Articles - Page 168

Agentic AI for Agencies in 2026

bmckeiver

Scandinavia has long been regarded as a cradle of CMS innovation. And while that cradle has been rocked by the rise of Western competitors, the Nordic legion of web content management systems still holds a strong position in the minds – and hearts – of their users.
Heart. That might be one of the most tangible differentiators for <a href="https://umbraco.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Umbraco</a>, a Danish platform that was originally coined “The Friendly CMS” <a href="https://umbraco.com/about-us/values/why-the-friendly-cms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">by one of its community members</a> back in 2006.
As this now-legendary designer was credited with observing: Everything about Umbraco is friendly. The UX, the community, and the pricing.
Turns out this tagline has stood the test of time – just like Umbraco itself.
In a global marketplace where CMS providers are struggling to establish or re-establish their identity (be it headless, DXP, or some bolt-on Frankenstein of neo-monolithic proportions), Umbraco is staying true to its core. It’s doubling down on its community, making complex technologies easier to use, and reminding us that open source is really about people – not just platforms.
For all these reasons (and presumably more), <a href="https://www.monterro.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Monterro</a> – the Swedish software growth investor that prides itself on turning Nordic software companies into global players – <a href="https://umbraco.com/blog/swedish-software-growth-investor-monterro-acquires-a-majority-stake-in-umbraco/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has just purchased a majority stake in the Danish vendor</a>.
We had a chance to discuss this news with Umbraco’s CEO and self-proclaimed “Chief Friend Maker,” <a href="https://twitter.com/kimsneummadsen?lang=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kim Sneum Madsen</a>, who has been with the outfit since 2016. While acclaimed founder Niels Hartvig will be parting company, Madsen will continue to man the reigns as Monterro’s operational and financial backing comes online.
In our exclusive interview, we discussed where the company has been, what’s ahead – and how open source is “not a hippie thing anymore.”
<h2>Expanding best-of-breed digital experiences</h2>
Umbraco has come a long way since its founding in 2005, and like the rest of the market, the company has adapted to significant change. But according to Madsen, what hasn’t changed is their persistent focus on making things simpler.
While describing Umbraco’s history, Madsen said there have been three key elements to their success: software, community, and company. The first decade of their growth was focused on making great software and aligning with Hartvig’s vision of open source. The second was focused on nurturing an active community that loved their product – and built on it in a big way. At last count, Umbraco boasts over 220,000 developers and users worldwide, which is an astounding amount of adoption by any measure.
With the software and community pieces firing on all cylinders, the company is now focused on the company, which is where Madsen comes in. While his mission over the last five years has revolved around “customer happiness,” his job as CEO will require a balancing of the elements to achieve scale in a competitive, mature, and increasingly commoditized market.
“We believe we’re in a very strong position with the balance of the elements,” said Madsen, speaking of the software, community, and company components. “We’ve reinvented the way our community works, we have a mature model for engaging community teams around the globe, and we can give them something to build on.”
To reach the next level, Umbraco has invested in expanding its product set. Along with its flagship open-source Umbraco CMS, they now feature <a href="https://umbraco.com/products/umbraco-heartcore/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Umbraco Heartcore</a>, a headless offering; <a href="https://umbraco.com/products/umbraco-cloud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Umbraco Cloud</a>, a fully-hosted ecosystem that boasts simplicity as one of its core attributes; and <a href="https://umbraco.com/products/umbraco-uno/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Umbraco Uno</a>, a one-stop platform for non-technical marketers and creative agencies.
Along with its vast community of members, including a large partner network that offers customized solutions that integrate with Umbraco, the company now counts more than 700,000 websites worldwide – the majority in Europe and the U.S. – running live on its solutions. Along the way, the company has scored some impressive customers, including JP Morgan, Rubbermaid, Scholl, the NFL, and other market leaders.
<h2>Monterro brings extensive CMS experience to Umbraco </h2>
On the Monterro side of the ledger, the stars couldn’t be more aligned – and Madsen is thrilled with the outcome. He said the private equity partner stood out because of their financial structure, but also because members of their operational staff served in key roles at other CMS platforms, including Episerver.
“With extensive CMS experience and a true belief in open-source software, Monterro is a perfect match as we strive to meet the increasing demand for best-of-breed DXP solutions that make complex technologies easy to use,” Madsen said.
As part of its mission to turn Nordic software companies into global market leaders, Monterro has completed 17 investments and 17 add-on investments since 2012. These include operational experience from successfully developing and running companies such as Pointsec, Orc Software, and CMS vendor Episerver, now <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/episerver-rebrands-as-optimizely-following-acquisition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimizely</a>.
“With Monterro’s valuable guidance and capital,” Madsen remarked, “we will continue to work closely with our active open-source community to bring the Umbraco family of user-friendly, flexible, and robust CMS platforms to an even greater portfolio of companies in even more countries.”
While the structure of Umbraco’s ownership has changed, Madsen affirmed that the company’s direction will remain the same. “Our ambition is to use this position and invest money back into the continued growth of all the elements that constitute Umbraco," he said. "We will continue to focus on creating world-class software that produces outstanding value for users and customers.”
<h2>Market consolidation and confronting the data challenge</h2>
One area we discussed was the breakneck consolidation echoing across the CMS market and the drive to shore up the data layer – <a href="https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/digital-experience-platforms" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a key requirement for Gartner</a> in their assessment of modern digital experience platforms.
Earlier this year, we saw several DXP players purchase customer data platforms (CDPs) to address the “missing data link” in their vision of completeness. This includes <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-acquires-customer-data-platform-zaius/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimizely’s purchase of Zaius</a> this past March.
Madsen said that data is important, and while Umbraco would love to claim itself as the “single source” for data, what’s important is the aggregation of all relevant data – particularly as it relates to GDPR and other compliance requirements. He said customers must be in control, and with CMS as the backbone of a digital business, this should be made simpler in the process.
<h2>The growth of Enterprise and the role of Microsoft</h2>
“As Umbraco has matured over the last five years, we’re seeing increased demand from Enterprise customers,” said Madsen. At the same time, he said they’re seeing more customers wanting to move campaign sites closer to marketers – which is where Umbraco Uno comes in. As an out-of-the-box solution, it’s providing shorter delivery times for a wider range of clients, from enterprise to full-service digital agencies to design shops.
We also discussed the legacy role of <a href="https://dotnet.microsoft.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Microsoft</a> and their history of .NET – which Madsen said continues to be a differentiator given Microsoft’s footprint in key geographies.
<h2>The rise of headless CMS</h2>
In our discussion of Umbraco Heartcore – their headless offering – Madsen reflected that it’s still very new as a stand-alone product. Like other traditional CMS platforms, their API nature has enabled connections and integrations before headless exploded in demand. He maintains that users want the freedom to build and connect as they see fit.
While the jury may be out on whether headless is a lasting trend, Madsen supports the need for agencies to have greater freedom over the frontend and focus on omnichannel. However, he underscored the need for the CMS to be structured around the workflow for users, so it remains easy for editors to do their job.
“We’ve always been focused on the content editor,” he punctuated. “It has to be easy, or they won’t bother.”
<h2>Mining growth from a strong open source community</h2>
What’s abundantly clear is that Umbraco’s fiercely loyal community has been a keystone to their success. Madsen knows this well given his history and proximity to partners during his tenure at Umbraco.
“Users and partners are intertwined, as developers often work for an agency,” he said. “Every developer working on Umbraco makes a living on our software.” This underscores the value of their open source community to their future growth.
Focusing on partners has had an intrinsic “one to many” effect on multiplying Umbraco’s business. Madsen describes their community as the implementers, which has allowed Umbraco to focus on perfecting their software.
We asked Madsen if there’s one thing he would want the market to know about Umbraco, and he again came back to the value of being open source – and the contributions of their community.
“Open source is not a hippie thing anymore,” he noted. “It has a far better development cycle. Developers can raise an issue and get an answer quickly from other developers. It is the true ‘outside in’ approach, not us inventing in a lab and taking something to market. This is all based on real-life experiences that our developers have.”
That sounds like a friendly CMS experience to us – and a true differentiator for an investor like Monterro.
Peace, love, and integration.
<h2>About Umbraco</h2>
Danish Umbraco was founded in 2005 with the vision of making the complex simpler. The company offers a user-friendly best-of-breed platform for content management (CMS) based on open-source technology. With more than 700,000 installations, Umbraco is one of the most deployed Web Content Management Systems on the Microsoft stack. Its success lies in the open-source model, a unique community of more than 220,000 developers and users, and a well-established partner network of digital agencies. Umbraco has 100 employees and is headquartered in Odense, Denmark, with a branch office in Charlotte, North Carolina. For more information, visit <a href="https://umbraco.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.umbraco.com</a>

Umbraco CMS Acquired by Software Investor Monterro: Interview with CEO Kim Sneum Madsen

cms-critic-staff

Image of Umbraco logo and CEO Kim Sneum Madsen

Turning 16 is a huge milestone. For many, it means a driver's license – and the first taste of freedom.
For <a href="https://www.joomla.org/">Joomla!,</a> the popular open source CMS, turning 16 is more like a license to brag.
And why not? In just over a decade and a half, their free content management system has been downloaded a staggering 123 million times and translated into 77 languages. At last count, they're powering over 2.5 million websites, making it the third most popular CMS on the planet.
Pretty sweet stats.
And speaking of sweet... if your invitation to their "Sweet 16" shindig got lost in the mail, there's some <a href="https://community.joomla.org/events/user-group-meetings/4244-joomla-turns-16.html">digital merrymaking planned</a> by the Australia chapter of the Joomla! Community on August 17th (the actual birthday). We're told that both the London and Chicago user groups will make an appearance, but they're still waiting on Lizzo to RSVP.
Now, it wouldn't be a celebration without some presents, and the <a href="https://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the-project.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joomla! Project</a> is unwrapping some big ones with the<a href="https://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5843-birthday-present-announcement-joomla-4-stable-17th-august.html"> stable release of Joomla! 4.0 and Joomla! 3.10</a> (the latter bridging the transition between the two major series). Just a month ago, Joomla <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-monthly-recap-wp-engine-launches-enterprise-wordpress-platform-salesforce-and-aws-expand-partnership-and-more/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> the availability of the first <a href="https://joom.la/4rc3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joomla! CMS 4.0 Release Candidate 3</a> and <a href="https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/releases/tag/3.10.0-alpha8" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Joomla 3.10 Alpha 8</a> – so fully launching both versions in a matter of weeks is an exciting way to mark the milestone.
<h2>Joomla! 4.0: a story nine years in the making</h2>
It's fair to say that a Joomla! 4.0 had become a victim of "someday" mythology. A decade is a lifetime in technology, and it seemed stuck in the skunkworks. On the announcement page of their website, they describe the venture as "nine long years in the making," which sounds... well, long. 
To give you some context: a decade ago, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-digital-commerce-unifies-data-content-commerce-and-digital-merchandising/">Acquia</a> was just a rambunctious toddler, and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/gatsby-unveils-v3-0-cloud-hosting-and-more-at-gatsbyconf-2021/">Gatsby</a> wasn't even a twinkle in the headless sky. Of course, being a completely volunteer-built platform means timetables are often a little more fluid. 
Regardless of the delays, the hard work has finally paid off. And now that Joomla! powers one in every 50 websites, this new version could provide a real boost to their position in the free and open source field of CMS players. 
Here are a few highlights we can expect to see in the planned release:
Enhanced Accessibility: Joomla! has improved its overall accessibility posture by aligning with W3C Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) and striving for AA compliance. They've elevated everything from the layout, contrast, and infrastructure capabilities by building a stronger foundation around accessibility standards.
Improved UX: A redesigned administration dashboard will help to speed up content creation, while an improved media manager will help streamline editor updates. There are also new article templates that will help maintain page structure and design standards.
Customizable Emails: Now, users can deliver customized messages that welcome and inform audiences. With Joomla's new email templating system, it's quick and easy to create emails that improve communication and enhance the customer experience. 
Elevated Search: We all know that search is a boost to any website, allowing visitors to hone in on areas of interest and increase engagement. Joomla! 4 brings smart search features that dramatically improve its previous capabilities.
Built-in SEO: Get to the top of any search engine faster with Joomla 4.0's built-in SEO foundation. The new platform "bakes" search standards into the architecture of each page without any additional extensions – providing stronger SEO performance out of the box. 
Tighter Security: Security is top of mind for every website and CMS. That's why the Joomla! Project made security a key part of their focus for Joomla! 4.0, which features an array of architectural enhancements designed to maximize security and keep hackers out.
Higher Speeds: With eCommerce and transactional websites becoming prolific during the Covid-19 pandemic, speed has become absolutely essential to improving conversions. Joomla! 4.0 has made a point to improve performance and accelerate load times by enhancing the backend and overall structure of the platform. 
Refined Workflow Capabilities: Workflows help run websites – and businesses – more efficiently. Joomla! 4.0 brings a combined bench of enhanced workflow services that enable marketing and content managers to customize their requirements and streamline their efforts. 
<h2>How to transition to Joomla! 4.0</h2>
As noted, Joomla! is releasing versions 4.0 and 3.10 simultaneously, with the goal of easing the upgrade. 
The process is relatively simple. Start by upgrading to 3.10, and the pre-update checker will allow you to confirm compatibility with Joomla! 4.0's minimum requirements (including the current hosting environment and, more importantly, any installed extensions). Follow the prompts and the migration should be relatively smooth. 
If you do run into challenges or issues, don't forget that you have one of the largest user groups to turn to on the <a href="https://community.joomla.org/">Joomla! Community Portal. </a>
Ready to celebrate? Download the latest version of Joomla at <a href="https://www.joomla.org/3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.joomla.org/3/</a>
From all of us at CMS Critic, we wish the entire community of contributors a very happy birthday – and hopefully, we're not waiting as long for the next update from Joomla!
(We mean that with the exclamation point, BTW...)
<h2>About Joomla! </h2>
Joomla! is an award-winning, open source content management system (CMS) that enables users to build powerful websites and online applications. Built and supported by a global community of volunteers, Joomla! contains easy-to-use features and it is freely available to everyone. Founded in 2005, Joomla! has become the third most popular CMS, powering over 2.5 million websites.

