Articles - Page 173

The Top 10 AI Tools for Small Business: From Automation to a Coordinated Team of AI Agents

matt-garrepy

In the ever-expanding realm of CMS and DXP platforms, the category of “website builder” has long been an enigma. It’s not uncommon to have our readers ask us: how do I actually "create" a website using this tool?
And that’s the rub: content management systems have traditionally been designed to "manage content," while DXPs have evolved the stack by expanding the layers of data and optimization. But building an actual website? That’s another story. Or stories, to be more accurate.
Let’s provide a quick backdrop: with traditional CMS platforms, creating a website has often been a labor of technical love. In most cases, it requires the implementation of responsive HTML templates into a system by a trained developer or system integrator. While this model has given designers and coders greater control over the experience layer – and enabled content creators to preview rendered pages – it also comes with a much steeper learning curve and cost.
The rise of headless CMS has also changed the calculus. In this new omnichannel world, websites have become another endpoint in the experience landscape. This has shifted the thinking for marketers as they embrace new ways of distributing content and engaging with audiences via <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JAMstack</a> libraries, custom apps, and other form factors.
Still, for many SMBs, a website is the center of their digital strategy. And with more demand at a do-it-yourself level, website building platforms have grown in popularity, giving way to more effective low-code/no-code tools with a myriad of drag-and-drop features. This includes purpose-built platforms like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/squarespace-a-diy-website-builder-1/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Squarespace</a> but has now grown to include hosting ecosystems like <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/websites/website-builder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GoDaddy</a> and marketing automation services like <a href="https://mailchimp.com/features/website-builder/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MailChimp</a>.
But if you’re a designer or an agency that’s focused on delivering a high-caliber customer experience – particularly in the bursting e-commerce sector – many do-it-yourself builder tools conjure a single word: compromise.
That’s where <a href="https://www.duda.co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Duda</a> has been expanding their niche as a best-of-breed professional web building platform. Their unique solution continues to gain ground with digital agencies and SaaS companies as the demand for digital commerce solutions grows exponentially.
Recently, the company announced that it has acquired <a href="https://snipcart.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Snipcart</a>, an e-commerce solution that lets businesses add a shopping cart to any website. The acquisition news comes hot on the heels of a successful round of $50M in Series D Funding, bringing Duda’s total funding to $100M thus far.
<h2>What is Duda? </h2>
Let's start with the basics: Duda is a platform that allows designers and agencies to rapidly create websites at scale with tools that automate the entire site-building process.
One of Duda’s key attributes is that it enables web professionals to achieve pixel-perfect designs without touching code. This has long been a challenge for nearly every website builder, but Duda seems to have to married simplicity with flexibility – allowing designers granular control to customize around their unique brand requirements. This reduces the headaches that many open source platforms like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WordPress</a> or enterprise CMSes create for web designers that want to focus on the experience and not the code.
Duda also provides a robust set of pre-built themes and templates that are free of charge, as well as a drag-and-drop builder that accelerates the design process. They also feature a library of widgets, as well as a nifty <a href="https://www.duda.co/developers/widget-builder?_ga=2.61014890.730348107.1631540715-a422507c-3bf0-4b7b-ad7f-09f0a73ade15" target="_blank" rel="noopener">widget builder</a> for coding your own functionality.
Duda claims to outperform other industry-leading tools by ensuring every site built on its platform ranks high on critical SEO factors. They also suggest that their platform can reduce the average website build time by 50% to 75% – which can be a huge advantage to businesses that need to pivot quickly.
<h2>Leveraging Snipcart’s e-Commerce capabilities for digital transformation</h2>
It’s impossible to ignore the<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"> impact of the Covid-19 pandemic</a> on consumer habits. As people turned to digital and contactless solutions over the last 18 months, e-commerce has exploded – and the market is <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">forecast</a> to grow by 50% to an estimated $6.3 trillion by 2024.
According to Duda, the company has already seen a whopping 265% year-over-year increase in e-commerce sites built on its platform. This was the impetus for the Snipcart acquisition, which will enable the company to further accelerate its growth by providing customers with a flexible e-commerce solution that can make any data or inventory they have shoppable.
Snipcart’s dynamic team of experienced developers, marketers, and managers has built a state-of-the-art e-commerce platform used by thousands of customers worldwide. Their focus on flexibility and modern e-commerce store design is very much aligned with Duda’s product vision of providing its customers with beautiful and modular e-commerce solutions.
<h2>Q&amp;A with Itai Sadan, Duda CEO and Co-Founder</h2>
CMS Critic had a chance to connect with Duda’s CEO and co-founder, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/itaisadan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Itai Sadan</a>. We discussed the Snipcart acquisition, how e-Commerce is changing the landscape, and what Duda is planning next.
<hr />
CMS Critic (CC): It’s clear that digital agencies are a key focus for Duda. What other partner channels or vertical industries are emerging as opportunities? Is the enterprise becoming more of a target?
Itai Sadan (IS): Aside from digital agencies that have always been our focus, Duda has also been focused in the last two years on vertical SaaS platforms. These are typically SaaS solutions that serve a very specific industry (e.g. healthcare, professional services, real-estate) and want to expand into offering websites to their customers.
Duda has a very unique offering for this category as our website builder can be seamlessly embedded into their platform allowing them to automatically generate websites with their customers’ pre-populated data, giving their customers an amazing head start on their site builds and ensuring data is always in sync.
