Articles - Page 174

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

matt-garrepy

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

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

paris-tuzun

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

Sitecore Announces $1.2B Investment to Accelerate Growth

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

ButterCMS Introduces Dynamic Landing Pages with Components

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

Solodev CMS Achieves AWS Public Safety & Disaster Response Competency Status

Solodev AWS Public Safety and Disaster Response Competency Banner

Contentstack, the Content Experience Platform (CXP), <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/contentstack-welcomes-translations-as-newest-catalyst/">announced</a> that Translations.com has joined the Contentstack <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/partners/">Catalyst</a> Partner Program. Launched in August 2020, Contentstack Catalysts are an ecosystem of industry-leading technology and service providers that help accelerate digital experience innovation.
Contentstack Catalysts advance the use of microservices-based, API-first, cloud-native SaaS and headless (MACH) architecture, as well as best practices and methodologies for delivering digital omnichannel engagement. In becoming a Catalyst, Translations.com will offer Contentstack users an all-in-one solution to initiate, automate, control, track and complete all facets of the translation process.
Contentstack has been actively building its partnership ecosystem in 2020, and recently launched a strategic <a href="/contentstack-and-gatsby-announce-partnership-to-power-ultra-fast-websites-with-headless-cms/">partnership with Gatsby</a> – a React-based open source web development framework. This alliance has benefitted both partners, bringing together marketing and development teams using headless CMS to power blazing-fast websites and applications.
With the addition of Translations.com to the Catalyst partner program, Contentstack is doubling down on localization as key ingredient in omnichannel content management. While the web continues to connect organizations across the globe, communicating with audiences in local languages has proven highly beneficial to improving customer experience. Even though English is the most commonly spoken language on the planet, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/262946/share-of-the-most-common-languages-on-the-internet/">only 25% of web users are native English speakers</a>. By accommodating customers in their own language, websites can significantly impact their most meaningful KPIs, particularly around SEO and bounce rates. For Contentstack, partnering with Translations.com will help their CMS users reach customers across geographies with more relevant content.
"With this partnership, we continue to support our customers who are creating multilingual content across platforms and devices," said Billy Nava, Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Translations.com. "Our GlobalLink Connect integration with Contentstack allows companies to manage multilingual content through a single user interface, dramatically simplifying the process of publishing global content."
The unique combination of Contentstack and the extended localization workflow capabilities of Translation.com’s GlobalLink Connect will provide users with a comprehensive solution for managing global enterprise content – with minimal effort and virtually no IT overhead. Further, when combined with Translation.com’s GlobalLink AI, Contentstack users can leverage automation and machine learning with translation services, helping to cut costs and accelerate time to market while maintaining high quality results.
"Doing business globally means communicating with customers not only in their native language but delivering the right content to them as well," said the Contentstack customer Joshua Scott, Vice President of Technology for Nu Skin Enterprises, Inc. "Bringing together Contentstack and Translations.com will make this process so much easier and allow us to create and publish multilingual content via a single interface. The process will be nearly completely automated, enabling us to deliver personalized experiences for our customers with little effort."
"We are very excited for Translations.com to be joining the Catalysts ecosystem," said Peter Fogelsanger, Contentstack's Global Head of Partnerships. "Contentstack's customers have enterprise-level content experience and translation requirements. Translations.com's GlobalLink integration with Contentstack offers global brands the industry leading capabilities for omni-channel content management and translation management in a tightly integrated solution."
Translations.com is the technology division of TransPerfect, the world's largest provider of language and technology solutions for global business. Offering a full range of services in 170+ languages to clients worldwide, Translations.com's GlobalLink Product Suite is trusted by over 5,000 of the world's largest brands to help scale the localization of their international experiences.
Contentstack's Catalyst Partner program brings together top agencies, consultants and technology companies to provide businesses with cutting-edge solutions and expert insights, accelerating their ability to deliver personalized, omnichannel digital experiences. Catalysts work with partners to drive market visibility, manage growth opportunities and deliver transformational customer success. Contentstack provides its Catalysts with the CMS industry's most powerful integrations framework – and the ability to build new integrations to meet customer needs.
More information on the Contentstack Catalyst Partner program, visit <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/partners">https://www.contentstack.com/partners</a>
<h3 id="about-contentstack">About Contentstack</h3>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/">Contentstack</a> is a headless CMS with an API-first approach that puts content at the center. It is designed to empower content editors to update content in their sites and apps without relying on a developer – while developers are free to code using their favorite tools and languages. Contentstack accelerates and simplifies content management across today's and tomorrow's digital channels, including web, mobile and IoT. From desktops to smart phones, kiosks to smart watches, billboards to jumbotrons, dashboards to VR headsets – content is delivered with the push of a button and optimized for every screen, device and channel.
<h3>About Translations.com</h3>
<a href="https://www.translations.com/">Translations.com</a> is the world’s largest provider of enterprise localization services and technology solutions. From offices in over 100 cities on six continents, Translations.com offers a full range of services in 170+ languages to clients worldwide. More than 5,000 global organizations employ Translations.com’s GlobalLink Product Suite to simplify management of multilingual content. Translations.com is part of the TransPerfect family of companies, with global headquarters in New York and regional headquarters in London and Hong Kong.

