigcommerce Next comes thanks to the brand new theme store with dozens of store designs that are not only visually stunning but are also responsive and highly optimized for conversion.</p><p>Its brawn is down to the improved advanced Bigcommerce features, including the API and platform with the introduction of Single Click Apps™, one-click payment setup, and a built-in blog. Finally, the brains come via access to Bigcommerce's industry-leading knowledge with on-demand training, a step-by-step marketing wizard, and more.</p><p>Regarding the release of Bigcommerce Next,  Eddie Machaalani, co-founder and co-CEO of Bigcommerce, had this to say:</p><blockquote><p>“With Bigcommerce Next we've placed a huge focus on two things – expanding the capabilities of our platform with Single Click Apps and increasing conversion rates for our merchants with blogging and dozens of new store designs that have been extensively optimized for conversion.”</p></blockquote><h2>Mobile Store Management, Blogging &amp; More</h2><p>Below is a listed roundup of what Bigcommerce users can expect from Bigcommerce Next:</p><ul><li>Single Click Apps, our integrated app store that allows merchants to add capabilities to their store via third party apps in a single click</li><li>A new theme store with dozens of store designs that are not only visually stunning but are also responsive and highly optimized for conversion</li><li>A new blogging engine which makes it easy for merchants to publish a blog that's automatically optimized for search engines like Google and Bing</li><li>Mobile store management apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android smartphones and tablets which lets merchants get order notifications, update products, and see real-time store performance metrics on the go</li><li>One-click integration with Stripe for payments – enables merchants to accept payments in seconds vs the traditional method of 2-4 week delays with payment gateways and banks</li><li>Google Trusted stores integration to increase the conversion rate for shoppers that arrive via any of the Google properties, including paid search and Google Shopping</li><li>A step-by-step marketing wizard called Traffic Engine which teaches merchants how to drive demand to their stores using Google, blogs, social media, email marketing, and more</li><li>A revamped checkout experience that has been designed to optimize conversion at each step of the process, all the way from the cart to the order confirmation screen</li><li><a target="_blank" href="https://support.bigcommerce.com/s/article/BigCommerce-University">Bigcommerce University</a>, a comprehensive video-based learning experience that teaches merchants how to sell more using Bigcommerce and online marketing</li></ul><p>A 15 day free trial of Bigcommerce Next is ready for anybody to try,  which can be found on the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/">official Bigcommerce website</a>.</p><p> </p>

Bigcommerce Launch Bigcommerce Next: Beauty, Brawn & Brains

mike-johnston

<p>This year, we've added a few new categories to our amazingly popular <a href="/cms-critic-awards/">Critics Choice CMS Awards</a> and one of the new categories is Best Forum Solution.</p><p>We had tons of nominations and we've sorted them out to figure out who you've chosen as the Peoples Choice Nominees for this year's awards.</p><p>Keeping in mind that the voting stage begins on September 1, 2013.. here are the nominees for Best Forum Solution.</p><h3>Vanilla Forums</h3><p>Vanilla allows you to create a customized community that rewards positive participation, automatically curates content, and lets members drive moderation. Vanilla provides hosted and open source community forum software that powers discussion forums on 666,836 sites.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://vanillaforums.org/">Visit their website.</a></p><h3>NodeBB</h3><p>NodeBB is a next-generation forum software using a groundbreaking web technology stack – Node.js, Redis, and WebSockets. We’ve designed it to be easy to set up. NodeBB will always be free and open source, allowing creative programmers and designers the freedom of building cool features and themes in a modular framework.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://nodebb.org/">Visit their website.</a></p><h3>Simple Machines Forum</h3><p>Simple Machines Forum — SMF in short — is a free, professional-grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the layout of your message board and with our unique SSI – or Server Side Includes – function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.</p><p>SMF is written in the popular language PHP and uses a MySQL database. It is designed to provide you with all the features you need from a bulletin board while having an absolute minimal impact on the resources of the server. SMF is the next generation of forum software – and best of all it is and will always remain completely free!</p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.simplemachines.org/">Visit their website.</a></p><h3>VBulletin</h3><p>vBulletin 5 Connect provides unparalleled capabilities for building community websites. The software facilitates increased content creation, more engaging content discovery and simplified site management.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.vbulletin.com/">Visit their website.</a></p><h3>Invision Power Board (IP.Board)</h3><p>Invision Power Board (abbreviated IPB, IP.Board or IP Board) is an forum software produced by Invision Power Services, Inc. It is written in PHP and primarily uses MySQL as a database management system, although support for other database engines is available.</p><p>While Invision Power Board is a commercially sold product, there is a large modding community and many of these modifications are free. In addition, many groups offer the download or design of free and paid skins.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.invisionpower.com/">Visit their website.</a></p><p>Good luck to all who are nominated and be sure to check back on the 1st of September to begin voting for your favourites!</p>

Announcing the Peoples Choice for Best Forum Solution Nominees!

<p>This is the first year we've had this category and we had tons of participation from the various ECommerce vendors on the market and those who use them. Thank you for making this nomination period such a great success. Some of the nominations were a close call but we've broken it down to the final nominees for the People's Choice award for Best ECommerce Solution for 2013.</p><p>Here they are:</p><h3>3dCart</h3><p>3dcart is a powerful online store builder and e-commerce solution that offers a staggering list of features for those looking to transact business online. If you are in the market for an exceptional platform for your store, this is a great product to consider. They offer a 15-day free trial that allows you to play around with their excellent software to see if it suits your needs. With 24/7 free premium technical support, quick setup, and no transaction fees, 3dCart is definitely a solid option to consider.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.shift4shop.com/">Learn more.</a></p><h3>AspxCommerce</h3><p>AspxCommerce offers a complete e-commerce solution that allows you to build and run your fully functional online store in minutes. You can create your storefront; manage the products through categories and subcategories, accept payments through credit cards and ship the ordered products to the customers. We have everything set up for you so that you can only focus on building your own online store.</p><p><a target="_blank" href="http://www.aspxcommerce.com/">Learn more.</a></p><h3>BigCommerce</h3><p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/">Bigcommerce</a> is an excellent online store builder that offers a plethora of features ranging from your own custom domain name to a ton of great integrations with products such as MailChimp, analytics and more. As with most, they offer a free trial as well so you can see how the product works.</p><p><a href="/products/bigcommerce">Learn more.</a></p><h3>Magento</h3><p>Magento is an open-source e-commerce web application that was launched on March 31, 2008. Magento uses several key coding practices that make the system both versatile and adaptable both as a web platform and as an e-commerce platform.</p><p><a href="/products/adobe-commerce">Learn more.</a></p><h3>Shopify</h3><p>Shopify is an excellent choice for those in search of the best online store out there. They offer a 14 day free trial on all of their plans and they offer a number of reasonable pricing plans for any size of online store.</p><p><a href="/products/shopify/">Learn more.</a></p><p>Congratulations to all who were nominated. Remember, voting starts September 1, 2013, so be prepared to vote for your favorites!</p>

Announcing the People's Choice for Best ECommerce Solution Nominees!