CC: What do Duda’s ideal SaaS customers look like? What in particular attracts them to Duda?
IS: Duda’s typical SaaS customer is a back-office platform that SMBs use to manage their business. Many times it could be a CRM, ERP, or a marketing platform for a certain industry vertical.
The moment these SaaS platforms want to help their customers acquire more clients, they need to provide some form of web presence to capture leads. Often these SaaS platforms have widgets that live on a website – such as a bookings engine or a form. Through integration with Duda they can have these widgets pre-installed on the websites, providing their customers with a hassle-free experience.
The great thing about Duda is that it is simple enough to be used by a business person via our simple drag and drop interface, and it is also a very powerful tool for developers who can make use of our API and add CSS, HTML, and JavaScript to our sites.
Our customers also know that Duda has their back in terms of ensuring our websites are highly converting and have great SEO. Duda handles all of the ongoing Google Core Web Vitals, AMP, and PageSpeed optimizations so that their clients will have a revenue-generating website that will perform well.
Lastly, I think what our partners really like is that Duda makes it very clear that we’re not in competition with them. Our go-to-market is always through channels; we are completely white-label and will never reach out directly to their customers. There is a certain trust and confidence that comes with that where these SaaS platforms know that they are our customers and we are 100% dedicated to seeing them succeed. Our Support and Account Management teams have received <a href="https://blog.duda.co/duda-honored-as-gold-stevie-winner-in-the-15th-annual-stevie-awards-for-sales-customer-service" target="_blank" rel="noopener">multiple awards</a> and have been heralded as one of the key reasons customers choose us.
CC: There’s no question that eCommerce is exploding, particularly with the pandemic driving more digital adoption and transformation. What has been the most important feature or capability in Duda’s current e-commerce toolbox that has given it an edge? 
IS: One of Duda’s current e-commerce solution strengths is that users can set up their store once to easily sync and sell across their website, social media (Instagram, Facebook) and  marketplaces (eBay, Amazon).
The existing e-commerce solution has a strong and loyal following, used by many of Duda’s customers to add website buying experiences and will stay in place for customers that prefer to keep using it. In addition, Duda will continue to support it and expand on its capabilities.”
CC: How quickly will Snipcart’s capabilities be woven into Duda’s offerings? 
IS: The Snipcart and Duda team are deeply focused on the integration. We believe the first phase of the integration will be released in early 2022. Initially, it will be offered to customers building new e-commerce sites.
CC: Compliance and governance are becoming pinnacle concerns for digital businesses – particularly those transacting with e-commerce. How is Duda approaching issues like data privacy, ransomware, etc.?
IS: As a SaaS provider with hundreds of thousands of customers and users from around the world, Duda cares deeply about the privacy and security of the data owned by its customers and users, and takes it very seriously. Regarding privacy - Duda has appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) and developed and maintains a set of internal policies, guidelines, and procedures to make sure personal data is being stored and processed in accordance with data privacy laws such as GDPR and CCPA.
We also have an Information Security Program which was developed by the Head of Cybersecurity security at Duda. The program aims to manage and reduce the risks to Duda’s data assets via an interactive process of business assessment, asset mapping, identification of vulnerabilities, potential threats, and the implantation of mitigating measures (i.e controls).
The controls we implement include information security awareness, developing required policies and processes, and the usage of technical measures. In an external audit that was handled in May 2021, we received very high scores both in Information Security and Business Continuity. Duda believes that Information Security is a fundamental requirement for business growth, and makes significant investments to improve the overall security posture each year.
Ransomware has become quite a popular threat recently, this is only one of the cyber threats Duda is dealing with on a daily basis. We use a large set of security controls to mitigate such risks, which include but are not limited to, security awareness among employees, email filtering and protection, identity management and access control, network segmentation, WAF and Firewalls, backups, as well as many others.”
CC: Some competitive platforms in your space are offering native app builders or API integrations to expand their omnichannel capabilities. How is Duda positioning against these offerings – and what’s on the horizon that we can share with our readers?
IS: We don’t have any plans to develop a native app offering. We think that most SMBs will do well with a website as the main way consumers are finding them is through a Google search or social media platforms that drive visitors to a website. We think the barrier to get an app installed is prohibitive for most SMBs and they will not see the ROI of building an app (for more detail see my <a href="https://blog.duda.co/how-the-web-was-won-apps-websites-the-birth-of-pwas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blog post</a> about this topic).
[On the horizon] we are investing in other areas that can help agencies. First, we always invest in our core platform. Web design is constantly evolving and we want to make sure our website builder always stays at the forefront of technology. We recently released <a href="https://flex.duda.co/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DudaFlex</a>, a way to build pixel-perfect sites in a very flexible way without needing to code. We are releasing a new membership feature that is in high demand and coming out in Q4 with a client billing solution that would allow agencies to seamlessly invoice and collect payments from their clients.
<h2>What’s next for Duda and Snipcart</h2>
Duda and Snipcart have already started working on their integration, which, as noted, is expected to be released in early 2022.
Along with Snipcart, Duda will continue to offer its existing e-commerce solution, which has a strong and loyal following amongst current users. They plan to support and expand these existing capabilities as well.
Duda also plans to invest heavily in growing the Snipcart team and adding more features to the core Snipcart platform. Additionally, Snipcart will continue to offer its product independently to customers, allowing Duda to grow their investment on multiple fronts.