Joomla! CMS Turns 16, Celebrates with Long-Awaited Release of Version 4.0

paris-tuzun

Background graphics of birthday themed elements with Joomla logo

Another week, another unicorn makes its way across the windswept landscape of CMS...
OK, enough melodrama. The dust has been settling for a few days since <a href="http://www.contentful.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Contentful's</a> $175 million Series F funding round, and it's time for a little reflection. No question: this is a big deal for the Berlin-based headless CMS platform, which is now sporting a valuation of around $3 billion. 
As they say in the pizza industry, that's a lotta dough.
Clearly, <a href="https://www.tigerglobal.com/">Tiger Global</a> – who led the round – sees a lot of promise in Contentful's strategic "recipe" for growth (with perhaps the promise of a public offering on the map one day?) <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/tidemarkcap/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tidemark</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/base10-partners/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Base10 Partners</a> also joined Contentful's robust investment ticket, which is over twice their previous <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/17/contentful-raises-80m-series-e-round-for-its-headless-cms/">Series E round of $80 million</a>.
It goes without saying that we've seen a lot of investment activity in the CMS category over the last year. But it's the headless variety that seems to be building more traction in recent months as brands and organizations expand their content channels beyond the website layer. In early June, <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/">Contentstack</a> – another headless provider – announced a <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-raises-57-5-million-in-series-b-round-qa-with-ceo-neha-sampat/">$57.5 million Series B</a> infusion.
Again, a lotta dough. And a big opportunity for these growth-stage challengers in the CMS and DXP markets.
So what does this all mean for the future of CMS?
In a word: transformation.
<h2>Building on a Headless Legacy</h2>
There's no question that Contentful had a banner 2020; Tiger wouldn't have invested at a 9-figure level without some confidence around performance. But more importantly, investors bank on the vision – something that Contentful is already laying out for the market. They no longer view themselves simply as a "headless CMS" for creating omnichannel experiences, but as a content platform that thinks beyond the limitations of networks and bandwidth.
Sure, this is still grounded in the world of APIs, where apps "talk" to one another and integrate around key capabilities. As digital experiences have evolved to include a wider range of endpoints (think IoT devices, voice assistants, and more), the landscape has become more complex and disjointed.
This is where Contentful is focusing its transformation. They want to simplify the complexity and harmonize organizations by helping them deliver their digital content faster – and personalize it for the right target at the right moment.
As the name implies, Contentful’s focus has always been on content. And while building apps has often been the domain of developers, Contentful has made its product much more approachable for marketers and content strategists. As the role of the "builder" expands, their tools are becoming even more accessible to a wider range of users within an organization, from sales to customer support. This is yet another way that Contentful is transforming its value and charting a new course for CMS.
<h2>Funding the Future of Digital Experiences</h2>
According to Steve Sloan, Contentful's CEO, the latest round of financing will enable the company to accelerate its investment in both its team and technology, helping to support its growing ecosystem of customers and partners. Contentful is already trusted by over 30% of the Fortune 500, with leading brands such as Shopify, Staples, Atlassian, Electronic Arts, Chanel, Roche, and Vodafone relying on the platform to deliver content experiences.
Along with increased market penetration and a growing customer base, Contentful has gained ground with analysts – a critical indicator for success, particularly with enterprise software. Most recently, the company earned the highest score possible in the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentful-responds-to-market-shift-with-new-partner-program/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">partner ecosystem criterion</a> (along with five other criteria) in the <a href="https://www.contentful.com/resources/forrester-wave-agile-cms-2021-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forrester Wave™ Report for Agile Content Management Systems (CMSes)</a>. 
As companies re-platform to modern software stacks, they are turning to agencies and system integrators such as Accenture, Publicis Sapient, Huge, Valtech, and others to define a new generation of digital experiences. Contentful is doubling down on relationships with these leading authorities and has now built a channel ecosystem with over 300 partners. This strategy is yet another signal of their overall market maturity – and the potential to scale globally. 
<h2>What's next for Contentful – and CMS?</h2>
It's nearly impossible to read the tea leaves these days.
When Covid-19 first emerged, every economic indicator called for a long winter. But the increased demand for technology in a remote and contactless world created unprecedented opportunities across the digital industry.
<a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/mckinsey%20digital/our%20insights/how%20six%20companies%20are%20using%20technology%20and%20data%20to%20transform%20themselves/the-next-normal-the-recovery-will-be-digital.pdf">According to McKinsey</a>, more than half (58%) of all global customer interactions are happening in a digital environment. Brands that intend to survive and thrive need to be able to not only deliver engaging content – but do it quickly and at scale.
While the pandemic appeared to be dissipating just two months ago, the more <a href="https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210726/breakthrough-cases-rising-with-delta-heres-what-that-means">recent rise of the Covid Delta variant and breakthrough cases</a> has again changed the calculus. The prolonged crisis also means the demand for digital content, from streaming services to eCommerce, will continue to grow.
Contentful's focus on both the mid-market and enterprise gives it a lot of room for growth in multiple directions. As companies continue to digitally transform and adapt to a new world, Contentful is well-positioned for whatever comes next - particularly as the role of the "builder" becomes more expansive within organizations.
At the same time, there are many headless CMS platforms entering the market – particularly around the flourishing <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/">JAMstack</a> – which is creating both competition and confusion. Additionally, many traditional CMS and DXP platforms have adopted an API strategy, creating greater commoditization and putting pressure on price. And of course, one of the most persistent challenges facing all headless CMS platforms is what <a href="https://preston.so/writing/digital-experience-orchestration-and-the-problem-of-headless-cms-preview/">Preston So</a> has written about extensively: the inability to preview content.
But Contentful might be breaking away from these limitations. By broadening their view and thinking beyond the confines of the "headless" moniker, Contentful is doing precisely what leaders do by transforming the narrative. They're laying out a vision – and if they can muster $175 million to invest in that vision, they might just deserve that unicorn status.
"We are living in a digital-first era where content makes digital experiences come alive," said Sloan.
Let's see what they can bring to life with a whole lotta dough.

What Contentful's $175M Investment Round Means for the Future of CMS

As headless continues to heat up, some of the leading platform providers are looking to the channel to differentiate their offerings and amplify their growth. That's certainly been the case for <a href="https://www.storyblok.com/">Storyblok</a>, which now touts over 600 solution partners worldwide.
While the North American market has remained a greenfield for the enterprise CMS, Storyblok just announced a strategic partnership with <a href="https://www.c-e.com/">Campbell Ewald</a> – an integrated advertising and marketing communications agency with offices in Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York.
Storyblok has certainly been gaining ground in a crowded field of commoditized platforms. Originally launched in 2015, the company has already managed to accrue over 51,000 users in over 130 countries, with more than 81,000 projects created on its platform in the last three years. Through this new partnership with Campbell Ewald, Storyblok aims to expand its U.S. presence and elevate its position in the headless market.
Campbell Ewald offers a wide range of strategic services, from advertising to media to content creation. Integrated digital experiences are core to their practice, and the agency plans to leverage Storyblok’s visual editor and component-based structure to drive efficiencies in their project delivery process.
“At Campbell Ewald, we value speed-to-market and efficiency," said Matt Riley, Associate Director Of Development at Campbell Ewald. "With Storyblok, we can knock out high-quality work quickly. We're excited to use it on upcoming client projects.”
Storyblok’s new and improved Partner Program is designed to provide better service practices and unlock new business opportunities on top of its CMS. Companies currently participating in the program include Portaltech Reply, Overdose, and Mediawave. According to Storyblok, the program has minimal barriers and no required waiting periods, making it easy for new partners to enroll and participate.
In addition to a Learning Centre that provides resources for sales and implementation, Storyblok's Partner Program offers up to a 10% ongoing revenue share for new customers in a monthly or annual subscription. The program also provides free unlimited staff members and development spaces for building and managing customers in one place.
<h2>Q&amp;A with Barry D'Arcy, VP of Partners at Storyblok</h2>
CMS Critic had an opportunity to connect with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrydarcy/">Barry D'Arcy</a>, VP of Partners at Storyblok. He shared some of his views on the CMS market, the value of being headless, and what his company is excited about.
<hr />
CMS Critic (CC): The headless CMS market is growing – but so are the platform choices. What gives Storyblok a competitive edge, particularly in a competitive field where large enterprise players are consolidating and expanding their offerings?
Barry D'Arcy (BD): One of the reasons the headless CMS market is growing is because it’s evolving with the ever-growing users’ needs. In fact, Storyblok was founded as a response to the need of a CMS that was working for both developers and marketers. Some of our value propositions can be found separately with other headless CMSs, but as it stands today, we have a pretty unique offer.
Starting with our one-of-a-kind visual editor with real-time in context preview, our highly customizable Rich Text Editor and editorial workflows, and our unparalleled content model which enables users to build a smart content strategy and to gain efficiency by reusing the content entries and templates they create. When it comes to security, we guarantee safe and compliant data transfer. We use ISO 27001 compliant data centers in EU with an option for separated infrastructure (eg. Mainland China), https protocols, data encryption, two-factor authentication, and daily backups.
Storyblok was also founded on the principle that no matter the size of the business, we should be affordable. Our pricing is scalable, transparent, predictable and it’s not necessarily based on usage. When you weigh in these features and compare our offer to one of larger enterprise players, you will see they fall short. They have high profile clients because they have been longer on the market, but we are catching up.
We are quick to react to feedback and user needs. This is reflected in our reviews in terms of ease of setup, use and admin, quality of support, and ease of doing business with, which are higher than those of most market leaders.
<hr />
CC: What is the greatest challenge facing headless CMS platforms and how is Storyblok addressing it?
BD: There is a very common expression when talking about headless CMS: “headless CMS is the future”. I believe that at the moment the challenge is to make business leaders (and others) realize that the future is now. Better yet, headless CMS should be our present, now is the time to migrate from traditional systems and embrace the benefits of headless.
One way in which we address this issue at Storyblok is with an informational and educational approach. We dedicate a lot of time and resources to create content (articles, whitepapers, ebooks, presentations, etc.) about the differences between traditional and headless, to point out the benefits of headless with real case scenarios, and to prove with use-cases the changes in speed and efficiency gain after migration to headless.
At the same time, we built a portal for our partners, a learning centre with educational &amp; promotional material, white-label sales decks as well as technical implementation guides to enable faster selling. We also have a dedicated partner team that supports all these efforts. 