<p><span style="color:rgb(33,37,41)">I've always loved the concept of Ghost. It's the (relatively) new kid on the block compared to WordPress and having competition is healthy. Recently, I ran CMS Critic on Ghost for a brief period using their paid Ghost Pro option, here's my Ghost Pro review and why I moved back to WordPress.</span></p><p>For those unfamiliar with Ghost Pro, it's basically an offering from the makers of the Ghost blogging platform that is fully hosted and managed by their support teams. <a href="https://ghost.org/pricing/">Pricing</a> ranges from around $29 to $199 per month (when billed annually).</p><p>The initial appeal of trying something different led me to run this site on Ghost Pro for a period of about 4 months (January until May 1 this year) as a trial. During that time, I came across a number of positives and a number of negatives. Sadly, the negatives outweighed everything else so I ended up moving back to WordPress (which the site is now running on again as of this article).</p><h2><strong>Positives</strong></h2><ol><li>The editor is simple and easy to use and makes Gutenberg look like it was developed by monkeys (and not smart ones).</li><li>The speed at which you can navigate the dashboard, publish a post and perform tasks is significantly better than WordPress.</li><li>The fact that I didn't have to rely on <i><strong>any </strong></i>plugins for SEO unlike WordPress which pretty much makes Yoast or something similar mandatory (and you can argue with me on that if you like but you'll still be wrong as far as I'm concerned).</li></ol><h2><strong>Negatives</strong></h2><ol><li>Ghost does not have a media library therefore every time you write a post, you need to re-upload any images for it. This means that if you write quite a bit about WordPress and typically use the logo for your featured image, for example, you'll be uploading that logo every time for each post. This is just silly and poor management of images and disk space.</li><li>NO ftp or SSH access. I can somewhat understand the no SSH part but for the hundred dollar a month range, not being able to use FTP and grab files or upload files to my server simply makes me mad. I don't want to have to email (and wait for) their support every time I need to do this.</li><li>Support is slow. If you are on the middle plan ($99 monthly if you don't take an annual plan) you only get support Monday to Friday so if your site goes down (on a HOSTED AND MANAGED PLAN mind you) you will be out of luck until Monday. Someone tell me I'm crazy for thinking this is ridiculous. Furthermore, their support is just slow.Here's a scenario to help you understand:  I emailed Ghost Support on a Saturday asking for an image export so I could move back to WordPress. I received a reply at 6:30 Monday morning asking me to do a security verification (no prob, did that and replied back literally 1 minute later).  I didn't get a reply back from them again until almost noon. That's 5 hours. The export I wanted was 3 gigs and doesn't take 5 hours to prepare. Sorry but for “premium” support, that's too slow for this guy.</li><li>They can't do much of anything. This may sound like I'm just being an ass but seriously, I use push notifications and since there's no plugin for Ghost, I needed to install some javascript and then upload a service-worker.js file to the root of my website. This is the only way to get it to work properly with my push notification provider.Here's the response I received from Ghost Support:<br />“<i>Thanks for reaching out! We're not able to load files into the root directory of your site.</i>“I was then told I could add it to my theme and upload it which would then make it accessible at the root of my website, so I asked if they could do that for me. The answer was no.Hm, so what can they do for me then for $99 month?</li></ol><p> </p><p>Now let's discuss why I feel so entitled as to think that they SHOULD be able to do these things for me. It's simple. I'm with <a href="https://www.bigscoots.com/portal/?affid=1002">BigScoots</a> as my hosting provider of choice when running WordPress and I don't think there's anything I've ever asked them within reason that they've ever said no to. In fact, I'm pretty sure they've done things for me that I totally didn't even expect so why should it be a different experience with Ghost Pro. In short, it shouldn't.</p><h2><strong>Conclusion</strong></h2><p>Ghost itself is a solid blogging platform with some great features and an excellent editor but when combined with the hosted offering, Ghost Pro, there are too many shortcomings to make it something worth investing in.</p>