Duda Snaps Up Snipcart to Boost e-Commerce Capabilities: Q&A with CEO Itai Sadan

cms-critic-staff

Duda and Snipcart logos with image of CEO Isai Sadan

If there's one company that's cornered the market on intuitive names, it's <a href="https://gathercontent.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">GatherContent</a>. 
As their moniker suggests, they are a platform that brings together, well... content. But along this journey, they're also connecting the people, processes, and technologies that make "<a href="https://review.content-science.com/what-is-content-operations/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Content Operations</a>" a real phenomenon. 
And let's face it: with so much content distributed across an expanding array of sources and endpoints, their role as the "gatherer" has never been more apropos. 
Now, GatherContent is making it easier for customers to streamline their martech stack experience. The company just announced a new set of integrations with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/gatsby-unveils-v3-0-cloud-hosting-and-more-at-gatsbyconf-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gatsby</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Netlify</a>, and deepened their existing integrations with <a href="https://www.adobe.io/apis/experiencecloud/aem.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)</a>, <a href="https://www.drupal.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Drupal</a>, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-monthly-recap-salesforce-completes-acquisition-of-slack-contentsquare-accelerates-ml-capabilities-and-more/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Slack</a>, <a href="https://vercel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Vercel</a>, and <a href="https://zapier.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zapier</a>.
Currently, GatherContent allows customers to seamlessly integrate their product with their own technology stack through these <a href="https://gathercontent.com/integrations" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">integrations</a>, as well as APIs and headless capabilities. This gives users a great deal of flexibility when it comes to multi-channel publishing and connecting GatherContent to production and project management workflows.
According to Gartner’s <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3992875" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2020 Marketing Technology Survey</a>, marketers only use 58% of their martech stack’s full breadth of capabilities because they have trouble with cross-functional collaboration compounded by a “sprawling array” of platform solutions. This is all validated by the eponymous <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2020/04/marketing-technology-landscape-2020-martech-5000/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Brinker Diagram</a>, which illustrates the flood of technologies available to marketers – including CMS. 
“GatherContent is the glue that connects these other platforms together,” said Angus Edwardson, Co-Founder and VP of Product of GatherContent. “Our goal is to allow GatherContent to easily slide into existing marketing workflows with as few barriers as possible.”
In addition to their new and enhanced integrations, GatherContent has expanded its API – including JavaScript helper libraries that use the popular <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">JAMstack</a> as a backbone. This makes it easier for developers to build on top of GatherContent and create seamless integrations with their existing martech stack that includes CMS, CRM, SEO tools, and more. 
“Marketing technology stacks are getting more cluttered," said Edwardson. "But when connected together in a way that makes sense, the result is better content, produced faster and with reduced risk.” 
<h2>About GatherContent</h2>
GatherContent is a Content Operations platform that brings together people, process, and technology. GatherContent has helped thousands of businesses save time and money, improve content quality, and reduce regulatory risk. The platform replaces the broken status quo of docs, spreadsheets, shared drives, and emails. These tools weren’t designed to manage high volume content production and workflow when many stakeholders are involved. Recognized as a Content Distribution Leader, Creation High Performer in G2’s Summer 2021 report, GatherContent is free to try, quick to set up, and very easy to use. Learn more at <a href="https://gathercontent.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://gathercontent.com/</a>.