Contentstack Partners with Translations.com, Adds Localization to Headless CMS

We all know it: CRM can get really complex. That's why many organizations turn to implementation partners to help unlock the maximum value of their CRM investment, from purchase to practice. 
To meet this demand head-on, <a href="https://www.sugarcrm.com/">SugarCRM</a> – the innovator of time-aware CX – has acquired W-Systems, Sugar’s North America Reseller of the Year in 2020 and one of the company’s largest global implementation partners. 
With this move, Sugar is expanding its ability to provide turnkey implementation services for its time-aware, AI-powered sales, marketing and service software – designed to help companies deliver a "high-definition" customer experience. In addition, W-Systems has developed numerous add-ons that are in high-demand by Sugar customers including document management, calendar enhancements, file storage, messaging services, and more. 
“We are excited to have the team at W-Systems, with their deep expertise and dedication to customer success, join Sugar to help fuel our continued growth in the North America region,” said Craig Charlton, CEO of SugarCRM. “W-Systems’ exceptional track record with more than 300 successful Sugar implementations and robust development of strategic add-ons perfectly aligns with our commitment to helping companies improve their business outcomes and achieve a high-definition view of their customers.”
The rapid growth of remote and distributed workforces and their reliance on digital – <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/what-800-executives-envision-for-the-postpandemic-workforce">a by-product of the COVID-19 pandemic</a> – has accelerated the need for easy-to-deploy technologies. However, for many organizations, CRM continues to be a challenge to implement and adopt – particularly for distributed teams. By adding W-Systems to their portfolio, it appears that Sugar is doubling-down on its value as a trusted advisor.
“Speed and expertise are critical factors for companies looking to compete on CX,” said Brent Leary, founder and principal analyst at CRM Essentials. “SugarCRM’s acquisition of  W-Systems, a firm with long and deep commitment to serving the Sugar customer community, addresses a growing need for mid-market companies who want a trusted advisor that can help them navigate and succeed in their adoption of next-generation CRM and marketing automation environments.”
According to <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/top-cx-trends-for-cios-to-watch/">Gartner</a>, organizations are struggling to keep up with the growth of customer insight data. The speed and precision of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and analytics, in addition to human insight, will provide the intelligence needed for the CX of the future. SugarCRM has been focused on innovation in all of these key areas, but adding W-Systems may help translate the complexity of bleeding-edge technologies like AI into practical, business-focused applications that validate the impact on CX.  
Much like <a href="https://www.salesforce.com/">Salesforce</a>, Sugar has also been diversifying their platform services to enhance value and compete more effectively. Most recently, <a href="https://www.sugarcrm.com/press-releases/sugarcrm-acquires-salesfusion/">they acquired Salesfusion</a>, a SaaS marketing automation solution, and Node – an AI platform that leverages CRM data. 
<h3 id="sugarcrm-and-w-systems-what-to-expect">SugarCRM and W-Systems: What to Expect</h3>
Sugar is on the path to becoming more than just a CRM. They are clearly evolving into a unified customer data platform that provides deep intelligence and insights across every facet of CX. Now, armed with marketing automation, personalization, and turnkey implementation services, they have more of the right tools to compete at the top of the market. 
W-Systems has been a long-time partner of SugarCRM, and they are fluent in the platform and its deployment. As previously mentioned, W-Systems has developed a number of custom add-ons for Sugar, which continue to be in high-demand amongst customers. These add-ons directly increase the utility and usability of Sugar Sell and Sugar Market (formerly Salesfusion), so we should expect to see more integration around those features. 
You can request a demo of the SugarCRM <a href="https://www.sugarcrm.com/request-demo/">here</a>.
<h3 id="about-sugarcrm">About SugarCRM</h3>
<a href="https://www.sugarcrm.com/">SugarCRM</a>’s time-aware sales, marketing, and service software helps companies deliver a high-definition (HD-CX) customer experience. For mid-market companies and anyone that wants a CX-driven platform, Sugar gives teams the time-aware customer data they need to achieve a clear view of the customer and reach new levels of business performance and predictability, and increase customer lifetime value. More than 4,500 companies in over 120 countries rely on SugarCRM. 
<h3 id="about-w-systems">About W-Systems</h3>
<a href="https://www.w-systems.com/" rel="noreferrer nofollow noopener">W-Systems</a>, acquired by SugarCRM, delivers sales and marketing solutions on a foundation of CRM to help customer-facing teams increase revenue and solve business problems.