Ghost Pro Review

<p>If someone told you that a nonprofit website is the same as a for-profit website, you know they’d be flat-out wrong. How many regular sites try to convince their visitors to donate, volunteer to a cause, or join to become a member?</p><p>The fact is that <a href="https://digigiv.org/nonprofit-websites/">nonprofit websites</a> are fundamentally different from for-profit websites. As such, when it comes to building a successful non-profit site that can attract, convert, and retain supports, a different approach is necessary.</p><p>Enter the world of nonprofit website builders.</p><p>With regular website builders, you can’t expect the web development process to be a breeze. The typical website builder is more geared towards building a blog, hosting or running an online store, and adding attractive pictures, which are all great, but nonprofits tend to need some more specialized attention and features.</p><p>Keep in mind that even with a regular website builder that features nonprofit add-ons, taking a closer look will reveal that it will cost you more money and time to set it up. Fortunately, there are a number of website builders specifically designed for nonprofits.</p><p>With these web builders, you can express your creativity and build a professional nonprofit website that provides an exceptional experience to all of your visitors. Ultimately, the best website builders provide you with everything that your nonprofit website needs to reach a much wider audience and receive more donations and memberships. Whether you’re looking to recruit volunteers, raise awareness, or even fundraise for your non-profit, web builders for nonprofits make the process easy and enjoyable.</p><p>If you’re in the market for a nonprofit web builder, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’re going to take a closer look at Digigiv – a drag-and-drop website builder.</p><h3><strong>Digigiv Overview</strong></h3><p><a href="https://digigiv.org/">Digigiv</a> is a market leader when it comes to helping nonprofit organizations and churches to increase their donations and funding. While they are not a donor management solution, they do have a whole portfolio or tools that places them right in the donor-focused category. They provide organizations with a comprehensive software solution to help them build user-friendly software and experience and also provide education, training, and resources to help skyrocket funding.</p><p>At first glance, we could tell that Digigiv comes with a tone of different features, including digital marketing tools, payment features, privacy tools, etc. With their website builder, Digigiv promises to let you create a comprehensive nonprofit website easily, all by yourself, regardless of your level of skills in coding and design.</p><p>Based on our initial look, it seems that users have a lot to gain with the tool. And we are totally confident it's the best solution available. It comes with all compelling features that you can expect from this kind of software solution and many ways to help keep your donor or members engaged with your content.</p><h3><strong>Who Digigiv is For?</strong></h3><p>Digigiv is best suited for nonprofits looking to build or increase their web presence. The web builder also serves as a hub for creating web content, blogs, and donation forms and will. It also takes care of the digital materials that you need to promote your cause.</p><p>We can clearly see it as being useful for nonprofits who want to keep a regular blog and those who intend to use social media to promote their campaigns and events. With that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that Digigiv is not only web solutions but also a complete donor management solution.  There are also a number of reporting tools included in the package, users won’t be able to find detailed information about their constituents, apart from perhaps the browser they are using.</p><h3><strong>Benefits and Features</strong></h3><p>The main role of Digigiv is to automate your web design process for your nonprofit and save you money and time so that you can spend it on growing your nonprofit and providing your supporters more value. Here is what you get with Digigiv web editor:</p><h3><strong>Drag-and-Drop Editor</strong></h3><p>Digigiv drag &amp; drop editor is specifically built for people with little or no technical know-how, but still, want to build a professional nonprofit website that has a superior user experience. With their editor, you can keep your website up to date and make it look great in just a few clicks.</p><p>The editor lets you add text, images, video, forms, and social media feeds, by ideally dragging and dropping each element as necessary. Their in-house technology will do its magic behind the scenes to automatically align the forms, content, and images so that everything will look crisp be the time you’re through. The editor also resizes images to ensure better optimization, so that your site is not crippled by slow load times.</p><h3><strong>In-depth Customizations</strong></h3><p>All the website designs provided in the app are 100% customizable. As such, you can customize your designs with little effort to meet your design and organization requirements, usually in a matter of minutes. You can also update the fonts, titles, etc. at the click of a button. The app also lets you customize your videos and images with no coding or design skills.</p><h3><strong>Fully Responsive Designs</strong></h3><p>Every website you design using the Digigiv platform is 100% responsive, meaning that they will look amazing regardless of the device. Keep in mind that in today’s marketplace, mobile-friendly web design is a requirement, not a luxury. Over 60% of web traffic today comes from a mobile device, and the number is only set to increase in the coming year. Digigiv is aware of this and goes out of their way to ensure their clients build a mobile-friendly website by default.</p><h3><strong>SEO Ready sites</strong></h3><p>Along with mobile-friendliness, websites created with the Digigiv software integrate the latest SEO best practices. As such, your new website will be ready to rank high in the search engines by default. You can also use their built-in search engine optimization panel in the editor to customize your title tags, ALT tags, page titles, and so much more.</p><h3><strong>No Need for Server Configuration</strong></h3><p>To make the design process as easy as possible for the new users, Digigiv manages all things related to the server side. This means that even the person with the least coding skills can build their site and have it running in no time. You don’t have to worry about the common backend problems and frustrations that newbie designers often face, or have to spend hours on support calls trying to get things up and running.</p><h3><strong>Free Templates</strong></h3><p>It’s generally rather intuitive to get started with Digigiv, and once you get the hang of it, you’ll find yourself making use of even more features, modules, elements, and widgets within their editor that actually make the customization process a breeze.</p><p>And even if you prefer to do minimal work, you’ll be happy to know that they also provide awesome ready-made nonprofit website templates &amp; design, and all you have to do is pick your favorite template and just customize it to your liking… or they'll do it for you. These templates are designed for churches, community groups, international nonprofits, associations, and environmental organizations.</p><p>From there, you can customize the logo, color scheme, typeface, along with other identifiers in order to make the design your own. And as you drag and drop modules, widgets, and elements onto the page to achieve your desired functionality, you’ll be able to see the changes you’ve made in real time. With this, you don’t have to make page updates blindly on the back end before you see how they appear in real life.</p><h3><strong>Premium Functionality</strong></h3><p>Digigiv really stands out from the crowd in that they strike a good balance between ease of use and premium functionality. Considering that your nonprofit website has a lot of things to do including sharing events, processing donations, sharing your vision and mission, etc. Digigiv lets you build a site that checks all of your boxes without sacrificing on user-friendliness.</p><p>With all these features and benefits, Digigiv hs made sure that you don’t have to hire a web developer or a web designer to manage the site for you. Just about anyone can build and customize a Digigiv website, with no specialized training required.</p><p>But how much do you pay?</p><h3><strong>Digigiv Pricing</strong></h3><p>While Digigiv indeed isn’t free, their $57 package if quite affordable for an up-and-coming nonprofit. And as your organization grows (or if it’s within your budget), you have the option of paying their $100 per page for content migration, formation, &amp; optimization if you went the to handle the heavy lifting for you.</p><h3><strong>Final Verdict</strong></h3><p>From the moment we first visited Digigiv’s site, we liked what we saw. And while there are quite few customer reviews about the platform on the web, we think that what their offer is quite compelling and competitive.</p><p>The monthly pricing is also relatively affordable, and we liked the fact that they give you the option of paying a one-off fee. Additionally, the flexibility of the $100 per page for content migration is fantastic for organizations of any size, with any budget.</p><p>This price gives you access you an easy-to-use, well-designed web builder, which can help any nonprofit come up with a professional looking website in very little time. Nonetheless, although we do like what they bring to the table, we can’t recommend it as a donor management system.</p><p>However, if you’re looking for some help building your nonprofit website, then Digigiv is undoubtedly worth the money. The incredible support, easy to use tools, and feature-rich services are impressive.</p>