GatherContent Adds New Integrations to Help Streamline Martech Stacks

paris-tuzun

Unless you're living under a pop culture rock, you've probably heard the phrase "there's an app for that."
Statements like this can often be hyperbolic. But in this case, it's on the money: <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to Statista</a>, there are 2.2 million apps available in the Apple App Store – and 3.57 Million in the Google Play store. That's a whole lotta apps.
The app revolution makes sense when you consider that most great ideas are born out of necessity. What's amazing is how the marketplace has enabled ordinary people with no tech or development background to access apps as a solution to their problems – like knowing which wine to pair with your salmon. Ask Vivino: they now have <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vivino-buy-the-right-wine/id414461255" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 50 million users worldwide.</a>
OK, so maybe wine isn't your thing. But let's say you're at your favorite craft beer pub and inspiration strikes. You grab a cocktail napkin and start mapping out a new app and how it will change your business. But now what? If you don't have the technical skills, outsourcing an app can be an expensive and risky endeavor. According to Utility, more advanced, multi-function and gaming apps <a href="https://utilitynyc.com/blog/app-development-cost#:~:text=Basic%20database%20apps%20cost%20between,based%20on%20quality%20and%20detail." target="_blank" rel="noopener">can cost between $150,000 - $250,000</a> or more based on quality and detail.
It's easy to get overwhelmed by these numbers. And if you're going big, it's always best to think about how an app can be sustained or even monetized. It's for this reason that <a href="https://www.fyresite.com/how-many-apps-fail/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">many people believe that 99% of apps fail</a> - but that doesn't reflect branded apps that reinforce your core business. 
So what if you just need a branded app? Not necessarily a suped-up AR-powered megalith, but a customized experience that allows you to enrich your users through a mobile channel with hundreds of different business solutions?
Well, it looks like <a href="https://www.wix.com/app-builder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wix</a> might have cracked that code – with no code at all. The popular website building platform recently announced a new product for business owners called <a href="https://www.wix.com/app-builder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Branded App by Wix</a>, which allows users to create native apps for the iOS and Android stores without any complex development.
Wix – which is best known for its slick drag-and-drop website builder and CMS – has become a go-to platform for artists, freelancers, and small business owners looking to establish brands online without the hassle of coding and complexity. Now, the platform is expanding its user-friendly approach by making it possible for anyone to get into the app game without learning any code or relying on expensive, third-party development sources. 
Branded App by Wix will offer users a simple experience for customizing their apps, starting with their logo – which will appear in the major app stores alongside other leading apps. This alone can provide a significant branding boost to any business.
The app builder also allows what Wix describes as "total creative freedom" to design an app icon and customize the layout and general look and feel of the app UI, and enhance it with access to hundreds of features including eCommerce storefronts and forums.
One of the most challenging (and overlooked) costs of an app is management and maintenance, particularly when dealing with the native app stores themselves. Wix alleviates this by enabling automatic updates, ensuring that your app is constantly working with the latest versions of the iOS and Android stores – and that your data is always being synced.
"Building my own app with Branded App by Wix has been a total gamechanger for my business," said Wix user Benji Beasts, Founder and Fitness Trainer at Core Attack Fitness Club. "I had to have an app that I could customize to achieve the exact look, feel and service my members experience when they walk through my doors. Members use the app every day—whether it's to book sessions, buy merchandise or even stream sessions on demand. The most amazing thing about this app, especially for the time we are living in, is the place it provides for customers to connect with me and other members, creating a community experience that keeps them motivated and coming back for more. No need for a background in coding, just my passion and my brand."
While it's a far cry from a complex app like Vivino, don't cry over any spilled wine: Branded App by Wix is another signal that the app marketplace is becoming more accessible and cost-effective to a wider range of businesses – particularly in the do-it-yourself range. Right out of the gate, the experience is offering some fairly decent design capabilities, and Wix plans to push new features that offer extended customization and navigation in the coming months.
"This release is another step in our native mobile app strategy making sure users can create custom iOS and Android apps as easily as they create custom websites," said Ronny Elkayam, SVP of Mobile, App Market &amp; Strategic Products at Wix. "The Branded App is a major addition to the Wix offering, enabling business owners to have another medium to activate their brand. We are happy to equip any type of business owner or service provider with the native mobile experience they need to enhance their customers' experience, grow their businesses, and ultimately compete with today's biggest brands."
The Branded App unlimited is currently being offered at <a href="https://www.wix.com/app-builder" target="_blank" rel="noopener">50% off</a> its original price – making it just $100 a month (paid annually). Note that the current plan doesn't include the registration fee for Apple's App Store (from $99 a year) and Google Play ($25 one-time fee), or any additional fees that Google or Apple may apply.
Even so, at this price point, you might want to pop a cork and start toasting to your new branded app.
<h2>About Wix</h2>
<a href="https://www.wix.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wix</a> is leading the way with a cloud-based website development platform for over 200 million registered users worldwide today. The Wix website builder was founded on the belief that the Internet should be accessible to everyone to develop, create and contribute. Through free and premium subscriptions, Wix empowers millions of businesses, organizations, artists, and individuals to take their businesses, brands and workflow online. The Wix Editor, Wix ADI, Editor X, a curated App Market, Ascend by Wix and Velo by Wix enable users to build and manage a fully integrated and dynamic digital presence. Wix's headquarters are in Tel Aviv with offices in Austin, Be'er Sheva, Berlin, Cedar Rapids, Denver, Dnipro, Dublin, Kyiv, Kraków, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Phoenix, San Francisco, São Paulo, Tokyo and Vilnius.