<hr />
CC: Your partnership with Campbell Ewald marks a new strategic focus on the U.S. market. Are agencies the primary channel for growing your partner program, or are you targeting other partner verticals?
BD: Yes, we're delighted to have a U.S. agency giant like Campbell Ewald on board as a Storyblok partner. We look forward to enabling them to build out innovative projects for their clients. This partnership is part of our strategic growth plan to enter the U.S. market more actively over the next 3-6 months. The Storyblok Partner Program is predominantly aimed at digital agencies and software development groups that are implementing CMS projects. It is our goal to onboard our partners through the delivery of best practice implementation guides and sales enablement content.
In terms of other partner verticals, we're also activating multiple technology partnerships. We're working on some exciting integrations that will support our partner network to build better with Storyblok. We already have integrations with <a href="https://lokalise.com/">Lokalise</a>, a feature-rich localization and translation management platform, and many eCommerce platforms (more coming soon).
<hr />
CC: In your release, you position Storyblok as a “future-proof CMS” for building a partner program. What makes it future-proof?
BD: Customers want a technology stack that they can live on for 4 to 5 years. Our component-based approach allows brands to scrap the traditional cycle of redoing their digital platform every few years and instead focus on continuous improvements. A headless CMS approach powered by APIs helps our partners solve their customer’s content problems while saving resources and cost. For our partners, being able to give a higher quality project delivery while also driving efficiencies in development time is a real no-brainer. This is helping agencies to grow their business with Storyblok and we're delighted to join them on this journey. 

<hr />
CC: Are you able to give us any insight on Storyblok’s future innovation? Are there any new platform features we can expect in 2021?
BD: The recent launch of our new Storyblok Partner Portal is packed with new features. One key update I'd like to mention today is our new Learning Centre. This is an educational hub for all our partners to get acquainted with Storyblok. We want to assist in developing and creating co-marketing and co-selling opportunities, to elevate our partners and ourselves, hand in hand. If you’re not a partner yet and would like to take part, you can sign up at <a href="https://www.storyblok.com/partners">storyblok.com/partners</a>.
We're also launching V2 of our application later this year which will include a fresh new UI amongst many new features for developers and content editors.
<h3>About Storyblok</h3>
Storyblok is a Headless Content Management System that provides developers with all the flexibility they need to build reliable and fast websites whilst giving content creators with no coding skills the ability to edit content independently of the developer. Thanks to the headless approach your content can not only be used for one website, which is the case if you use a monolithic CMS like WordPress. Storyblok empowers you to use your content on iOS and Android apps, as well as any other platform of choice (IoT, smartwatch, AR/VR) through Application Programming Interfaces (“APIs”).
For more information: <a href="https://www.storyblok.com/partners">https://www.storyblok.com/partners</a>
<h3>About Campbell Ewald</h3>
Campbell Ewald is a full-service, fully integrated marketing communications agency with offices in Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York. Their mission is to create fans of brands and endorsers of products by igniting conversations and experiences that demonstrate how brands enhance consumers’ quality of life. They take pride in engaging consumers at every level of conversation. They turn consumers into advocates that carry messages across platforms. And whatever the discipline — Campbell Ewald thrivse on solving complex problems and turning big ideas into relevant communications that reach our target every day, in every medium. They have offices in Detroit, Los Angeles, and New York.
For more information: <a href="http://www.c-e.com/">www.c-e.com/</a>

Interview: Headless CMS Storyblok Expands Partner Program with U.S. Agency Campbell Ewald

<h4>In our exclusive Q&amp;A with Sanity founder and CEO Magnus Hillstead, we discuss the current state of the CMS market, the advantages of headless, and what's ahead for the structured content platform. </h4>
<hr />
After a year of hyper-accelerated digital transformation, the content world might feel a little, well… unruly.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, companies feverishly raced to adapt in a contactless, eCommerce-driven economy, experiencing a decade of acceleration in a matter of months – an effect <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/five-fifty-the-quickening">McKinsey</a> christened as "The Quickening."
At the same time, the reliance on content has exploded. Now, with billions of websites and apps floating in the ether, the task of managing dynamic content and digital experiences across a growing multitude of screens and endpoints has become nearly insurmountable.
But the aptly-named <a href="https://www.sanity.io/">Sanity</a> – a San Francisco/Oslo-based SaaS startup – is betting that their innovative platform for structured content will help bring calm to the chaos.
Today, the company announced that it has raised $39 million in Series B funding, becoming the latest venture in the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/headless-cms/">headless CMS</a> and DXP ecosystem to acquire significant investment in recent months. In fact, they just completed their Series A in October of 2020 <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/sanity-a-platform-to-build-and-manage-content-flows-on-sites-raises-9-3m-from-ev-williams-threshold-and-more/">for $9.3 million</a>, codifying the confidence around their growth potential.
Over the past year, Sanity has tripled its customer base and doubled its revenues while broadening a portfolio of notable brands, including Unilever, National Geographic, Figma, and others. The company has also doubled the size of its team in the same timeframe.
<h2>A compelling stable of investors</h2>
Founded in 2018, Sanity has experienced a meteoric rise with some impressive investment. This latest round, led by <a href="https://iconiqgrowth.com/">ICONIQ Growth</a> – with additional venture capital from <a href="https://leadedge.com/">Lead Edge Capital</a>, <a href="https://threshold.vc/">Threshold Ventures</a>, <a href="https://www.heavybit.com/">Heavybit</a>, and <a href="https://allianceventure.com/">Alliance Venture</a> – brings Sanity’s total funding to a tidy $51.8 million.
It’s worth noting that ICONIQ Growth General Partner <a href="http://www.pepperspectives.com/p/about-doug-pepper.html">Doug Pepper</a> has joined the board, codifying the overall confidence in their growth potential. Pepper was the first investor in <a href="https://business.adobe.com/products/marketo/adobe-marketo.html">Marketo</a> before its acquisition by <a href="https://www.adobe.com/">Adobe</a> for $4.75 billion in 2018 and has a track record of early bets on strong B2B software players like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/canva-button-gives-cms-users-integrated-graphic-design-tools-for-visual-content/">Canva</a>, <a href="https://www.braze.com/">Braze</a>, <a href="https://www.datadoghq.com/">Datadog</a> and <a href="https://airtable.com/">Airtable</a>.
“Sanity has created the hero product for building innovative product experiences, with an impressive developer-oriented approach to content delivery and a personalized product experience that breaks down silos for content creators, marketing, and developer teams," said Pepper. "We're excited to support the Sanity team as they enter this next phase of growth.”
<h2>Rethinking CMS in a world of siloed data</h2>
One of the biggest challenges facing brands in the digital age is the gap between customer expectations and reality. According to <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/si/en/pages/strategy-operations/articles/changing-consumer-digital-marketing-impact-Covid-19.html">Deloitte</a>, brands face a challenging disconnect as users access multiple touchpoints throughout the purchase experience. While 75% of customers expect consistent experiences, 58% feel like they’re communicating with a number of different divisions – and not one company.
This lack of cohesion is forcing brands to rethink the role of CMS and embrace a new philosophy around content as data. Sanity’s vision to provide structured content comes as businesses look to redefine their digital customer interactions and break the silos that exist across channels.
Sanity positions itself as a “fast-growing alternative to the traditional CMS,” uniquely treating content as data. By storing resources in their <a href="https://www.sanity.io/docs/datastore">Sanity Content Lake</a>, organizations can effectively de-silo their content – making it available for both collaboration and global distribution. By leveraging APIs, users can manage their text, images, and other media in a unified platform and build engaging digital experiences in real-time.
Sanity also enables teams to collaborate on content, design, and code in parallel, allowing them to achieve velocity and ship better products faster. Editors are also able to work more efficiently in customized editing environments built on Sanity’s open source <a href="https://www.sanity.io/docs/sanity-studio">Content Studio</a>, which developers can customize and extend with their own React components.
<h2>Q&amp;A with Magnus Hillstead</h2>
CMS Critic had an opportunity to connect with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnushillestad/">Magnus Hillstead</a>, the founder and CEO of Sanity. He shares some of his views on the CMS market, the value of being headless, and what his company is excited about.
<hr />
CMS Critic (CC): How would you describe the overall CMS market in 2021? Where are the gaps from your perspective, and how does Sanity address them?
Magnus Hillstead (MH): In 2021, content is moving beyond websites and mobile applications. Content is reshaping into a web of information that is structured, contextual, and reusable. The CMS industry comes from a web perspective and has partly broadened out to support mobile applications. The rise of JavaScript and new web frameworks has driven a trend of improved customer experience for both marketing and eCommerce. However, as customers are increasingly getting their product experience from digital content, the requirements and opportunities for making amazing customer experiences are growing.
This creates a shift in how organizations work with content. As digital channels become integrated parts of the product experience, the CMS needs to transform to be a part of the product stack and support organizations in extending their product experiences.
We believe that the market has just seen the first increments of a much larger motion. Having content available on an API is table stakes in 2021. Mature digital organizations should require more from their content solutions. Content should no longer be stuck in HTML silos at the edge of organizations, but rather structured, shared and reused across the organization. Organizations should be able to integrate product, customer, and transaction data together with content in order to create better product experiences.
This is the gap Sanity closes. By treating content as data, we fully decouple it from design considerations. Content can be used as a single source of truth for driving product and marketing operations. Rich data models allow faithful integrations of content systems and other data sources, allowing the enrichment and decoration of the content for better customer experiences.
This is what Sanity is all about – high-fidelity data models, real-time event-driven system synchronization, and custom user interfaces for optimal content operations for modern content teams.
<hr />
CC: You mention that Sanity is an alternative to CMS. As an API-driven ecosystem, how would you say Sanity differs from headless CMS platforms?
MH: Sanity treats content as data. Content is structured and programmatically approachable for both reading and writing through real-time APIs. This enables content to be seamlessly interoperated with other sources of truth and used to better express content in context for the various applications and situations organizations communicate to their customers.
Our user interface is open source and meant to be customized and extended by the end-users. Developers can thus create the optimal content model and user interface that the organization needs, fast and with great tools for further development and iteration as their business needs develop.
In a decoupled world, all systems need to be headless, i.e. separate the presentation layer from the content platform. But being headless is not enough. Most headless CMSes are semi-monoliths with code extensions that still treat content as a situation-specific asset, integrating content and design. But they fail to treat content as data and provide a platform that centers around structured content and enables organizations to leverage a programmatic approach to content.
Sanity, therefore, stretches far beyond web content management. We provide a platform for structured content, that enables organizations to treat content as a single source of truth in any application, device, or channel.
By properly separating content from design, you avoid the typical CMS migration every time you want to iterate on your digital surface. Our content platform is meant to be iterated on as your content workflows and digital applications change, without having to rework or migrate the content itself.
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CC: Would you say Sanity is focused more on the developer as opposed to ContentOps roles, such as marketing?
MH: No, not at all. In fact, Sanity enables developers to create a content platform that bends around the organization, instead of a CMS that the organization has to bend around. This provides much better tools for working with content for the various content creators and organizers.
At Sanity, we believe in finding the general high-level description of what content management systems need to do in organizations. We then carefully express this as high-level APIs that developers can use to build optimal collaborative editing experiences.
Our solution has state-of-the-art multiplayer collaboration, social presence, and per-field rollback where you can see that someone on your team mistakenly changed the hotspot of an image last Wednesday and amend it. All made to enable content creators to collaborate seamlessly as they iterate on content and presentations.
<hr />
CC: As a content platform, how does personalization play into your strategy?
MH: Many of our customers use Sanity to personalize content for their various audiences, and most of the others have plans to do so in the near future.
The rich data models offered by the Sanity Content Lake let content strategists add personalization at exactly the level it is needed. Variants are expressed where you need them, from a single field, to sets of fields to entire documents. As such: personalization is just a special case of content variants like localization or A/B testing.
When it comes to delivering personalization to web users we see a variety of solutions that integrate well with Sanity, from Uniform to Optimizely. Sanity delivers the content and the metadata and seamlessly integrates with such solutions.
<hr />
CC: How are you leveraging AI and automation across your horizon? For example, your asset pipeline and editorial workflows appear to provide some dynamic features. Is AI playing a role here (or elsewhere)?
MH: Sanity is an ideal use case enabled by various forms of AI. As all data is structured and programmatically available, Sanity can handle content and contextual metadata that is key for enabling machine learning.
We do not develop machine learning models for our users out-of-the-box. There is a range of third-party solutions that our users can integrate into their Sanity platform and enable machine learning algorithms on text and images stored in Sanity.
We think that we are only seeing the start of these kinds of solutions and that our key value proposition is to seamlessly integrate with your solution of choice, creating a state-of-the-art platform that enables the best AI for your content.
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CC: Any innovation on the horizon that you can hint at? What are you most excited about?
MH: We’re excited about a lot of things. We’re excited about how our customers are picking up the idea of content as data and using it to break out of the CMS mode, remove internal silos, and create wider, more holistic digital experiences for their customers. They’re extending their products with digital experiences that drive customer adoption and engagement.
We believe that the world will significantly change its view on what content is and how it should be used in the organization going forward. Content should increasingly be served from a single source of truth and reused across the organization.
We also believe that the future content platform not only powers classic digital presentation layers like web and mobile, but that we will see an increasing use of our content platform as a backend to any application that needs a dynamic, versatile and scalable solution instead of having to build their own in-house.
<h2>About Sanity</h2>
Sanity treats content as data so teams can create transformative digital experiences. Developers use Sanity’s APIs to build optimal editing workflows and share content between systems to increase digital velocity. Our mission is to be the platform for all content - a single place to interconnect, store, author, collaborate, and distribute. Dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Oslo, Norway, Sanity is used by thousands of companies including Unilever, Puma, National Geographic, and Condé Nast. Sanity is backed by ICONIQ Growth, Threshold Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, Heavybit, Alliance Venture, Monochrome Capital, and prominent angel investors like Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams, Netlify co-founder Matthias Biilmann, ex-CEO of Heroku Adam Gross and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch. Learn more at <a href="http://www.sanity.io">www.sanity.io</a>.