Digigiv Review

<p>Recently, Concrete5 5.6.0 was released and it brings some new features to the popular open source CMS. Concrete5 is often seen as a solid alternative to the traditional big three (Joomla, Drupal, WordPress) and this new release is packed full of features to make it extra attractive to both developers and users alike.</p><p>First off, comes a new completely rebuilt advanced permissions system that brings the following changes:</p><ul><li>More granular permission control that maps directly to common concrete5 tasks.</li><li>Ability to control which users or groups CAN’T do something, as opposed to only allow those who CAN do something.</li><li>Ability to grant a permission to only those users in a particular combination of groups.</li><li>Ability to control which users and groups can add which types of block site-wide and in simple permissions mode.</li><li>Restrict permissions to various roles, including “uploader of the file”, “page owner”, etc…</li><li>Shortcut for enabling guest view access on blocks.</li><li>Group Sets can group groups together for organizational purposes, permissions.</li><li>Fine-grained, granular controls on content types, permission types.</li><li>New user permissions to control who can edit which users, assign which groups, etc…</li></ul><p>Check out the video below for a run through of the new permissions system:</p><figure class="media"><div data-oembed-url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7Z3x2RDss"><div style="position:relative;padding-bottom:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:56.2493%"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Ac7Z3x2RDss" style="position:absolute;width:100%;height:100%;top:0;left:0" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe></div></div></figure><p>Also included in this release are improved mobile support, a new extendable workflow system, performance improvements and more. For a full list of changes, check out the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/background/version_history/5-6-0-release-notes/">Concrete5 5.6.0 release notes</a>.</p><p>Website: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.concrete5.org/">http://www.concrete5.org</a></p><p> </p>

New Concrete5 Release Brings Tons of New Features

<p> </p><p>All of us would love to create the perfect product that never needs support. Realistically even extremely user friendly products generate some questions and do “gasp” break at times! Providing great support can make a good product even better. MindTouch is upping their already remarkable support game by adding integration with SalesForce.</p><p>MindTouch, the company dedicated to creating the world’s best self-service help experiences, announces that its social help system now integrates with SalesForce.com Help Desk and support ticketing to dramatically improve support agents’ efficiency and customers’ help experiences.</p><p>The MindTouch social help platform is revolutionizing the user manual and SaaS customer experiences through a web-based environment that includes a knowledge base, help center, ticketing integration, and help button. Agents using CRM and web-based support ticketing systems have instant access to MindTouch powered help articles and knowledge base assets, thereby speeding time to resolution for customer issues. For support agents using SalesForce.com, MindTouch enables them to quickly pinpoint customers the most relevant content and to easily publish new content to the MindTouch knowledge base, as well as identify gaps in product documentation assets–all without ever leaving the SalesForce interface.</p><blockquote><p>“Salesforce.com views customers as database fields, but exceptional customer experiences are not delivered by a handful of database fields. This is precisely why many of our customers have asked MindTouch to improve Salesforce.com by integrating our social help center,” said Aaron Fulkerson, founder and CEO of MindTouch. “Our customers are upgrading their customer experience and support tenfold by adding MindTouch. Quality customer experiences aren’t just about responding to support requests, it’s about delivering an experience that turns users into product experts and customer advocates.”</p></blockquote><ul><li><strong>Faster support resolution (lowered support cost):</strong> Support agents provide faster resolution with the help of recommended articles and real-time search delivered by MindTouch adaptive search, a powerful search engine that indexes articles, comments and even the contents of file attachments to suggest the best content for any question.</li><li><strong>Happier customers:</strong> 65% of software users prefer self-serve help (2011 TNS research). Users do not want to wait for a support response or be forced to sift through forums. MindTouch enables users to self-serve effectively.</li><li><strong>Create experts and advocates:</strong> Context-rich help delivered just-in-time maximizes user learning and satisfaction, rapidly creating experts to advocate products and brands.</li></ul><p>Find out more at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.MindTouch.com">www.MindTouch.com</a></p><p> </p>

MindTouch - May the 'SalesForce' Be With You

<p> </p><p>In a move that will hopefully lead to more and more iPad apps from CMS vendors, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.laserfiche.com">Laserfiche</a> has announced the release of Laserfiche Mobile for iPad.</p><p>Here is a video showcasing some of the app's features:</p><p>As part of the Laserfiche suite, Laserfiche Mobile for iPad:</p><ul><li>Provides secure, anywhere access to documents, metadata and audio-visual files stored in the Laserfiche repository.</li><li>Enables users to create and upload new electronic documents.</li><li>Tracks and audits all mobile activity occurring in Laserfiche.</li><li>Prevents bottlenecks in business processes by giving mobile employees the ability to participate in workflows.</li><li>Enables people to configure custom views of the Laserfiche repository on their iPads.</li></ul><p>Laserfiche Mobile for iPad, which includes a built-in demonstration, is available for free download from the Apple App Store. Laserfiche Mobile for iPad operates with Laserfiche Web Access as a part of Laserfiche Avante and Laserfiche Rio systems. To accept connections from Laserfiche Mobile for iPad, Laserfiche users can download the free add-on, Laserfiche Mobile for iPad Add-On, from the Laserfiche Support Site.</p><p> </p>

Laserfiche heads to the App Store with Laserfiche Mobile for iPad

CMS Summit 26

Find out at CMS Summit 26, May 12 - 13 in Frankfurt, Germany

What's ahead for CMS in the agentic era?