Wix Launches New Branded App Builder for Creating Code-Free Native Mobile Apps

With so much negative news these days, it's great to be covering something positive – and that's exactly what the Special Olympics brings out: positivity.
As an organization, the Special Olympics goes far beyond the field of play. Not only does it provide a diverse and inclusive community for athletes and their families, but it delivers life-changing healthcare to thousands of individuals. Tragically, over the last year and a half, Special Olympians have been largely sidelined due to the pandemic, as people with intellectual disabilities have the <a href="https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/terrible-toll-covid-19-people-intellectual-disabilities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">highest independent risk factor</a> for contracting COVID-19.
But that all changes next June at the <a href="https://www.2022specialolympicsusagames.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2022 Special Olympics USA Games</a>, which will be held from June 5th through the 12th in Orlando, Florida. These will be the largest Games in history, as several Caribbean nations have also been invited to compete (the charter of the Special Olympics is inclusion, so this fits right in).
As with most modern large-scale live events, mobile apps and digital experiences have played a key role in the fan engagement strategy. The 2022 Special Olympics USA Games is planning to take that innovation even further – and is looking to the Cloud as a means to unlock the possibilities.
To get there, they've engaged <a href="https://www.solodev.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solodev</a> – a cloud-first content management and customer experience platform with a distinct focus on AWS. More recently, the company has transformed into something of a marketplace ecosystem for building and deploying custom cloud apps and experiences, leveraging their knowledge of containers and DevOps to help companies launch advanced cloud services at scale. This includes their legacy <a href="https://www.solodev.com/marketplace/solodev-cms-enterprise" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solodev CMS</a>, but now a whole lot more.
Today, <a href="https://www.solodev.com/news/solodev-selected-as-cloud-consulting-partner-of-the-2022-special-olympics-usa-games.stml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the company announced</a> that it has been awarded the status of "Cloud Consulting Partner" of the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games. Solodev will be responsible for building and deploying an advanced cloud infrastructure that powers immersive digital experiences – including a mobile fan engagement app designed exclusively for the event.
With the Games anticipating over 5,500 athletes and coaches, 20,000 volunteers, and more than 125,000 spectators, any apps will be expected to scale with a high degree of assurance. The fan engagement app, for example, will provide ticketing, scheduling, wayfinding, and other features that are essential to athletes and fans. Ensuring a seamless experience for tens of thousands of users will require an intelligent, secure, and highly scalable cloud strategy, which is where Solodev excels.
As an <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon Web Services (AWS)</a> Advanced Technology Partner, the company has amassed deep experience building world-class cloud architectures – the kind that enable applications to serve large communities of users. To meet the unique goals of the USA Games, Solodev chose AWS as the cloud of choice to design and deploy a container-based “serverless” infrastructure. The solution will integrate AWS’s most advanced portfolio of services, and Solodev's team will provide the necessary DevOps to support the infrastructure leading up to and during the event.
“Being a Cloud Consulting Partner to the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games is one of our proudest moments,” said Shawn Moore, Chief Technology Officer at Solodev. “Leveraging our cloud expertise to help create a unified and connected event for these incredible athletes – as well as their families, friends, and fans – is part of our own mission to positively impact the world through digital experiences.”