Sanity Raises $39 Million, Focuses Growth on Content as Data for Transformative Digital Experiences

Sanity logo with image of CEO Magnus Hillstead

Ready to drop your jaw?
<a href="https://wpengine.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WP Engine</a>, a leading <a href="https://wordpress.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WordPress</a> digital experience platform for websites and apps, <a href="https://wpengine.com/wordpress-economy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">just released a comprehensive study</a> of the “WordPress Economy.”
Simply put: the numbers are staggering.
The research – which was carried out in the US, UK, and Australia – suggests that 41% of the internet is currently built on WordPress, representing over 82 million websites. It also reveals that WordPress powers 35% of the top 10,000 sites by traffic, making it the open source force behind some of the top-performing websites on the planet.
Perhaps the most mind-boggling metrics were from the financial side of the study. According to WP Engine, the economic value of WordPress is estimated to be around $597 billion. As if that wasn’t enough, the research forecasts a 6.5% increase in 2021 – bringing the total value to $636 billion.
That’s over half a trillion dollars.
WP Engine also provided some interesting context in their report. For example: if the WordPress Economy were the market cap of a company, it would rank 10th – making it one of the largest companies in the world, and in the same league as Amazon and Walmart.
And if that example wasn’t shocking enough, try this one on for size: if the WordPress economy were a country, it would rank 39th in the world based on the IMF’s GDP rankings.
<h2>Accelerating digital transformation in the digital economy</h2>
When your head stops spinning, you might ask why and how these numbers escalated to epic proportions. According to the study, the answer can (almost) be summed up in a single word: pandemic. 
According to <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-has-pushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformed-business-forever" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a study by McKinsey &amp; Company</a>, 36% of all global customer interactions in 2019 happened online – and by 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, that number had ballooned to 58%. In the U.S. alone, digital interactions climbed from 41% to 65% in the same time period.
While the pandemic appears to be waning, its impact will be felt for many years to come – and a new urgency to compete on the digital playing field has become the status quo.
As noted in the WP Engine study, the businesses that pivoted to digital early in the pandemic have emerged successful, and in some cases even thrived. Thanks to flexible, open source software like WordPress, large segments of the economy – from small brick-and-mortar stores to large global brands – have adapted to meet customers’ digital behaviors and demands.
While the "gig economy" was already a well-documented phenomenon, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated a sweeping shift to remote work. This may have contributed to the overall impact on individual incomes, which were likely elevated by higher demand for digital services. In fact, nearly half of all respondents in the study said that 25% to 100% of their personal income is represented by WordPress – and that users who work with the platform more than 15 hours a week derive 48% of their income from WordPress.
This groundswell of increased WordPress use is tied to an average income increase of 0.1% across all markets, which represents an estimated $610 million impact on the overall economy.
<h2>Understanding the scope of the WordPress study</h2>
Given the explosive growth of WordPress, WP Engine commissioned this study to better understand the breadth, reach, and potential of the ecosystem.
In partnership with research firm <a href="https://www.vansonbourne.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vanson Bourne</a> and the <a href="https://www.gold.ac.uk/institute-management-studies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Institute of Management Studies (IMS) at Goldsmiths University of London</a>, the research was focused on the economic value and social impact of WordPress. The respective firms conducted reviews of academic and industry literature, as well as survey-based valuations of 103 research group members, 400 businesses, and 400 WordPress end users.
The study also included a diverse group of over 100 collaborators and co-marketers representing a cross-section of the WordPress ecosystem that derive revenue from the open source platform.
Based on the results of the study, WP Engine suggests that flexibility, lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and a growing open source community are the key factors that have made WordPress the most popular choice for a wide range of users.
The broader WordPress ecosystem is also a force multiplier. With over 500 hosting providers, 11,000 themes, and 60,000 plugins, WordPress has far surpassed the scope of any other website building platform. And with a CMS market share of nearly 65%, WordPress is nearly unreachable in terms of scale; in fact, the next most-used CMS, Shopify, has only a 5.5% market share.
<h2>A Legacy of WordPress innovation</h2>
Since its launch in 2003, WordPress has grown from a humble blogging engine to the worldwide de facto standard for building and managing websites.
Along the way, WP Engine emerged as a laser-focused WordPress hosting provider, working to make the open source framework more secure, scalable, and trusted – so it can meet the challenges of the digital economy head-on.
With more than 90,000 customers, WP Engine delivers a range of features that help fortify WordPress in key gap areas, providing DDoS mitigation, dev tools, SSL/CDN, backups, and even 24/7 dedicated support.
<h2>What does this study mean for the future of WordPress?</h2>
The power and reach of WordPress is undeniable. In less than two decades, it has shaped the internet in profound ways, and this research codifies its sweeping impact.
What’s abundantly clear is how WordPress has democratized the internet for builders at every level of the market. Once the niche domain of PHP developers and independent bloggers, the platform is now trusted by leading media brands like the <a href="https://wordpress.com/notable-users/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">New York Times</a> and public sector entities like <a href="https://wordpress.org/showcase/the-white-house/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The White House</a>.
While open source is undoubtedly one of the biggest advantages to WordPress, it remains one of its most persistent challenges. As companies wrestle with increased security requirements and heightened compliance around data privacy, WordPress struggles with risks from outdated plugins, themes, and other exploitable vulnerabilities.
When it comes to the eCommerce horizon, WordPress also faces growing headwinds from players like <a href="https://www.shopify.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Shopify</a> and other services that offer complete solutions. Additionally, the wave of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headless_content_management_system" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headless CMS</a> options continues to grow, providing developers with secure and scalable choices that are more purpose-built for API and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JAMstack</a> applications.
But this is where WP Engine continues to prove its value as an industry-leading platform. Their solution provides an answer to many of the challenges that exist with WordPress, powering more than 1.5 million digital experiences with trusted, managed solutions. While competition continues to increase up and down the CMS and DXP stack, WordPress on WP Engine looks to have a very promising future ahead.
We highly recommend reading this study. But put down your drink first. These numbers are… well… intimidating.
<h2>About WP Engine</h2>
WP Engine, the WordPress technology company, provides the most relied upon and trusted brands and developer-centric WordPress products for companies and agencies of all sizes, including managed WordPress hosting, enterprise WordPress, headless WordPress, Flywheel, Local and Genesis. WP Engine’s tech innovation and award-winning WordPress experts help to power more than 1.5 million sites across 150 countries.

WP Engine Releases World’s First Study of the WordPress Economy, Cites Awe-Inspiring Numbers

Composite illustration of WordPress logo and growth chart with man pointing upwards.