SugarCRM Acquires Reseller W-Systems to Meet Demand for CRM Implementation Services

Bloomreach, a leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP), and Exponea, the Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP), have <a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2020/bloomreach-and-exponea-announce-strategic-partnership.html">announced a strategic alliance</a> to offer more enhanced digital commerce experiences to the market. 
The partnership will provide their joint clients with a more personalized and sophisticated e-commerce solution, combining Bloomreach’s rich catalog of DXP capabilities with Exponea’s customer-centric approach to unifying data.
Partly driving the move is Amazon’s market dominance in the e-commerce and digital retail space. While brands struggle to compete around rapid distribution and free shipping – key attributes to <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-has-the-right-businesses-to-weather-coronavirus-but-spending-could-grow-even-faster-2020-04-13">Amazon’s success during the COVID-19 pandemic</a> – they often miss the mark with customer experience. This is where Amazon excels, and where Bloomreach and Exponea plan to focus their offerings.
By combining their unique capabilities, the two companies plan to help brands and retailers create more relevant and personalized experiences based on data and insights. Their innovative catalog of capabilities will help customers to increase retention, drive repeat purchases, recommend relevant products, and increase customer satisfaction.
<h3 id="a-partnership-built-for-digital-commerce-experiences">A partnership built for digital commerce experiences</h3>
Both Bloomreach and Exponea have experienced significant growth as a result of the recent surge in digital commerce worldwide, <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/covid19-pandemic-social-shift-ecommerce-report/">accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. While both vendors maintain solid reputations in the market, this partnership represents an innovation “sweet spot,” leveraging their strengths to offer a more complete solution.
Bloomreach is on a mission to arm enterprises with a superior weapon in their battle against the Amazons of the e-commerce world. In 2018, they <a href="/bloomreach-launches-dxp-for-commerce-so-enterprises-can-beat-amazon/">launched</a> their DXP for Commerce to offer highly relevant and personalized digital experiences. Today, their Bloomreach Experience Platform (brX) drives over $200 billion in digital commerce experiences across many of the world’s largest online retailers, brands, distributors, and B2B manufacturers – representing 25% of retail e-commerce in the U.S. and U.K.
Exponea – <a href="https://go.exponea.com/exponea-named-cool-vendor">which was named a “Cool Vendor” in multichannel marketing in 2020 by Gartner</a> – collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints. They enrich customer data through AI, providing insights to deliver personalized campaigns to individual targets through preferred channels. Exponea processes more than 2 billion customer profile updates every day on behalf of leading retailers and brands, enabling marketers to leverage over 250 billion behavioral events in real-time to orchestrate powerful 1:1 marketing.
<blockquote>This partnership will amplify both Exponea and Bloomreach’s unique capabilities to drive consistent and laser-targeted customer experiences across marketing and commerce. Combining together Exponea’s customer-centric view with Bloomreach’s catalogue-centric view will enable our joint customers to have the most sophisticated e-commerce experience possible.
- Peter Irikovský, CEO of Exponea</blockquote>
The alliance comes at a time when leading vendors across the digital stack are making big moves to compete more effectively in a crowded, fragmented landscape. As more organizations pivot to online – specifically in the retail sector – demand for rapid, end-to-end solutions is increasing by the day. By aligning their capabilities, Bloomreach and Exponea can fast-track a more effective response to shifting market conditions and challenge the e-commerce space. 
"We've long been on a mission to power exceptional commerce experiences – from search to content, to leveraging our commerce-specific data and AI to drive personalization,” said Bloomreach CEO and co-founder Raj De Datta. “We chose to partner with Exponea for their impressive customer data analytics capabilities, omnichannel campaign execution, and their strong and trusted relationships with our joint customers. Having looked at this closely, we believe they are the clear global leader in driving high performing marketing and customer communications, and the synergies we can drive across our platforms are very meaningful for our customers.” 
“Bloomreach is best-in-class when it comes to the search and commerce experience,” added Peter Irikovsky, CEO of Exponea. “We’ve been impressed by their robust platform and the company’s sophisticated B2B and B2C customer base for quite some time. The combination of our strengths will enhance the personalized customer experience for our joint clients with the most innovative, fast, and impactful solutions in the market.”
<h3 id="about-bloomreach">About Bloomreach</h3>
<a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en">Bloomreach</a> is digital experience enhancement platform that enables highly personalized digital experiences for retailers, banks, distributors, manufacturers, public service agencies and other enterprises. Its flagship product, brX, is a digital experience platform built specifically for brands, retailers, and B2B companies who want to grow their revenue online while delivering each of their customers a premium, personalized commerce experience. brX combines content management capabilities with market-leading commerce-specific, AI-driven search, merchandising, and personalization in one flexible, API-first next-generation platform. Bloomreach serves over 500 global brands including Albertsons, Staples, Bosch, Puma, FC Bayern München, and Marks &amp; Spencer.
<h3 id="about-exponea">About Exponea</h3>
<a href="https://exponea.com/">Exponea</a> is a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP) that collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints into a unified Single Customer View and utilizes this data to help e-commerce businesses to convert and retain customers by acting on customer signals with the right message at the perfect time through the preferred channel. Built from the ground up (i.e. no acquisitions) for retail and e-commerce, Exponea collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints to give businesses the insights and action opportunities they need to execute campaigns that deliver real results.