#ffffff

<p>The <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/groups/cms-experts" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Boye &amp; Company CMS Experts Group</a> always provides lively debate and thought-provoking presentations. At the organization’s annual <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff23/program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CMS Kickoff</a> on January 17-18 in St. Petersburg, Florida, the event went to script.</p>
<p>One of the lines of thought particularly intriguing to me was put forth by <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-kickoff-2023-draws-global-attendees-focuses-on-the-future-of-content-and-composable/" rel="noopener">Optimizely's Deane Barker</a> in his opening presentation. He talked about the creation of content – <em>where content begins – </em>and the idea that the “first 85% of content exists outside of a CMS.”</p>
<p>I had never considered this but had learned from my own experiences – and nightmares – why this is the case. </p>
<h2>So many CMSes, so little time</h2>
<p>I have had the opportunity in my varied roles as a journalist, consultant, project manager, search engine optimizer, and content producer to interact with more than 15 different content management systems. Whether proprietary, mass appeal, enterprise license-based, low-code, no-code, or HTML-code, they all essentially do the same thing. An interface exists to push content to the web, and this interface is more user-friendly, organized, and manageable than doing so in code. A CMS enables many more users within an organization to publish to the web and (should) limit the old bottleneck that was created by content creators (often many) sending their written content “over the wall” to developers (often few) to bring those “artifacts” to life digitally. </p>
<p>While publishing to the web might have become an action to be handled by many more hands, the fact that content creation itself doesn’t happen in a CMS – Barker’s “85%” comment – is still the general law of cyberspace.  A CMS – even when it features a WYSIWYG or visual editor – has never felt like a great place to begin the content journey. For me, it has never provided a better toolset than word processing software, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, or notes applications, like Evernote, Apple’s Notes, or Microsoft OneNote. In addition, I am sure we have all experienced the nightmare of trying to develop content in a CMS, and then some reboot or login script automatically triggers and wipes away your potential masterpiece. </p>
<p>Barker noted that people are hesitant to create content within a CMS because of an anxiety of potentially being judged while a kernel of an idea is gestating. “Psychological Safety” is important for healthy content development. Barker himself negotiates “keyboard time” into his agreements with his employer, <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/?utm_source=linkedin&amp;utm_medium=referral" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimizely</a>. This is an acknowledgment that to create, you often need to “go dark” for at least a bit and be trusted to create. It also got me thinking that while content editing, queueing, moderation, and publishing can feel like a virtual supply chain, content creation feels more like product development or innovation. </p>
<h2>Trust the process... whatever that may be</h2>
<p>Some enterprise organizations, like Boye &amp; Company event presenter <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-spenceley-7058a312/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Spenceley</a>’s team at <a href="https://www.jnj.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Johnson &amp; Johnson</a>, <em>can</em> build a high-performing content team that aligns impeccable customer-centric content creation into a kind of content conveyer belt, but most still need inspiration from the mind of a creator to kick things into gear. Could this – <em>should this – </em>be accounted for in the CMS? Is it good for content operations, from conception to commercialization, to be commoditized?  Should we still leave and trust some parts of the process to serendipity?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/carriehane/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Carrie Hane</a>, principal evangelist at <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sanity-raises-39-million-focuses-growth-on-content-as-data-for-transformative-digital-experiences/">Sanity.io</a>, talked at the Boye &amp; Company CMS Kickoff about how content technology impacts business. Her own research and vantage of the market note that “CMS users still think their CMS <em>sucks</em>, and that’s just how it is,” and that “most organizations don’t have a content strategy.” She also noted that composable technologies are being embraced by early-adopting IT teams and are better for content management. </p>
<p>This made me further think about the best use cases and philosophical aspirations of a content management system. </p>
<p>How do we square all these competing elements?</p>
<ul>
<li>CMS users who don’t like the system, but only use it for 15% of the content process.</li>
<li>IT teams procure new systems on behalf of content managers, who will primarily use them.</li>
<li>The right platform for content inspiration simultaneously enables quick and efficient processes for content perspiration.</li>
</ul>
<p>Most importantly, is there a specific problem in all this that is hankering to be solved?</p>
<h2>A new (old) content sheriff in town?</h2>
<p>In times of yore – let’s say the late 2000s – when selling the virtues of the then-nascent CMS to a prospective customer, we would often say that the technology allows you to manage and publish content on the web as simply as you can within Microsoft Word. Back then, it felt like the CMS would make Microsoft Word redundant, or worse, anachronistic!</p>
<p>This is a funny notion now in 2023. Microsoft has made quite a resurgence, up to its current perch as the third-largest company in the world by market capitalization. And just this past Monday (January 23), it announced <a href="https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/01/23/microsoftandopenaiextendpartnership/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT</a>, via its maker OpenAI. Many are frenziedly anointing ChatGPT as the holy grail of content creation and production. It will undoubtedly become tightly integrated with Microsoft’s products.</p>
<p>Is it possible in the future that a CMS could just become a way to deliver generative AI-enhanced, Microsoft Word content directly to the web for publishing? What if Microsoft can swoop in and own Barker’s “85% of content” happening outside of the CMS and make a moot point of whether CMS users think their CMS sucks or not (per Hanes’ presentation)?</p>
<p>What happens in the CMS might not stay in the CMS much longer. It's a gamble to be sure, but the bets are already on the table that AI will change everything. We'll have to wait and see. </p>
<h2>About the Author</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mcqueeny-9732493/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Matthew McQueeny</a> is part of the leadership team at <a href="https://konabos.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Konabos</a>, a global agency that specializes in digital experience platform implementation. Matt's role as the relationships and community lead is powered by over 15 years of digital marketing and web project management experience. He has worked with clients ranging from Fortune 500 to startups across a wide range of industries including healthcare, publishing, technology, telecommunications, education, retail, entertainment, manufacturing, and transportation. </p>
<p>Matt loves the intersection of technology, marketing, and communications. Throughout his career, he has worked with many licensed and open-source content management systems, in editorial, social media strategy and advertising, search engine marketing, lead generation, analytics, and podcasting. You can follow Matt on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-mcqueeny-9732493/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mattmcqueeny" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a>. </p>


What Happens in the CMS, Stays in the CMS?

mattmcqueeny

Las Vegas sign with text that reads "Welcome to your Fabulous CMS" instead of Las Vegas. Background of Las Vegas city skyline at night.