If you've seen <a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/series/the-mandalorian/3jLIGMDYINqD">"The Mandalorian" on Disney Plus</a>, you're probably familiar with the gunslinging protagonist's mantra: This is the way.
In a swirling galaxy of CMS and DXP platforms, <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/?utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=2021_06_09_series_b_funding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Contentstack</a> is proving that headless is the way – and gambling big to expand its empire.
Today, the content experience company announced that it has raised <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/blog/announcements/b-stands-for-believe-and-57-5-million/">$57.5 million in Series B financing</a>, making it the latest enterprise platform to tap major investment dollars. Their ambition is clear: fuel international growth, expand an ecosystem of channel and technology partners and accelerate new technology innovation incubating in its labs.
The oversubscribed round was led by <a href="https://www.insightpartners.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Insight Partners</a>, who also piloted the company’s Series A round. Existing investors <a href="https://illuminate.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Illuminate Ventures</a> and <a href="https://gingerbreadcap.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gingerbread Capital</a> also participated, as did new investor <a href="https://georgian.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Georgian</a>. Together, the investment pool brings Contentstack’s total amount raised to $89 million – a healthy sum for financing their competitive goals in an increasingly dense marketplace.
“Contentstack has risen from being the pioneer of headless CMS to establishing itself as an industry leader in its category and we are excited to support its next phase of growth,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/teddie/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Teddie Wardi</a>, Managing Director at Insight Partners and Contentstack board member. “Given our scale, we have a unique vantage point on global trends; Contentstack is tapping into the tailwinds of one of the biggest market shifts we’ve ever seen. Contentstack is indispensable for companies that want to accelerate their digital journey and maximize the business rewards promised by digital transformation.”
<h2>The impact of Covid-19 on digital transformation</h2>
According to <a href="https://www.twilio.com/press/releases/twilio-study-finds-covid-19-accelerated-companies-digital-communications-strategy-by-six-years" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a recent study from Twilio,</a> COVID-19 was the "digital accelerant" of the decade for many companies, pushing up their digital communications investments by an average of 6 years. Given that, it is no surprise that <a href="https://www.prweb.com/releases/aragon_predicts_the_content_experience_platforms_market_to_reach_28_8_billion_by_2025/prweb17737402.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Aragon Research forecasts</a> the CXP market will grow to $28.8 billion by 2025 (up from $11 billion in 2019). Additionally, 50% of large enterprises are expected to shift to a CXP by the end of 2022 alone.
It's impossible to ignore the impact of Covid-19 on the digital landscape and igniting unprecedented growth. To that end, Contentstack is positioning itself to capitalize on this opportunity by offering modern, <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">MACH-based</a> solutions that outperform traditional product suites and legacy technologies.
<h2>Expanding growth with headless CMS</h2>
Since closing its Series A round, Contentstack's headless CMS has experienced over 150% growth across its customer base – and more than doubled the number of Fortune 1,000 companies that have adopted its platform.
"The company’s outstanding results were fueled by unprecedented market demand for powerful digital experiences due to the pandemic, as businesses were compelled to deliver content-rich digital interactions across the spectrum," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehasampat/">Neha Sampat</a>, founder and CEO of Contentstack. "In the last year, we have helped leading companies in industries such as retail, financial services, gaming, and travel to create personalized experiences for their customers in order to drive revenue, improve customer satisfaction and build customer loyalty."
New customers include a number of well-known international brands, including Broadcom, Chico’s FAS, HP, La Perla, Leesa Sleep, McDonald’s, and NBC. Because of this growth, the amount of digital content powered by Contentstack grew a staggering 60X over the same time period. Individual customers now serve petabytes of content to their audiences every month – marking significant growth around delivery.
"This round of financing demonstrates that our strategy is paying off, including our core beliefs around equality, customer care, and product innovation," said Sampat. "During a remarkably challenging year, our team delivered impressive results and we are excited to continue this growth trajectory by delivering the best agile CMS platform for a digital-first world.”
One example of Contentstack's recent success is Harbor Capital Advisors, which was experiencing pressure from their marketing team to revamp their website and CMS, estimating it would take a year or more to make updates to their legacy system. They chose Contentstack because it offered a simple, straightforward user interface that didn’t require reading the documentation to use. After implementation, Harbor experienced a 75% reduction in developer time, expanded their content production, and increased site change frequency to weekly and even daily intervals.
<h2>Enhancing UI and investing in AI/ML</h2>
In February, Contentstack launched an elegant <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/contentstack-reimagines-enterprise-content-management-for-new-user-experience/?utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=2021_06_09_series_b_funding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">new user interface</a>, raising the bar for UI experiences among CMS products and enhancing the visual sophistication of their product. Additionally, with the backing of Georgian – a significant investor in <a href="https://www.temenos.com/news/2020/10/16/kony-is-now-temenos/">Kony (Temenos)</a>, <a href="https://www.shopify.com/">Shopify</a>, and <a href="https://tealium.com/">Tealium</a> – Contentstack plans to add AI and machine learning capabilities across all aspects of its operations, from delivery to customer success operations.
“We are big believers in Contentstack and the leadership team, especially after our conversations with global brands revealed how important Contentstack is to these organizations and how beloved the product is by both business and technical users,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/emily-walsh-15593a11/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Emily Walsh</a>, Lead Investor at Georgian. “Now with access to our technology platform, Contentstack can not only gain operational efficiencies but also supercharge the innovation, experience and support it offers to customers and partners. We are excited to help Contentstack customers leverage AI to gain business advantages through new insights and automation.”
<h2>Q&amp;A with Neha Sampat, CEO of Contentstack</h2>
In our exclusive Q&amp;A with Neha Sampat, we asked key questions about the current state of Content Management Systems, Contentstack's investment in AI, and the roadmap for the future.
CC (CMS Critic): What is your opinion on headless versus traditional or hybrid platforms? NS (Neha Sampat): Traditional CMS represents the past, a world in which the primary (and only) digital channel was the web – and the tighter things were coupled, the faster you could get results. Today, with the rise of many more digital channels, that tight coupling has become a hindrance. Headless represents a new architecture that allows companies to be more agile and to deliver seamless, and rich content experiences. It allows business needs to influence technology decisions, rather than technology dictating business processes. Hybrid in our opinion is a half-step in the right direction. Just like hybrid-cloud has its place, hybrid CMS will find its takers. But the biggest benefits are to be had for digitally ready organizations that can fully embrace the new architecture, which the market is calling MACH – microservices, APIs, cloud-native SaaS and headless.
CC: In your press release, you say that with the backing of Georgian, you'll be investing more in AI across your platform. Can you give us more details? NS: Georgian (our new investor) actually has an incredible track record of leveraging AI in lots of different ways across its portfolio companies, ranging from streamlining go to market operations, to making financial forecasts more predictable, to accelerating customer onboarding, to delivering personalized customer experiences at scale via conversational channels. Within the Contentstack platform itself, there are countless opportunities for self-optimizing algorithms, automation and AI-driven insights to add value and differentiation. We will be exploring all of these aspects and more as part of our new partnership with Georgian. CC: There's been a big shift in the overall marketplace with recent acquisitions to build more integrated offerings, particularly around data services. The most recent examples are <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-acquires-customer-data-platform-zaius/">Optimizely acquiring the customer data platform Zaius</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sitecore-acquires-boxever-and-four51/">Sitecore acquiring Boxever</a>, a SaaS-based customer data platform providing decisioning and experimentation. How do you see the competitive field changing with large players doubling-down on CDP purchases and enhancing optimization/personalization capabilities? NS: We’ve seen a lot of larger companies try to infuse new technologies into their legacy offerings. Acquiring appropriate technology companies is only a small part of that journey. Integrating offerings from different eras, offering a smooth migration for existing customers, making sure new customers aren’t confused by a cobbled-together product portfolio – all that takes time and doesn’t come without risk. Outside of acquisition sprees, we’ve also seen vendors from different categories partner together in new ways – for example, via industry alliances like the <a href="https://machalliance.org/">MACH Alliance</a> – streamlining their products and even their go-to-market operations. The value to customers is that instead of being limited to the capabilities of any particular vendor, they can benefit from an easily composable technology stack that brings together best-in-class components from all domains. It’s the best of both worlds – with choice and seamless integration no longer being on opposite sides of the table. CC: Are there any exclusive new features that you might have in the pipeline that are worth teasing the market with? Any market applications, industries, or partner channels where you're creating opportunities? NS: Lots and lots in the pipeline – watch this space 🙂
<h2>What's next for Contentstack</h2>
There's no question that Contentstack is on a roll, and under Sampat's keen leadership, poised for more growth. As headless continues to shift the roles and responsibilities for a CMS within a ContentOps strategy, it will be interesting to see how players like Contentstack innovate around the key challenge for every headless platform: the ability to preview experiences.
As <a href="https://preston.so/writing/digital-experience-orchestration-and-the-problem-of-headless-cms-preview/">Preston So</a> observed in his article about digital orchestration, vendors are grappling with a "channel explosion" that continues to evolve. If Contentstack can continue to innovate around these challenges, they might be telling the rest of the headless market: This is the way.
<h2>Recent accolades</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.contentstack.com/resources/wr/forrester-wave-report/?utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=2021_06_09_series_b_funding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">"Strong Performer" in The Forrester Wave™: Agile Content Management Systems (CMSes), Q1 2021</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.g2.com/categories/headless-cms?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp;selected_view=grid&amp;segment=enterprise#grid" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">G2 Grid® for the top Headless CMS Software</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.inc.com/best-workplaces/2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Inc. Magazine's "Best Places to Work," May/June 2021</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.customerzone360.com/topics/customer/articles/448274-recipients-the-2021-customer-products-the-year-award.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Customer Magazine's 2021 Product of the Year Award</a></li>
<li><a href="https://atxwoman.com/womans-way/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Woman's Way Business Awards for 2021 Business to Watch</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/contentstack-wins-four-2020-comparably-best-places-to-work-awards-301099999.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Comparably "Best Places to Work" Awards</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>About Insight Partners</h2>
Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit <a href="http://www.insightpartners.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">www.insightpartners.com</a> or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.
<h2>About Georgian</h2>
Georgian is a fintech company investing in high-growth software companies that harness the power of data in a trustworthy way. At Georgian, we're building a platform to provide a better experience of growth capital to software company CEOs and their teams. Georgian's platform is designed to identify and accelerate the best growth-stage software companies, taking an intelligent, data-first approach to solving the key challenges CEOs face as they grow their businesses. Based in Toronto, Georgian's team brings together software entrepreneurs, machine learning experts, experienced operators, and investment professionals. For more information, visit <a href="https://georgian.io/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://georgian.io/</a>.
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<h2>About Contentstack</h2>
Contentstack – the pioneering Agile Content Management System (CMS) – empowers marketers and developers to collaborate around content like never before. Together, they can orchestrate superior customer journeys and deliver dynamic digital experiences across channels, audiences, brands, and regions. Companies such as Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald’s, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, Sephora, and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences. Famous for its Care Without Compromise™, Contentstack has the industry’s highest customer satisfaction. As a founder of the MACH Alliance, Contentstack advocates for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. Learn more at <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/?utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=2021_06_09_series_b_funding" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.contentstack.com</a>.
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Contentstack Raises $57.5 Million in Series B Round: Q&A with CEO Neha Sampat

Contentstack logo with image of Neha Sampat, CEO

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If you are reading these lines, there’s a fair chance that you’ve worked with content management systems for some time and perhaps have even used multiple different systems.
Now, if you close your eyes for a moment: Try to pretend that you don’t know much about CMS and the confusing marketplace. And then put yourself in the shoes of a buyer - a customer who needs a new CMS to power their digital experience. How would you navigate and make sense of it all?
Would you look at analyst reports? Vendor websites talking about DXP with CMS appearing below the fold? Would you rely on your digital agency of choice? There are many options, many considerations, and it’s quite confusing, to be blunt. Perhaps even more so now than twenty years ago, and to add some more pressure: Today your website is much more important than back then.
In this post, I’ll try to help you make sense of it all. Based on input from the CMS Expert community, I hope you’ll leave with some helpful and useful guidance to make sense of it all. Let’s start with going back in time to understand why it’s not easy.
<h3>Understand the CMS problem before solving it</h3>
Twenty years ago, I worked at a CMS vendor based outside Frankfurt, Germany and I thought I knew all there was to know about the crowded, confusing, and immature marketplace for content management systems.
Or perhaps rather, I was pretty sure I had a firm grip on what buyers needed, how to address the challenges, and how to navigate the still young marketplace.
Little did I know that outside my echo chamber, there was so much more to learn and understand.
Having worked for four years in various pre-sales, consulting, and product management roles, I had the privilege of visiting customers, prospects, and partners and seeing many different organizations behind the scenes. We also frequently ran into competitors and our partners also worked with multiple vendors.
You might think that back then, CMS was basically publishing webpages. It was much more. Much of the feature set you’ll find today was also there back in 2001. There was personalization, static or dynamic content, caching, workflows, mobile content, and much more.
My training was that CMS covered the digital content lifecycle from the cradle to the grave:
<ul>
<li>Content acquisition, like from existing sources, databases, external repositories</li>
<li>Content creation</li>
<li>Composition</li>
<li>Delivery</li>
<li>Archiving</li>
</ul>
Few CMS vendors cared much about archiving. Some vendors only covered the first 2 or 3 bullets and would later be known as headless. Some focused mostly on the last bullets and others tried to do it all.
And that’s the problem in a nutshell: An almost endless amount of use cases. If you then add plenty of room for innovation, the power of digital transformation and increasing spend, then you know why this space hasn’t exactly consolidated as some analysts predicted back then. Instead, it’s become more crowded and more confusing.
Before we move on, there’s also an important piece of good news: Thankfully, many more projects are succeeding. Let’s look at how you can find your way through the CMS maze.
<h3>Focus on your projects, but do your CMS homework</h3>
My preference is to look at how customers are doing it to identify patterns, but as the saying goes: All roads lead to Rome.
There are indeed many ways to smarten up and make sense of the CMS market. Irrespective of your path, I would encourage you to focus on your projects, your initiatives, and time-to-market. It requires many full-time jobs to stay on top of the CMS market – and it is a fast-moving market. Your job is probably to make a tool selection or to inform one and then move onto actually creating value. Keep that in mind so that you don’t fall into CMS analysis paralysis.
In my previous post, I shared <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/what-can-we-learn-from-the-w3c-cms-selection-process/">what we can learn from the W3C CMS selection process</a>. In brief, this was a story about a public tender with requirements, a strong emphasis on accessibility, and a selection process led by a customer in close collaboration with a digital agency.
Recognizing that you and your organization don’t know everything about the problem at hand at the beginning is a good place to start.
Leave some time and budget for learning. In particular, as you’ll run into confusing and contradicting messaging along the way.
Actually, when it comes to learning, and before picking one or multiple CMS vendors, now would be a good time to read a book like<a href="https://deanebarker.net/books/"> Real World Content Modeling by Deane Barker</a>. It’s absolutely worthwhile to know what you want to do with your content before you put it in a new CMS. I've written more about the book in this piece: <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/blog/2019/12/11/happy-editors-make-better-content" rel="noopener noreferrer">Happy editors make better content</a>.
You might also want to make key decisions about:
<ul>
<li>Who will own the experience?</li>
<li>What about headless?</li>
<li>How will you allow for interoperability?</li>
</ul>
So far, so good? Let’s move on to how to get more clarity and make sense of it all.
<h3>Getting ready to set sail in the sea of content management systems</h3>
Moving on from your own requirements and key initiatives, some customers turn to industry analysts. Several of them cover this space, although some today prefer DXP (Digital Experience Platforms).
Recently, Gartner released their 2021 Magic Quadrant for DXP, which covers key trends and vendors. A good place to start is this post with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/key-takeaways-from-gartners-2021-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms/">Key Takeaways from Gartner’s 2021 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a>. To name just a few vendors included: In the leaders’ quadrant, you’ll find quite different vendors like Sitecore and Liferay, while Salesforce is rated as a challenger and Magnolia introduced as a niche player.
Forrester also came up with an Agile CMS report. In the evaluation, Adobe was listed as an agile CMS, <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/vendors/contentful">Contentful</a> is a strong performer and Acquia is also in there. These are quite different vendors with quite different systems. If you read the report, you can find both an overview of Agile CMS market trends and evaluations of 15 vendors’ offerings, strategy, and market presence. I haven’t yet heard customers ask for an agile CMS, but sometimes analysts do start a trend.
Traditionally, open-source options are missing from the major analyst reports. Some analysts have revenue requirements for inclusion, which makes it hard, while others look at global adoption or other criteria.
Besides the industry analysts, I would rather recommend turning to your digital agency or agencies of choice. How about asking them for their recommendations? They probably know you well and also have a decent understanding of the CMS marketplace. There’s good guidance to be found among trusted advisors whose jobs and businesses depend on getting your project across the finishing line.
Finally, as you are out in the open waters and swimming in the sea. You’ll likely discover vendors that you hadn’t heard about in advance. Some will try to change the game by turning your attention to their approach, their unique feature, and why you should choose them. That’s all normal and a part of it. Keep an open mind, but do try to keep the focus on your projects. Time spent talking to references is well spent.
Think you need a life jacket? In the final chapter, I’ll do my best to make sure you don’t drown.
<h3>Inconvenient truths about the CMS marketplace</h3>
You might think that after all these years, a helpful vendor or digital agency should be able to easily size up your project and tell you what it will take in terms of budget and team size to swim safely. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
You’ll need to speak to multiple vendors, and ideally, multiple digital agencies to get the best proposal on the table. You’ll probably find quite different pricing and sizing in their suggestions, and you might also need to change course along the way, but that’s a part of it.
Do try to seek inspiration from peers. That’s a key part of going to conferences or attending something like our <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/groups/cms-experts">CMS Expert community</a>. By speaking to peers, you’ll get the insider story on the good, the bad, and the ugly. You’ll probably hear something on governance, working with the agency, and helpful insights on their CMS. As always: The devil is in the details.
Finally, a word on risk: Surely, there’s a difference between picking a regional vendor like Norwegian <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/vendors/enonic">Enonic</a> or a global powerhouse like Adobe. Yes, but just because Adobe is big doesn’t necessarily mean that they are more committed and more willing to invest and stay in the CMS space compared to smaller and lesser-known vendors. Just a few examples:
<ul>
<li>IBM sold their CMS offering to HCL</li>
<li>Microsoft discontinued their CMS</li>
<li>Interwoven was big back then but acquired by Autonomy</li>
</ul>
To be fair, there are still customers using IBM, Microsoft, and Interwoven to power their website. Just please don’t discount smaller vendors as riskier than larger ones.
Good luck!
P.S. – Deane Barker also wrote a recommended book on the topic that is packed with valuable lessons: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Things-You-Should-Know-Technology-ebook/dp/B086SCGCN8">Things You Should Know: 25 Lessons I've Learned About Selecting Content Technology and Services</a>
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How to make sense of the CMS market in 2021