“We’re proud to have Solodev on our technology team,” said Lonnie Snyder, Chief Information Officer at the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games. “As we build our mobile fan engagement app, the cloud has become a critical part of our overall digital strategy. We needed a trusted partner to help guide us through key decisions, so we can deliver the best experience for our athletes, coaches, volunteers, spectators, and ambassadors.”
Solodev has long supported the technology goals of not-for-profit organizations, delivering best-in-class cloud consulting, CMS, and other digital experience services. This includes public sector and healthcare organizations with critical requirements around security, scalability, and high availability. According to the company, their experience will provide key advantages to the USA Games, bringing deep cloud expertise that will support safety and healthcare-related services that help improve the lives of Special Olympics athletes.
“What we’re building is more than a cloud infrastructure for fan engagement, it’s digital transformation,” said Matt Garrepy, Chief Digital Officer at Solodev. “Our underlying serverless architecture powered by AWS will have an impact on an athlete’s entire experience. Our team’s contribution will help change lives for the better, and that’s a unique privilege for any company.”
The mission of Special Olympics is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-style sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities – giving them opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills, and friendship with their families, other athletes, and the community. The USA Games is held once every four years in the United States, offering athletes from across the nation to compete in summer sports.
To learn more about the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games, visit <a href="https://www.2022specialolympicsusagames.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.2022specialolympicsusagames.org/</a>
<h2>About Solodev</h2>
Solodev is the galaxy’s largest ecosystem of cloud and digital marketing services, from containers to content management to AI. With Solodev, developers and organizations can build and launch amazing customer experiences, power omnichannel strategies across the IoT, deploy custom cloud apps, and collaborate on digital transformation. Solodev also provides consulting, training, managed services, and 24/7 human support to help users succeed on their cloud journey. An Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Technology Partner, Solodev has achieved rigorous competencies in Government, Education, Digital Customer Experience (DCX), and Public Safety &amp; Disaster Response. Solodev products – including CMS, Kubernetes, and Personalize – can be purchased on-demand in the AWS Marketplace, through State and Federal contract vehicles, or online at <a href="http://www.solodev.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.solodev.com</a>
<h2>About 2022 Special Olympics USA Games</h2>
The 2022 Special Olympics USA Games, scheduled for June 5-12, 2022 in Orlando, Florida, will unite more than 5,500 athletes and coaches from all 50 states and the Caribbean during one of the country’s most cherished sporting events – the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games. The Games will offer 19 Olympic-style team and individual sports, including athletics (track &amp; field), basketball, bocce, bowling, cheerleading, equestrian, flag football, golf, gymnastics, open water swimming, powerlifting, soccer, softball, stand up paddleboard, surfing, swimming, tennis, triathlon and volleyball. For over 50 years, Special Olympics has been empowering athletes and encouraging a more inclusive world for those with intellectual disabilities and beyond. For more information, <a href="http://www.2022USAGames.org" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.2022USAGames.org</a>

Solodev Selected as Cloud Consulting Partner of the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games

Image of Solodev, AWS, and 2022 Special Olympics USA Games logos

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

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

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

CMS Summit 26

Find out at Open Source CMS 26, October 20-21 in Utrecht, Netherlands

What's ahead for Open Source CMS?

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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.
<hr />
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.
<hr />
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

janus-boye

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

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