<p>For better or worse, <a href="https://www.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google</a> has a long history of "optimizing" things. And not just on the tech side of the fence.</p>
<p>Consider how <a href="https://abc.xyz/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alphabet</a> – the publicly traded parent of the search giant – <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/18/investing/google-alphabet-stock-split/index.html#:~:text=But%20the%20split%20has%20two,prestigious%20Dow%20Jones%20Industrial%20Average." target="_blank" rel="noopener">split its stock in 2022</a> to improve its market capitalization. The company has a market cap of over $1 trillion and is still considered one of the most valuable on the planet. But the move made it even more attractive to main street investors while enhancing its position on the exchanges. </p>
<p>On the negative side, the company recently "optimized" its workforce, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/google-parent-lay-off-12000-workers-memo-2023-01-20/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cutting 12,000 jobs</a> after what it called a "pandemic hiring spree." It plans to refocus its budget on AI initiatives, no doubt in response to the recent explosion of <a href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-and-openai-working-on-chatgpt-powered-bing-in-challenge-to-google" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ChatGPT and the announcement from Microsoft</a> that it will weave the bot's intelligence into its <a href="https://www.impression.co.uk/blog/bing-differ-google/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bing</a> platform. For reference, Bing represents less than 10% of the search market (Google owns almost all the rest). </p>
<p>When it comes to its products, Google is also wrestling with a bevy of optimization challenges, most notably the sunsetting of its eponymous <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528?hl=en#:~:text=On%20July%201%2C%202023%2C%20standard,Google%20Analytics%204%20going%20forward." target="_blank" rel="noopener">Universal Analytics (UA)</a> as of July 1, 2023. Companies have been scrambling to get its replacement, <a href="https://www.solodev.com/blog/digital-marketing/how-to-make-the-leap-from-universal-analytics-to-google-analytics-4.stml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Analytics 4 (GA4)</a>, up and running. Despite its touted new features and "optimizations," many digital marketing and SEO professionals have confronted significant challenges with the new platform. </p>
<p>As if that wasn't enough, Google is now retiring two more of its products: <a href="https://optimize.google.com/optimize/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Optimize</a> and <a href="https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/optimize-360/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimize 360</a>. The company recently announced that beginning September 30, 2023, users will no longer have access to either product and that it was “investing in A/B testing in Google Analytics 4."</p>
<p>How will these changes impact users? It's hard to say. But in a world where Google's grip over search and analytics is being threatened by fragmentation and competition – all ignited by advanced AI – there may be more "optimizing" ahead for everyone. </p>
<h2><strong>The dawn of a new </strong><strong>A/B testing and personalization era</strong></h2>
<p>While Google Optimize and Optimize 360 have a strong and proven legacy, Google Analytics has long been the data source of truth for millions of websites. The upgrade was highly anticipated by marketing and SEO professionals, but there have been swelling questions about how the rollout would affect the broader ecosystem – including the interplay with the Optimize products.</p>
<p>As noted, the shift to GA4 has been fraught with controversy, particularly around the limitations of migrating historical data. To be fair, Google has been strongly encouraging customers to make the switch to GA4 as soon as possible, so they have ample time to build historical data in the new platform. But don't panic: your legacy data can be exported as CSVs, and UA will still be in effect until July 1, 2024.</p>
<p>Google said its rationale for sunsetting Optimize, a five-year-old product, was rooted in "developing something better" for customers. According to the company, many users were requesting features and services not currently available for experimentation and testing. Google said it wanted to invest in more robust and effective solutions to meet the evolving need – and no doubt, to compete with more expansive customer analytics platforms like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/amplitude-announces-new-testing-and-analytics-tools-for-making-smarter-product-decisions-at-scale/">Amplitude</a>. </p>
<p>Optimize users are encouraged to download their historical data before September 30. For more information on how to access that data or how this will affect a current Optimize and Optimize 360 contract, visit <a href="https://support.google.com/optimize/answer/12979939#:~:text=Google%20Optimize%20and%20Optimize%20360,on%20that%20date%20will%20end" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Support</a>.</p>
<h2><strong>“The Times They Are a-Changin’”</strong></h2>
<p>What <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_They_Are_a-Changin%27_(song)" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bob Dylan</a> so eloquently penned in 1964 still holds true. <em>The times are a-changin'.  </em>And like the musical poet of yesteryear, Google has withstood the test of time in our modern digital era and become a cultural icon. (Worth noting: a search for "Bob Dylan" returns over 122,000,000 results).</p>
<p>At the same time, Google is facing the fierce headwinds of change as an aging brand and ecosystem, one that has achieved a monolithic status in the tech stack. New and innovative products are forcing the company to evolve, and that's good. But change – as Dylan would agree – is like a hard rain falling. </p>
<p>As Google executes its sunsetting and upgrading, we're already getting a glimpse of how analytics will look in the future. The field of data science is exploding, and analytics have become more important than ever. At the same time, measuring across different platforms and applications has become exceedingly more difficult.</p>
<p>Google Optimize and Optimize 360 will be remembered as transformative tools in the A/B testing and experimentation narrative. While we're not expecting any love songs to be penned for their eulogy, they have impacted how marketers think about testing and its scalability. Google has indicated its lofty ambitions to incorporate more of these personalization functions into GA4, but when?</p>
<p>The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind. </p>
<h2><strong>So…what now?</strong></h2>
<p><em>Get GA4 up and running!</em> You have time to download and export your legacy Optimize and UA resources, but GA4 really needs historical data to thrive – so set it up ASAP. Just a reminder: Google has remained firm on not making any extensions for the programs they are retiring. That could change, but it's best to assume the worst. </p>
<p>It's likely that GA4 will introduce its new A/B testing features in 2023. But if you don’t like the idea of “wait and see,” there are also other platforms to explore:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/?s=optimizely">Optimizely</a> is choosing to celebrate the news by offering Google Optimize customers a <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/google/optimize/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">special deal</a> for keeping their experimentations running smoothly.</p>
<p><a href="https://business.adobe.com/products/target/adobe-target.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adobe Target</a> is another leading product that has similar functionality to Google Optimize, but with more features. It predictably integrates with Adobe Analytics, rather than Google Analytics.</p>
<p><a href="https://vwo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Visual Website Optimizer</a>, <a href="https://www.abtasty.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AB Tasty</a> and <a href="https://www.dynamicyield.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dynamic Yield</a> are also good options to explore, even with smaller market share in this field.</p>
<p>With just a few months left to use Google Optimize, it might seem daunting to consider a new alternative, but it’s also nice to have options. Not to get too poetic (though we have already mentioned Dylan), but each sunset <em>does</em> bring the dawn of a new day. And it looks like we’ll just have to wait and see what Google shines a light on next.</p>