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A short while after Amazon said hello to <a href="https://tamebay.com/2021/02/amazon-breaks-a-100-billion-quarter-with-record-sales.html#:~:text=Jeff%20Bezos%20chose%20Amazon's%20best,%24100%20billion%20quarter%20sales%20barrier.">$100 billion in a single quarter</a>, it said goodbye to its founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos.
After 30 years, the internet retailer announced that <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/jeff-bezos-to-step-down-as-amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-to-take-over-in-q3.html">Bezos would step down</a> as chief executive officer and transition to the role of executive chairman. The plan will take effect in Q3 of 2021, with Bezos continuing to work on initiatives like his namesake Earth Fund, <a href="https://www.blueorigin.com/">Blue Origin</a>, The Washington Post, and other passion projects.
Bezos will leave an astounding legacy. What started as a small online bookstore has become the template for e-Commerce and digital innovation. It has changed industries, challenged supply chains, redefined distribution, and ushered in the modern concept of the digital customer experience.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon provided a lifeline to millions of sheltered citizens toiling for toilet paper in a contactless world. It also created jobs around the globe that were deemed essential during an economic crisis.
While those positive attributes persist, the Bezos regime has left an indelible red mark on the retail industry. For better or worse, the Amazon Effect has had a profound <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/insights/amazon-effect-us-economy/">impact on our economy</a>, and is often linked to the dreaded "retail apocalypse" playing out in shopping malls around the U.S.
In physical retail realm, Amazon has been met with a range of successes and failures, which include the purchase of high-end grocer Whole Foods to the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/retailers-wary-amazon-com-closing-150500266.html">shuttering of nearly 100 pop-up stores</a> in 2019. This manic foray is still nascent, but they have a lot of money to experiment with.
Bezos has not been without controversy both in his personal and professional lives. And while the exploits of the world’s richest man will continue to be fodder for media over-analysis, what’s more interesting – and speaks volumes about Amazon’s future – is his replacement: Andy Jassy.
<h3 id="who-exactly-is-andy-jassy">Who exactly is Andy Jassy?</h3>
Jassy, who currently heads the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division, has been a fixture at the retail juggernaut nearly as long as Bezos. Over the course of his 24-year tenure, he is credited with building AWS into the world’s most profitable cloud computing brand – and charting a new course for the internet giant in an evolving, highly-competitive digital world.
When Amazon <a href="https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-web-services-launches-amazon-s3-simple-storage-service">launched AWS in 2006</a>, it happened with very little fanfare; the cloud computing division was, after all, designed to support the growth of their online bookselling empire. They needed a modern infrastructure to meet customer demand, adapt quickly to changes, and manage resources around the seasonal buying habits of shoppers.
It’s fair to say that AWS was born out of Amazon’s need to “scratch its own itch.” Yet within a decade, it had created a tectonic shift in the technology landscape.
As the Amazon mothership diversified and expanded its retail offerings, so too did AWS. And it was under Andy Jassy’s leadership and vision that the cloud computing division was groomed as its own profit center – to the point where <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/02/aws-earnings-q4-2020.html#:~:text=AWS%20continued%20to%20drive%20much,same%20period%20a%20year%20ago.">AWS has become the growth engine for its parent company.</a>
<h3 id="a-brief-history-of-jassy-at-aws">A brief history of Jassy at AWS</h3>
Like Bezos, Jassy’s own career with Amazon is a legend in its own right. Shortly after graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School, he joined the fledgling startup in 1997. After a stint in marketing, he and Bezos collaborated on the concept for AWS, leveraging the company’s growing footprint of data centers to building a virtual ecosystem for hosting business services and applications.
What started as a small initiative with less than 60 employees has ballooned to over 25,000 worldwide and $40 billion in revenue – and Jassy’s fortunes have skyrocketed in lockstep. As CEO of AWS, he now earns the kind of money that buys a stake in the <a href="https://www.nhl.com/kraken">Seattle Kraken hockey club</a>.
As the new CEO of Amazon, he might be buying an entire team. Or a league.
In the early days, AWS (run by then Amazon CTO Allan Vermeulen) offered a limited spectrum of services within their e-Commerce-as-a-service model. The tools were mostly disparate, and the offerings still primitive.
When Jassy started managing the portfolio at <a href="http://amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">Amazon.com</a> Web Services (as it was called) in 2003, he laid out a vision for an “Internet OS” after seeing their own teams struggle with infrastructure issues. He outlined key areas like database, storage, and compute as foundational components, all based on how <a href="http://amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">Amazon.com</a> was leveraging them in a scalable, cost-effective manner.
Fast forward, and AWS has perfected this model across hundreds of services that support every kind of application – from storage to satellites. Customers can outsource their computing and infrastructure needs in regions around the world, allowing them to run and scale applications while controlling capacity at every turn.
The other big concept that Jassy helped pioneer was AWS’ subscription-based pricing. Trading CapEx for OpEx allowed businesses to part ways with expensive hardware and maintenance and instead focus on operations. This pay-as-you-go model has eliminated costly long-term contracts, reduced dependency on data centers, and democratized the cloud by lowering the barriers to entry.
<h3 id="the-impact-of-aws-on-digital-experience">The impact of AWS on digital experience</h3>
As digital experiences have evolved, so have their reliance on cloud infrastructure. For e-Commerce websites, running a digital business application that’s “cloud-first” or purpose-built for AWS provides an unmatched set of advantages like rapidly scaling resources, enhancing redundancy, and reducing capacity costs through optimization.
The cloud has had a profound effect on applications that leverage these capabilities, including content management (CMS), digital experience (DXP), customer relationship (CRM), marketing automation, and customer data. Solutions that are “cloud-first” or purpose-built for AWS can connect and scale in ways that were previously unimaginable, and this has influenced how enterprises select platforms as part of their stack.
Software that's designed for the cloud will have the advantage in a cloud world. When considering a CMS, DXP, or CRM platform, organizations will rely on security artifacts, deep learning algorithms, and other advanced cloud services that can be orchestrated through these platforms. Add the complexity of compliance (such as GDPR and CCPA) and the cloud becomes a governance watchdog.
What's exciting is that many of these solutions can be procured in the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace">AWS Marketplace</a>, a virtual shopping mall for applications designed to run on AWS. As they continue to pioneer new services, AWS is enhancing these platforms with AI and machine learning capabilities like <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/personalize/">Amazon Personalize</a>, which provides a subscription-based recommendation engine using the same technology that powers <a href="http://amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">Amazon.com</a>.
Under Jassy’s leadership, digital experience has been thrust to the forefront of business imperatives. Exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, more organizations are relying on the cloud and digital transformation to adapt to a new world of “digital-first” commerce – and AWS is powering the transformation.
<h3 id="what-does-jassy-s-role-as-amazon-ceo-signal-for-the-future">What does Jassy’s role as Amazon CEO signal for the future?</h3>
This is a brave, new world – and it’s Andy Jassy’s for the taking. As he assumes command of the Amazon flagship later this year, all eyes will be on him.
Amazon’s selection of Jassy was based heavily on his track record at AWS. But what this move signals is the global shift in consumer habits, and how the cloud will be instrumental to unlocking the future.
During his keynote speech at <a href="https://youtu.be/xZ3k7Fd6_eU">AWS re:Invent</a> in December 2020, Jassy said that the Covid-19 pandemic “accelerated cloud adoption by several years.” This reality will serve as his greatest opportunity, but also his greatest challenge. Competitors are rising from all corners of the globe with a focus on owning the digital consumer, and that means innovation will be essential to his success.
From the beginning, Jassy has been leading AWS to innovate rapidly and push the boundaries. Technologies like <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/containers/">containers</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=aws+serverless+computing&amp;rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS763US764&amp;oq=aws+serverless+computing&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l6j69i64l2.4454j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8">serverless computing</a> – widely seen as the next wave of digital transformation – are beginning to power everything. By leveraging Jassy’s expertise around these cutting-edge innovations, Amazon can draft a roadmap for offering advanced services across their channels.
The lesser-known AWS Marketplace might be one area where Jassy blends cloud services through Amazon. While traditionally a DevOps-focused shopping experience, the AWS Marketplace is already offering more business applications that are built for the cloud. This could be expanded to include SaaS technologies sold more broadly across the Amazon ecosystem.
<h3 id="the-challenges-ahead">The challenges ahead</h3>
For Bezos, Amazon has always been a sandbox for invention. Maybe its greatest invention is the grooming of Andy Jassy as its leader.
Time and again, Jassy has executed a cohesive vision, generating billions and growing Amazon into a titan.
But where do you go when you’ve already reached the top?
One place to start might be the relationship with large retailers – the very brands that Amazon has eaten away at for years. Borders, Toys ‘R Us, and other legacy brick-and-mortar players struggled and lost to the convenience and delivery of Amazon. Needless to say, when it comes to Amazon, trust is a rare commodity among many retail brands.
But as Walmart (arguably Amazon’s biggest challenger) continues to expand their own offerings, many retailers like Nordstrom and Nike have turned to AWS to juice their digital experiences by running mission-critical workloads in the cloud.
As the early moves begin to crystallize, what’s already clear is the rising challenge from competitive clouds (think <a href="https://cloud.google.com/">Google</a>, <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/">Microsoft</a>, and even <a href="https://us.alibabacloud.com/">Alibaba</a>), the ever-present threat of Walmart and its breadth of physical locations, and the looming governance around data privacy. There are also lingering issues around the company’s reputation as a "business killer," despite having over a million businesses operating on their platform.
Perhaps the only certainty that Andy Jassy faces is change. 2020 accelerated digital, but 2021 may bring an unexpected fork in the road. Jassy is inheriting an empire he helped build, so he knows it more intimately than almost anyone. That gives him an unmatched insight to adapt and thrive in a changing world.
With millions of products and services under the Amazon/AWS umbrella – from cloud to streaming video to <a href="https://www.housingwire.com/articles/49260-you-can-now-buy-your-house-on-amazon/#:~:text=Now%2C%20Amazon%20is%20making%20this,some%20are%20selling%20like%20hotcakes.&amp;text=Amazon's%20got%20you%20covered.,of%20292%20square%20feet.">prefabricated houses</a> – there's a vast kingdom to oversee. What could possibly go wrong?
You read that right: you can buy a house on Amazon.
Maybe Jassy’s next trick will be giving you an address on the moon.