Bloomreach and Exponea Announce Strategic Partnership to Energize Digital Commerce Experiences

New partnerships continue to emerge across the digital stack, and CMS platforms are reaping the benefits. Recently, SEMrush, a leading search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing platform <a href="https://www.semrush.com/news/semrush-and-yoast-announce-integration-partnership/">announced a strategic partnership with Yoast</a> – the most popular and widely-used SEO plugin for WordPress.
The partnership kicks off with an updated release of Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress, the leading open source content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO will now feature a tight integration with SEMrush’s extensive keyword database and SEO services, giving Yoast users access to smarter, SEO-focused keyword suggestions and data within the CMS post editor – and enhancing search engine indexability to drive qualified traffic.
For the <a href="/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">WordPress</a> community, Yoast is practically a household name. For years, this handy plugin has enabled users to control a multitude of attributes across websites, including meta descriptions, keywords, titles, and more. Yoast has proven to be a go-to solution for driving traffic from major search engines like Google and Bing to leading social media channels like Facebook.
SEMrush has long been regarded as a trusted brainstorming tool for keyword strategy. With standout features such as link building and site auditing, SEMrush provides users with a go-to checklist of features and capabilities for improving technical and on-page SEO.
“At a time when all businesses are becoming even more reliant on their digital strategy to thrive and survive, it is hard to overstate the significance of this partnership between SEMrush and Yoast, two highly regarded names in SEO,” said Eugene Levin, SEMrush’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We are thrilled to announce the seamless integration of one of the largest keyword databases on the market with Yoast’s unrivaled reach into WordPress-powered sites. As many of SEMrush clients run websites with WordPress, this partnership is an important one for our customers. We look forward to cooperating further with Yoast to help as many people as possible become the best digital marketers they can be.”
Yoast founder and Chief Product Officer Joost de Valk added, “As more and more people get online, we see that these people need help with keyword research. Previously we could not give our customers information regarding how people search, specifically which related searches there are for important search terms. Our integration with SEMrush not only makes this possible, it shows it right when and where you need it. I look forward to building out this feature to help people write better content, faster.”
In order to benefit from the new features in the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, users will need to have either a free or premium SEMrush account. The full set of SEMrush features available in Yoast SEO will help customers access related keywords that are similar to a user’s query, gather useful metrics for every keyword, and uncover new keyword ideas for their content.
You can download the Yoast SEO plugin <a href="https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/">here</a>.
Sign up for a free or premium SEMrush account <a href="https://www.semrush.com/signup/">here</a>.

SEMrush and Yoast Partner to Enhance WordPress SEO and Digital Marketing

CMS Summit 26

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

What's ahead for Open Source CMS?