Google Announces Sunset of Google Optimize and Optimize 360

mk-patterson

<p>Last week, Portland-headquartered <a href="https://www.sheerid.com/shoppers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SheerID</a> announced a new partnership with composable commerce vendor <a href="https://commercetools.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commercetools</a>. The goal: help merchants create better personalization and more relevant offers and promotions for consumers based on identified customer segmentation.</p>
<p>“Our partnership with SheerID further demonstrates our commitment to providing our merchants with access to market-leading technologies,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellygoetsch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kelly Goetsch</a>, chief strategy officer at commercetools. “We look forward to working together to help merchants sell more, grow faster, and create meaningful connections that build customer engagement and loyalty.”</p>
<h2><strong>SheerID gets personal</strong></h2>
<p>SheerID operates what it calls a “digital verification engine.” With more than 20,000 authoritative data sources, the system helps to instantly verify eligible customers for offers they qualify for.</p>
<p>With brands like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/andy-jassy-amazons-new-ceo-signals-bold-future-for-loud-and-digital-experiences/">Amazon</a>, Spotify, and T-Mobile already on the verification platform, SheerID boasts their customers have received three times the conversion of their typical campaigns when utilizing the verification platform.</p>
<p>“Our strategic partnership with commercetools enables the company’s merchants to access our audience verification service, driving significant business outcomes,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakeweatherly/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jake Weatherly</a>, chief executive officer at SheerID. “Providing offers to valuable consumer communities like students, teachers, and healthcare professionals is a proven strategy to drive immediate sales. In the cookieless future, online merchants increasingly rely on privacy-compliant, zero-party data marketing solutions like this to drive consumer acquisition, retention, and loyalty.”</p>
<h2><strong>Heading headless with commercetools</strong></h2>
<p>The partnership with commercetools – a <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/">leading headless commerce platform</a> and member of the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MACH Alliance</a> – was a natural fit for SheerID to improve customer segmentation. More integrations like SheerID and commercetools could be likely in the future as companies embrace the headless commerce structure, allowing for greater flexibility and more software offerings.</p>
<p>“The integration was conceived with MACH principles in mind,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyvanags/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Andy Vanags</a>, global director of retail technologies and marketplace partnerships at SheerID. “Companies will be able to flexibly set up SheerID with their existing frontend e-commerce systems and DXP, CDP, and marketing automation systems. With our supporting documentation and sample open-source code, a merchant's developer or system integrator can easily leverage the verified customer data to create custom promotions, feed the loyalty system and/or personalize the site experience. Companies are only limited by their imagination!”</p>
<h2><strong>About commercetools</strong></h2>
<p>The inventor of headless commerce, <a href="https://commercetools.com/?utm_source=press_release&amp;utm_medium=announcement&amp;utm_campaign=publicis" target="_blank" rel="noopener">commercetools</a> is an innovative technology disruptor that has established itself as an industry-leading eCommerce software provider. Today, some of the world’s most iconic brands and growth-focused businesses trust commercetools’ powerful, flexible, scalable solutions to support their ever-evolving digital commerce needs. As the visionaries leading the modern MACH (Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless) architecture movement, commercetools provides customers with the agility to innovate and iterate on the fly, merge on and off-line channels, drive higher revenue, and future-proof their eCommerce business.</p>
<h2><strong>About SheerID</strong></h2>
<p>SheerID is the global leader in identity marketing. With SheerID, brands identify and acquire customers from highly valued consumer communities — such as the military, students, teachers, first responders, and more — with personalized offers, gated by instant verification from the largest set of authoritative data worldwide. SheerID verifies over 2.5 billion people via 20,000 authoritative data sources; provides global insights from hundreds of the world’s leading brands, and never shares or sells customer data. As a result, the world’s biggest brands — including Amazon, Home Depot, Spotify, and T-Mobile — rely on SheerID as their identity marketing partner. Founded in 2011, SheerID is backed by Fortson VC, Brighton Park Capital, Centana Growth Partners, Voyager Capital, and CVC Growth Partners. For more information, please visit <a href="https://www.sheerid.com/business/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">SheerID</a> or follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/SheerID" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/sheerid/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a>, and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/SheerIDdotcom" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Facebook</a>.</p>


SheerID and commercetools Form Partnership to Provide More Personalization and Better Offers for Consumers