Andy Jassy, Amazon’s new CEO, signals bold future for cloud and digital experiences

<a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en">Bloomreach</a>, a leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP), has announced their acquisition of <a href="http://www.exponea.com/">Exponea</a>, a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP). This news comes just months after both companies publicized a <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/bloomreach-and-exponea-announce-strategic-partnership-to-energize-digital-commerce-experiences/">formal strategic partnership</a>.
With the acquisition, Bloomreach could very well become the next SaaS “unicorn” of the digital experience stack, integrating their market-leading e-commerce capabilities with Exponea’s best-in-class customer data (CDP) and marketing automation platform. This combination has the potential to accelerate the creation, personalization, and optimization of powerful commerce experiences – and drive rapid growth for both B2C and B2B brands.
The last two weeks have seen a dramatic news cycle from across the DXP stack, with major investment announcements from industry leaders like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sitecore-embarks-on-1-2b-investment-plan-to-accelerate-growth/">Sitecore</a>. As Covid-fueled digital transformation continues to drive market activity, companies are leveraging billions to fund their expansion strategies. To support the acquisition of Exponea, Bloomreach also announced an investment of $150 million from Sixth Street Growth.
“We have been incredibly impressed by the leadership teams of both Bloomreach and Exponea and look forward to partnering with them as they continue to develop and capitalize on their market-leading platform,” said Michael McGinn, Partner at Sixth Street and co-head of Sixth Street Growth. “Technology serving more bespoke customer experiences is a rapidly expanding market and we are pleased to join Bloomreach in its leadership of the digital commerce experience and marketing sector.”
The investment from Sixth Street Growth will also fuel the ongoing growth of Bloomreach’s digital commerce experience platform. Bloomreach Experience Platform (<a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en/products/bloomreach-experience">brX</a>) drives over $200 billion in digital commerce experiences across many of the world’s largest online retailers, brands, distributors, and B2B manufacturers – representing 25% of retail e-commerce in the U.S. and U.K.
<h3 id="from-partnership-to-acquisition">From partnership to acquisition</h3>
As noted, Bloomreach and Exponea had only recently announced a strategic partnership – a calculated first step towards integrating the companies. By working with a shared customer base, it’s fair to say that the alliance served as a testing ground for combining Bloomreach’s rich catalog of DXP capabilities with Exponea’s customer-centric approach to unifying data.
As digital technologies evolve at an accelerated pace, enterprise organizations are doubling down on solutions that enhance the value of data. While third-party platforms will continue to have a role in every ecosystem, brands are struggling to stitch together multiple solutions with manual effort – and falling behind. By integrating the digital experience and customer data layers, businesses will have greater control over personalizing and optimizing the customer experience.
The combination of Bloomreach and Exponea will deliver the market’s only true commerce experience platform, unifying the full spectrum of customer and product data. Bloomreach’s real-time, AI-based recommendations and actions will allow clients to drive purchases and enhance loyalty, while Exponea’s customer data capabilities will augment relevance and improve performance. Further, Exponea’s leadership in consumer data, privacy, and security will ensure that customers can securely access and manage this powerful integration of data.
For information on how Exponea’s data privacy will be handled post-acquisition, click <a href="https://exponea.com/legal/data-privacy/">here</a>.
<h3 id="what-s-next-for-bloomreach">What’s next for Bloomreach?</h3>
DXP is on fire – and the Covid-19 pandemic was the match. As companies and brands pivoted towards digital at a breakneck pace, technology providers were crushed under the weight of a decade of transformation.
Consolidation continues to be a core strategy: in the past six months alone, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">Hyland acquired Alfresco</a>, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/twilio-acquires-segment-for-3-2b-adds-market-leading-cdp-for-building-data-driven-apps/">Twilio acquired Segment</a>, and most recently, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/episerver-rebrands-as-optimizely-following-acquisition/">Episerver acquired Optimizely</a>. Meanwhile, enterprise DXP providers such as <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-digital-commerce-unifies-data-content-commerce-and-digital-merchandising/">Acquia</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sitecore-embarks-on-1-2b-investment-plan-to-accelerate-growth/">Sitecore</a> released major new products and services. While acquisition is key, many leading DXP platforms (along with CMS, CRM, and more) are investing in innovation to compete beyond 2021.
With competition getting so fierce – particularly amongst enterprise players – Bloomreach is exerting more dominance in the e-commerce category. However, while other DXP and CMS platforms pose a threat to market share, one of the biggest existential challengers is <a href="https://www.amazon.com/">Amazon</a>.
By combining capabilities, Bloomreach and Exponea are continuing to fortify the beachhead against the world’s largest online retailer – and enabling brands to shape their e-commerce strategy to compete more effectively. This could give them a significant edge in the coming years, especially as Jeff Bezos steps down and Andy Jassy, the head of AWS, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/02/02/andy-jassy-to-become-amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-to-become-executive-chairman.html">takes the reins as Amazon’s new CEO</a>.
“Incredible e-commerce experiences happen when we reach a customer with exactly the right product at the right time on the right channel, and that requires a deep understanding of products and people which hasn’t been possible until now,” explained Raj De Datta, CEO, Bloomreach. “The coming together of Bloomreach and Exponea positions Bloomreach to be the market-leading commerce experience platform in a multi-billion-dollar market that is expanding quickly. As a solution, Bloomreach is now uniquely at the intersection of marketing, commerce, and AI.”
<h3 id="about-bloomreach">About Bloomreach</h3>
<a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en">Bloomreach</a> is a digital experience enhancement platform that enables highly personalized digital experiences for retailers, banks, distributors, manufacturers, public service agencies and other enterprises. It powers brands representing 25% of US and UK e-commerce. Its flagship product, brX, is a digital experience platform built specifically for brands, retailers, and B2B companies who want to grow their revenue online while delivering each of their customers a premium, personalized commerce experience. brX combines content management capabilities with market-leading commerce-specific, AI-driven search, merchandising, and personalization in one flexible, API-first next-generation platform. Bloomreach serves over 500 global brands including Albertsons, Staples, Bosch, Puma, FC Bayern München, and Marks &amp; Spencer.
<h3 id="about-exponea">About Exponea</h3>
<a href="https://exponea.com/">Exponea</a> is a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP) that collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints into a unified Single Customer View and utilizes this data to help e-commerce businesses to convert and retain customers by acting on customer signals with the right message at the perfect time through the preferred channel. Built from the ground up (i.e. no acquisitions) for retail and e-commerce, Exponea collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints to give businesses the insights and action opportunities they need to execute campaigns that deliver real results.
<h3 id="about-sixth-street">About Sixth Street</h3>
Sixth Street is a global investment firm with over $50 billion in assets under management and committed capital. Sixth Street Growth is the firm’s dedicated platform for making customized, non-control private investments in growth-oriented companies. The Sixth Street Growth team partners with companies and management teams to provide bespoke, accretive financing solutions that often fall between traditional growth equity and commercial debt. Sixth Street has invested over $4 billion in more than 40 companies in its growth investing strategy since inception. Select current and past representative Sixth Street Growth investments include Airbnb, AvidXchange, AvePoint, Gainsight, and MDLive.

Bloomreach Acquires Exponea, Secures $150M Investment to Power E-Commerce SaaS Expansion

The last year has seen a number of jaw-dropping moves by CMS and DXP vendors, from strategic acquisitions to major expansions. Yesterday, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore</a> elevated the noise to a whole new level with the largest martech investment deal ever.
The digital experience platform provider <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2021/01/sitecore-embarks-on-1_2b-investment-plan-to-accelerate-growth">announced</a> that it received backing on $1.2 billion in capital investment – just five months after <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sitecore-names-steve-tzikakis-as-chief-executive-officer/">Steve Tzikakis</a> took the reins as CEO.
While the announcement was relatively soft on specifics, Sitecore did say that the investment would be focused on accelerating product innovation, doubling their go-to-market presence, expanding their team, growing their global footprint, and launching a brand campaign.
One thing we do know is that Sitecore appears to be well-positioned for growth, achieving record revenues over the last three quarters. Much of this can be attributed to accelerated demand for digital transformation due to the pandemic. According to <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/how-covid-19-has-pushed-companies-over-the-technology-tipping-point-and-transformed-business-forever">McKinsey</a>, the industry jumped years ahead in consumer and business adoption of digital in just a matter of weeks. This has created numerous opportunities in the eCommerce, web, mobile, and digital experience categories.
“An investment of this magnitude in our industry is unprecedented,” said Steve Tzikakis, Sitecore's CEO. “As companies and consumers search for more seamless ways to communicate, coordinate, and collaborate during this momentous period, Sitecore’s investment will supercharge product innovation in order to better enable deeper and more engaging experiences across the entire customer journey.”
There's no question that Covid-19 forced businesses to shift their focus to digital. Sitecore has already been very agile in responding to these unprecedented market shifts, investing heavily in the transformation of their products and services. Less than 6 months ago, Sitecore pushed a <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sitecore-updates-experience-platform-and-experience-commerce-releases-new-sitecore-content-hub/">major release to its flagship products</a> – Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10 and Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10 – with the main goal of bringing marketing and IT teams together and allowing them to work more efficiently.
“Global Markets today are undergoing monumental shifts, and the need for digital experiences that fabricate and define Human Connections are becoming more important,” <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tzikakis_today-is-a-very-special-day-on-my-journey-activity-6706590350095523840-ndmi">said</a> Tzikakis, when he joined Sitecore. “Our customers and partners can expect to see us accelerate our global expansion plans and innovation of more market-leading cloud and SaaS solutions, while further increasing our customer-centric DNA.”
With Tzikakis at the helm, Sitecore has focused its strategy on expanding global reach and elevating brand awareness. This $1.2 billion investment is a testament to their growing momentum, as well as their confidence around market demand for their products and services. With increasing competition up and down the stack, this news is a clear signal that we can expect more innovation from the DXP leader in the months and years to come.
<h3 id="about-sitecore">About Sitecore</h3>
Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform (DXP) that empowers the world’s smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers. A highly decorated industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Carnival Cruise Lines, Kimberly-Clark, L’Oréal, and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalized experiences for their customers. Learn more at <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore.com</a>.