#ffffff

By Janus Boye, <a href="https://boye-co.com">Boye &amp; Co</a>
There’s a million different ways to select a new content management system and having been a part of the marketplace for the past two decades, I thought I had almost seen them all.
Still, the recent CMS selection as a part of the <a href="https://w3.org">World Wide Web Consortium</a> (W3C) redesign project was a different one. A project done out in the open, with a controversial tool selection and an emphasis on accessibility.
Given the public profile of the W3C, this naturally led to increased attention among agencies, analysts, vendors and other industry pundits alike.
<a href="https://craftcms.com/">Craft CMS</a> came out the winner, but let’s take a step-by-step look at what happened and see what others might be able to use in their own selection processes.
<h2 id="finding-a-modern-and-accessible-cms-starts-by-getting-some-help">Finding a modern and accessible CMS starts by getting some help</h2>
A good place to start to get an overview of this process is the <a href="https://www.w3.org/2019/11/website-redesign-rfp.html">W3C website redesign phase 1 RFP</a>. This was issued back in November 2019 and as you see, W3C asked for help with more than selecting a CMS. To quote from the project summary
<blockquote>“W3C is looking to incrementally redesign its Website and revise the information architecture”</blockquote>
As the customer, W3C asked for cost estimates on services like design, SEO, development and consulting on things like migration strategy. Objectives included:
<ul>
<li>Solidify brand authority, consistent design, uniform appearance</li>
<li>Create an engaging and easy to navigate experience</li>
<li>Increase engagement</li>
<li>Create a long-lasting partnership with a web design agency to continue to work with us as our needs and organization evolve</li>
</ul>
The specific requirements included this bullet with three sub bullets:

<ul>
<li>Provide advice on a modern replacement for the custom CMS used for the current site
<ul>
<li>We need a CMS that is long-lived and easy to maintain, because we run our systems for decades.</li>
<li>Full change histories identifying who made each change.</li>
<li>The CMS may need to enable collaborative editing</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>