<p>Last week, the MACH Alliance announced the addition of three new members to the organization: Adyen, Commerce Layer, and Pipe17. With these new members, as well as naming <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/google-cloud-joins-mach-alliance-as-enabler-member/">Google Cloud</a> an Enabler member earlier this month, the MACH Alliance now boasts <a href="https://machalliance.org/members" target="_blank" rel="noopener">74 total members</a>.</p>
<h2><strong>Adyen: an A+ choice for financial tech</strong></h2>
<p>The Netherlands-based financial technology company, <a href="https://www.adyen.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adyen</a>, was the first added to the MACH Alliance roster last week. Adyen’s all-star list of clients includes Facebook, H&amp;M, Uber, and Microsoft, with a specialization in providing end-to-end payment options and financial products in one solution.</p>
<p>“Joining the MACH Alliance is a natural move for us, as our success hinges on the strength and flexibility of our digital backbone, of which MACH solutions are foundational,” said Brian McDonnell, Senior Vice President, Partnerships at Adyen. “Unified commerce for retailers and other players in the fintech space wouldn’t be possible with legacy technology. We believe the MACH framework is the standard that will change the game for how businesses connect, transact and grow.”</p>
<h2><strong>Commerce Layer provides ready-to-use headless commerce experiences</strong></h2>
<p><a href="https://commercelayer.io/why" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Commerce Layer</a>, an Italy-based, API-first, headless commerce platform, helps customers scale their businesses for almost any commerce channel in any market. Commerce Layer utilizes a set of “ready-to-use micro frontends that allow you to quickly create a headless commerce site without compromising the flexibility and the uniqueness of your brand.”</p>
<p>They also focus on commerce, merchandising, and product discovery rather than content and catalog management.</p>
<p>Occupying MACH principles, Commerce Layer promotes composable, headless commerce and offers customers a “clean separation of commerce and content,” which helps developers design and build efficient and clean shopping experiences.</p>
<h2><strong>Pipe17 offers operations ease from initial sale to delivery</strong></h2>
<p>Seattle-based <a href="https://pipe17.com/why-pipe17/overview" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Pipe17</a> is an API-first e-commerce integration operations platform that helps customers simplify the workflow of orders from the point of sale to fulfillment obligations.</p>
<p>As opposed to just focusing on quick and scalable e-commerce solutions, Pipe17 uses composable technology to connect inventory data, as well as shipping and fulfillment services, which help companies keep the same tempo from sale to delivery. They promise users improved sales, smoother integrations, greater visibility for consumers post-checkout and easy accessibility for developers.</p>
<h2><strong>MACH Growth at MACH Speed</strong></h2>
<p>Since the MACH Alliance formed in June 2020, the organization has had a stringent process for accepting new members based on principles aligned with MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native SaaS and headless). With the goal of “future proofing enterprise technology,” each organization must embrace MACH architecture in order to be accepted. With growth increasing from 15 organizations at the launch of the MACH Alliance to now almost 75, companies are taking note of the benefits of early adoption of these principles, compared to other monolithic enterprises. With four new additions already in the first month of 2023, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/8-cms-trends-to-watch-in-2023-from-mach-to-metaverse/">we anticipate seeing even more adoption of MACH principles and growth for the MACH Alliance continuing for the rest of the year</a>.</p>
<h2>About the MACH Alliance</h2>
<p>The MACH Alliance is a [501(c)(6)] non-profit organization, governed by an independent board and does not endorse specific vendors, members or otherwise. The Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems that are Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless. All MACH Alliance members meet certification principles that are published on the website.</p>
<p>The MACH Alliance welcomes technology companies and individual industry experts who share the same vision for the future. Learn more at <a href="http://machalliance.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">machalliance.org</a>, read here about MACH certification and follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/machalliance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/machalliance/posts/?feedView=all" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a>.</p>


Adyen, Commerce Layer and Pipe17 Named Newest Members of MACH Alliance

<p>Yesterday, <a href="https://machalliance.org/newsroom/google-cloud-joins-the-mach-alliance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the MACH Alliance announced</a> that Google Cloud will join its ranks as a MACH Enabler, becoming the latest addition to the organization's fast-growing community of composable platforms. </p>
<p>Google Cloud will play an important role as a foundational cloud and infrastructure provider alongside other Enabler members, including <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-to-host-headless-commerce-summit-for-talks-on-building-world-class-e-commerce-experiences/">Netlify</a>, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-monthly-recap-mach-alliance-announces-new-enabler-category-glassbox-and-optimizely-partner-gutenberg-updates-and-more/">Mongo DB</a>, <a href="https://vercel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vercel</a>, <a href="https://www.webscale.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Webscale</a>, and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/aws-joins-mach-alliance-as-enabler-member-reflects-growth-of-cloud-native-solutions/">Amazon Web Services (AWS)</a>. The MACH Alliance now boasts more than 70 members in its best-of-breed technology ecosystem.</p>
<p>“The MACH Alliance has quickly become the face of advocacy when it comes to pushing for a new standard for IT architectural excellence,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-colyer-4129214/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chris Colyer</a>, Worldwide Head of Retail Industry Partnerships at Google Cloud. “We see the future in headless and composable commerce and it’s important for us to be a part of the community to which a number of our partners belong. Through our membership, we can truly support those partners while championing open and cloud-native technology ecosystems as they grow in relevance and competence.”</p>
<h2><strong>“Hey Google, what's a MACH Alliance Enabler?”</strong></h2>
<p>No need to consult your Google Home assistant – we've got the answer.</p>
<p>The MACH Alliance added its specialized Enabler membership category in December 2021, reserved for companies that provide an essential platform or infrastructure solution to MACH Alliance members. Enablers typically provide monitoring, data storage, cluster or container management, tracing, service meshing, API gateways, and orchestration.</p>
<p>While they don't offer a direct MACH product or service, Enablers help power MACH solutions for other vendors – making them an integral part of the ecosystem. </p>
<p>“Having a brand like Google Cloud aligned with our organization is a powerful indicator that the market shift toward composable is speeding up and becoming mainstream,” said <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">Casper Ramussen</a>, MACH Alliance president. “This shift represents a major challenge to the position of long-established enterprise suites, and we’re in the right place at the right time for our movement to really scale. The Enabler category is ripe for growth over the next 12 months and critical to the success of MACH across all industries.”</p>
<h2><strong>Rapid Growth for MACH</strong></h2>
<p>The adoption of MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless) has continued to disrupt the previously monolith-dominated tech landscape. With leading global brands like AWS – and now Google Cloud – joining the MACH Alliance Enabler category, it's clear that MACH has achieved a new tier of industry validation, likely leading to more adoption in the future. </p>
<p>In just under three years, the MACH Alliance has transitioned from four founding members to 15 at launch, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/bloomreach-emporix-and-kontent-ai-join-mach-alliance-pushing-member-total-over-70/">to now more than 70</a>. This is due in no small part to the rising demand for composable solutions that eliminate vendor lock-in, decrease the need for re-platforming, accelerate time-to-market, improve personalization and experimentation, and more. </p>
<h2><strong>About the MACH Alliance</strong></h2>
<p>The MACH Alliance is a [501(c)(6)] non-profit organization, governed by an independent board and does not endorse specific vendors, members, or otherwise. The Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems that are Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless. All MACH Alliance members meet certification principles that are published on the website.</p>
<p>The MACH Alliance welcomes technology companies and individual industry experts who share the same vision for the future. Learn more at machalliance.org, read here about <a href="https://machalliance.org/insights/mach-certification-a-seal-of-confidence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MACH certification</a> and follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/machalliance" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/machalliance/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LinkedIn</a>.</p>


Google Cloud Joins MACH Alliance as Enabler Member

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