Sitecore Announces $1.2B Investment to Accelerate Growth

ButterCMS has been a favorite of developers for years, garnering some of the best reviews of any headless CMS on the market. Now, with the addition of its <a href="https://buttercms.com/features/?utm_source=referral&amp;utm_medium=guest-post&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic&amp;utm_content=components-post#flexiblecontentmodeling-components">new Components feature</a>, Butter is poised to gain some serious ground with marketing teams as well.
Components give marketers the ability to build dynamic landing pages. This means marketers can try new ideas, run new tests, and publish entirely unique pages - all with minimal support from their engineering teams.
The addition of components opens up a new world of possibilities for marketers while simplifying the development process for sites and apps built on many popular tech stacks.
<h2 id="a-new-way-of-doing-things">A new way of doing things</h2>
As ButterCMS Founder Jake Lumetta points out, the addition of components adds new layers of flexibility and control that traditional CMS doesn’t offer.
“Many marketers have to schedule a developer each time they want to make a change to a page. Even marketers who already have a good CMS are often limited to controlling content within a static layout,” says Lumetta. “Components give marketers the ability to add, remove, and reorder the elements of a page. This is a level of control some marketers have never had before.”
Today’s results-oriented marketing teams need the ability to continually test content and page variations. Components enable this, and they allow the marketing team to implement many changes on their own, without a developer.
Engineering configures a standard set of components upfront and creates the code to render those components as desired. Marketing can then choose which components to include in a page, and also gets complete control over the content.
<h2 id="how-components-work">How components work</h2>
While this change represents a major turning point in the workflow for developers and content marketers, it is a relatively small change to the ButterCMS user interface. Two new field types enable the component-based approach.
The first new field type is components. A component is essentially a repeatable grouping of fields. One component might include all of the copy and images for the page’s hero section, while another might include all of the links for the footer.
Components enable marketing teams to create standardized page elements, control their content, and easily reorder them within a page.
The second new field type is the component picker. The component picker provides a library of components that marketing can use to build whole pages. Components can be repeated and reordered within a page, providing the flexibility to use any combination and any number of components.
The result is that engineering builds one template, while marketing gets access to many dynamic landing pages.
<h2 id="building-a-page-with-buttercms-components">Building a page with ButterCMS components</h2>
Building a page with components is simple and intuitive. To illustrate, let’s look at the process you would follow to create this landing page:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/3Sk2yKrvHyafd70wxmQVx7vZkVD7SwWvFjTb9_kBP6w8c4qAuerh8qQMlF8ZctDF144z-UuOHksPEs8Ijk-OobgNSsi4E-_ZZpm2dfZhSGdSRHpLQ759zBmUYvol81zUFRCgwhqS" alt="undefined" /></figure>
This is a fairly standard landing page, but it has many different elements, each with its own layout requirements. If we break this page down into components, a few of them might look like this:
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/z5IdOaI2QFHoi8yp-70x46BEV_Cl74xhgV3ceC3wJNs7_gH-Wv7cjtKMj-guPYLHo1G9ejjaUN0MfOIrVhKKrlxuxXbbptotSW1KxTt80f3zKBu4p1-TWmVO2crJXnIx5vgzL9cM" alt="undefined" /></figure>
This component contains the content fields for the hero section.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/fcAsnmNNzj0EDL7ziwoN_Tm7YboXZH_fQrY88gILhae8A_yzfD5Ro0YBNJ-ncDHJ-8EuXCQQlZWb1K0RvE_zHY5WQfOMRB4vP8XEBQK0BYnGHmgT7iX9ghAZCB_5y10ELMGiC93t" alt="undefined" /></figure>
This component contains content fields for a call-out section with an image.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/HcIC3Oy0niXntGlub7Whv3Qr05HJCujRsKuMntjZMAbDN2mB57Q8_ZXVY_nWq74YscK0PiNhTil78FVFJO4cp7sxi9H3V9PSboYwk1HJgFPv6CeK5FHg3JxFSU1mLUfvLxki4gVd" alt="undefined" /></figure>
This component contains content fields for a call-out section without an image.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/fXGaYQbchHNuDI7yj_UXgJmJlXh8P9ssb1MbNBOhyJPlE0K-PYVJm1xSx9i6-TtSj4DXiaDEK0ahnadtcftjxDAYyR0VhXFjATY9-p9_pdo5ahSY0TgUJ3gW6wpbyayzaAVsVQoL" alt="undefined" /></figure>
This component contains content fields for a use case section.
When your components have been configured, the component picker allows you to choose which of them you want to include in the layout of your current page. You can choose as many custom components as you need, and you can repeat them within a page. Just click on the plus “+” sign to see all available components that your team has customized for you.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/4xm4Zo9QJovuqtdGsA0iMm0TA4JX3OzRL_Nkq9pXxcqB_FIZkOfSlj_jhSzzaHJqIuHUFGEeXz0FomRikZgfSCbHBXVmZLO8Z0tDojBWRZ-V51j5xtRW_00fSG9IvQwP1qhpyfZe" alt="undefined" /></figure>
You can reorder entire sections of the page simply by clicking and dragging.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-qdpBwjUSt7jPohI6r3E8euvRZB1vGm2chuyqlIWnQDi06Fy_4nRIbkUark7jHdhgJ60hyUOyQsETgc2-tQwqCPmbnJzoNis9KL7MUrFX6-rVdjCijvLH44UGRo5o4dpB0CF1tIu" alt="undefined" /></figure>
Setting up a page like this is a simple, straightforward process for both engineering and marketing.
After a component has been configured, it can be reused any number of times. ButterCMS maintains a library of your configured components, and you can use them every time you create a new page, even across different page types.
<h2 id="working-with-component-repeaters">Working with component repeaters</h2>
Component repeaters bring even more flexibility to a page by allowing users to repeat groups of fields for related items. It’s a great way to handle image galleries, feature grids, content sliders, and much more.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/y15xQjznquUSOdGYaEbaqkmY1Jo2_0HsOCQ7JrPb25C7kg-z1-kJaeUoQ0gG4g898LrR4E7ivJYzwioavRU4ZOdMQqEWRu5v_-333sqriMKtmuaxvNahshRqrfNbaXdfyJLZcoZO" alt="undefined" /></figure>
Looking at the e-commerce site below, you can see that there are multiple product slides that rotate within the hero section.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/v8K__iKW8l2i0hcYRUlhZqiOBfbOK0ygiIn3uA86mKJz3GgqTBoUdco7G-QJVjntpi7A4wK9yVjE-OlqIK3r9hun9LJrvj1UvqCYS4lNX00mxcB7OG0CUkxWcsycKdtTy3mD5p4-" alt="undefined" /></figure>
To model this in Butter, you would create a page with a hero component, add a repeater to the component, and finally, add fields to the repeater.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/TZobfuajjEeBAUZrTuPto7SLmXAhoETqDxassPL3d9iN6M72Kn8-F9h4MkkKwogZQO_kJ3RHOL5oLsCNgcFlsbJbbIqeMAXuC-Gbd7u37XNlb0lAT5TRANv3zxT4c8SRa_sf89uH" alt="undefined" /></figure>
After your page configuration has been saved, you will see the Product Hero component and the Product Slides repeater in the content UI.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Y6yw84bClHYmDRYRML71juMdn7qIzX78c7U_oAaXky9FjNSA2RhEH_uHJXTGHCNy4CZRExvUHhAXGaLeG-Dx_h4Isj5M7NL0Gz0Lsc1kRXfoRsoHVt1hC4H3uqSiwjySkB1R2OQA" alt="undefined" /></figure>
At this point, you can begin building your page by clicking the button to add a new Product Slide, and completing the fields that were specified above in the page configuration.
For additional details, check out this quick tutorial about configuring pages in ButterCMS: <a href="https://buttercms.com/kb/create-dynamic-landing-pages-using-components?utm_source=referral&amp;utm_medium=guest-post&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic&amp;utm_content=components-post">https://buttercms.com/kb/create-dynamic-landing-pages-using-components</a>.
<h2 id="more-new-features-have-arrived">More new features have arrived</h2>
The team at ButterCMS recently released several exciting new features. These are a few of the changes that Butter fans are loving:
<ul>
<li>New dashboard and updated UI</li>
<li>Advanced image editing</li>
<li>Drag and drop images</li>
<li>Advanced content search</li>
<li>Scheduled content releases</li>
</ul>
ButterCMS already supports many popular tech stacks such as React, Angular, Vue, and more.  They have recently added support for React Native, Gridsome, Java, Nuxt JS, and Ionic to help more enterprises add headless CMS capability to their modern, cross-platform apps. If your company uses any of those frameworks, be sure to check out Butter’s updated <a href="https://buttercms.com/docs/?utm_source=referral&amp;utm_medium=guest-post&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic&amp;utm_content=components-post">official guides</a>.
Visit <a href="https://buttercms.com/?utm_source=referral&amp;utm_medium=guest-post&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic&amp;utm_content=components-post">buttercms.com</a> to learn more about Butter’s enterprise CMS solutions. You can set up a trial account today for free.
<h3 id="about-buttercms">About ButterCMS</h3>
<a href="https://buttercms.com/">ButterCMS</a> is an API-first content management system that integrates with websites and apps to deliver content headlessly, connecting with a wide range of frontend frameworks including React, Angular, Vue and more.

ButterCMS Introduces Dynamic Landing Pages with Components

Orlando, FL (December 3, 2020) – Solodev, the Digital Customer Experience platform built for Amazon Web Services (AWS), announced today that it has achieved the AWS Public Safety &amp; Disaster Response (PSDR) Competency status. This designation recognizes that Solodev provides both a proven cloud technology and human expertise in helping customers leverage the power of AWS to protect the public and prepare, respond, and recover from natural or man-made emergencies and disasters.
Achieving the AWS PSDR Competency further differentiates Solodev as an AWS Advanced Technology Partner, demonstrating their long-standing commitment to serve the public interest for mission-focused organizations such as government agencies (state, local and education) and not-for-profits. The Competency highlights Solodev’s technical proficiency and proven customer success in developing technology solutions that support PSDR emergency communications with rapid, scalable website management and content distribution. To receive this designation, AWS Partners must possess deep expertise to design AWS Well-Architected solutions delivered seamlessly on AWS.
“Solodev is proud to have achieved the AWS Public Safety &amp; Disaster Response Competency,” said Shawn Moore, Chief Technology Officer at Solodev. “Our platform – and more importantly, our people – have proven themselves time and again while serving customers during a crisis. We’ve been with them at the most critical moments, when content and communications have saved lives by connecting hospitals with vital blood donations or informing communities about a hurricane’s impact. By helping organizations embrace their digital transformation in the cloud, we’ve been able to accelerate their time to mission while expanding the focus on public safety. This is important work, and we’re thrilled to be working with a company like AWS that’s invested in our shared vision and values.”
In a year that has seen historic disasters – from epic wildfires to record hurricanes – the need for digital transformation around public safety has never been more urgent. Solodev’s customers have relied on their cloud-first CMS to coordinate communications from emergency operations centers (EOC), allowing low-code/no-code users to distribute evacuation alerts and switch to “dark sites” with critical instructions in a matter of seconds. Solodev also enables API integrations with third-party solutions, allowing organizations to expand their PSDR stack while maintaining governance around data privacy, ADA accessibility, and other compliance requirements.
Leveraging the power of AWS, Solodev brings a flexible, multi-layered, cost-effective solution for addressing redundancy, disaster recovery, and instant scalability during a crisis event. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these types of solutions, AWS established the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/partners/competencies/">AWS Competency Program</a> to help customers identify Consulting and Technology AWS Partners with deep industry experience and expertise in key areas.
The AWS PSDR Competency is the fourth AWS Competency designation that Solodev has achieved, reinforcing the company’s trusted role as an AWS Advanced Technology Partner – and one of the few that has achieved this milestone in the CMS and digital experience space. Solodev’s also achieved the AWS Government Competency, AWS Education Competency, and AWS Digital Customer Experience Competency designations, each requiring a rigorous technical validation and demonstrable expertise to achieve.
To learn more about Solodev’s Public Safety &amp; Disaster Response solutions on AWS, visit <a href="https://www.solodev.com/aws/public-safety-and-disaster-response/">https://www.solodev.com/aws/public-safety-and-disaster-response/</a>
<h3 id="about-solodev">About Solodev</h3>
<a href="http://www.solodev.com/">Solodev</a>, the Digital Customer Experience Platform for Amazon Web Services (AWS), empowers individuals and teams to work together on digital transformation in the cloud and create amazing customer experiences. Built from the ground up on AWS, Solodev provides enhanced security, scalability, and redundancy with 24/7/365 U.S. based support. Recognized as a leading “High Performer” on the G2 Grid for Web Content Management, Solodev is a past winner of the AWS “City on a Cloud” Innovation Challenge. An AWS Advanced Technology Partner that has achieved the AWS Government Competency, AWS Education Competency, AWS Digital Customer Experience Competency, and AWS Public Safety &amp; Disaster Response Competency designations, Solodev products can be purchased on-demand in AWS Marketplace, through State and Federal Contracts, or online at <a href="http://www.solodev.com/">www.solodev.com</a>

Solodev CMS Achieves AWS Public Safety & Disaster Response Competency Status

Solodev AWS Public Safety and Disaster Response Competency Banner

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