Finally, the RFP also included this sentence on budget:
<blockquote>“The average cost estimate of $200,000 is based on figures given by people who are in the ecosystem. We would like vendors to propose what they recommend even if it exceeds $200,000.”</blockquote>
Several agencies responded during December, including UK-based <a href="https://www.studio24.net/">Studio 24</a>.
Studio 24 which was awarded the contract in early February. Although slightly delayed by a few weeks, given the holidays, that’s not a much longer response time than many other projects.
If you look at the project tweets from W3C, you can see a more detailed timeline for selection
<figure class="kg-card kg-embed-card">
<blockquote>
Our W3C Website redesign RFP has now concluded. 
We awarded the project to <a href="https://twitter.com/studio24?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@studio24</a> who we are very much looking forward to working with. 
Thanks to the 31 other bidders for the excellent quality of their proposals.<a href="https://t.co/RCtmGY6VBn">https://t.co/RCtmGY6VBn</a>
— W3C (@w3c) <a href="https://twitter.com/w3c/status/1225796276555567105?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 7, 2020</a></blockquote>
</figure>
You might also want to see the <a href="https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-website-redesign/2019Dec/att-0024/W3C_Website_redesign_RFP_Proposal_Studio_24.pdf">winning proposal from Studio 24</a> (PDF)
My take:
Nothing out of the ordinary in the opening. A high-profile customer. A reasonable budget to relaunch a notable website. The project pretty much looks like any other website redesign including a new CMS to power the website. Also worth mentioning, that a customer showing an ability to make decisions at the beginning is a good starting point.
<h2 id="cms-strategy-to-inform-the-selection">CMS strategy to inform the selection</h2>
The project kicked off in mid-March and following user group research and design discussions, then moved onto CMS strategy and requirements in May.
This led to the creation of a comprehensive <a href="https://w3c.studio24.net/docs/cms-strategy-and-requirements/">CMS strategy and requirements document</a>. This covers technical requirements, accessibility, content editing, forms, search and much more. 
There’s also a section on licensing models. To quote:
<blockquote>“W3C has a strong preference for an open-source license for the CMS platform.”</blockquote>
And later in the same chapter:
<blockquote>“We will consider commercial software that fits the requirements for W3C.”</blockquote>
The document also outlines questions to be answered for each potential system as well as a section on headless CMS and static site generators.
My take:
While there’s no set formula for how a CMS strategy should look like and any rules on required chapters, I found the work done here comprehensive and understandable, also by non CMS experts.
From the perspective of an analyst or customer, I would also consider the importance of the ecosystem around the system and the quality of the documentation. Depending on who you ask, some might also consider a look at company/community vision and roadmap. Are they aligned with what you want to achieve?
<h2 id="narrowing-down-the-shortlist">Narrowing down the shortlist</h2>
As the project moved forward, the time also came to narrow down the list of potential systems.
Given the public nature of the project, you can read more in this document: <a href="https://w3c.studio24.net/docs/w3c-cms-selection-process-update/">W3C CMS platform selection - full status update</a>. To quote from the chapter on shortlisting:
<blockquote>“We then looked at a series of CMSes from a high level. We looked at their marketing material to understand their philosophy and their main features; got a sense of the level of activity of their development team and community; scanned their user and developer documentation.
Based on this first review, we for example excluded all static site builders (e.g. Gatsby, Jekyll). Jekyll and Gatsby can have performance issues when building large sites, which we would rather avoid. Others such as Hugo are built on technology we are not familiar with in the studio.”</blockquote>
This led to a shortlist of three candidates, all based on the PHP technology stack familiar to the W3C:
<ul>
<li>Craft CMS</li>
<li>Statamic</li>
<li><a href="https://www.boye-co.com/vendors/wordpress">WordPress</a></li>
</ul>
Later in the document, there’s strengths and weaknesses with each of the three finalists. To me they looked balanced, but I in particular noticed this sentence on WordPress:
<blockquote>“Because we have a lot of experience with WordPress, we are also very much aware of its limitations in the context of a project of this size and longevity.”</blockquote>
My take:
This is a phase of the project, which can be either extremely difficult without outside help or left to random circumstances. Working with an agency with real implementation experiences like Studio 24 provides valuable insights to finding the right system.
It’s refreshing to read how marketing material provides a starting point for understanding the systems. In other processes, industry analysts like Forrester, Gartner or Real Story Group are also pulled in to provide insights to making the technology decision. Either via their reports or through their analyst services.
According to Simon Jones, the Gartner Magic Quadrant was reviewed as a part of the process, although this wasn’t noted in the project documentation.
As a part of our conversation for this article, Simon also mentioned that the PHP technology stack was a big decider on limiting CMS choice. Using the tech stack to narrow down the list is quite common.
<h2 id="not-selecting-wordpress">Not selecting WordPress</h2>
Judging from the outside, it looks like the most controversial part of the process was removing WordPress from the final three.
In the <a href="https://w3c.studio24.net/docs/w3c-cms-selection-process-update/#the-review-process">CMS selection review process</a>, Studio 24 wrote this about the process they used to test the finalists:
<blockquote>“This is how we tested Craft and Statamic (we didn’t submit WordPress to that test as we already have extensive experience working with it).”</blockquote>
And later in the document this quote:
<blockquote>“We have already rejected the use of Gutenberg in the context of this project due to accessibility issues.”</blockquote>
A few weeks later in the <a href="https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/weeknotes-11-sept/">CMS selection project weeknotes from 11 Sept</a>, there’s this sentence:
<blockquote>“We have shortlisted two CMS platforms at present.”</blockquote>
In other words: WordPress was out.
This created quite some debate in the community. Let’s look at the timeline:
<ul>
<li>24 September: WordPress Tavern - <a href="https://wptavern.com/w3c-drops-wordpress-from-consideration-for-redesign-narrows-cms-shortlist-to-statamic-and-craft">W3C Drops WordPress from Consideration for Redesign, Narrows CMS Shortlist to Statamic and Craft</a></li>
<li>25 September: Web consultant focusing on standards and accessibility Adrian Roselli expanded a Twitter thread to this post:  <a href="https://adrianroselli.com/2020/09/gutenberg-accessibility-costs-wordpress-the-w3c-work.html">Gutenberg Accessibility Costs WordPress the W3C Work</a></li>
<li>26 September: Member of the WordPress Accessibility Team Amanda Rush - <a href="https://www.customerservant.com/w3c-is-prioritizing-accessibility-over-its-open-source-licensing-preferences-why-is-that-a-bad-thing-again/">“W3C Is Prioritizing Accessibility Over Its Open Source Licensing Preferences”. Why is that a bad thing again?</a></li>
<li>27 September: Accessibility consultant and WordPress contributor Joe Dolson was cited in the WordPress Tavern article and published this piece as a response: <a href="https://www.joedolson.com/2020/09/the-w3c-drops-wordpress-from-consideration/">The W3C Drops WordPress from Consideration</a>.</li>
<li>29 September: WordPress Tavern with this update - <a href="https://wptavern.com/w3c-selects-craft-cms-for-redesign-project">W3C Selects Craft CMS for Redesign Project</a></li>
</ul>
Simon Jones from Studio 24 also responded with <a href="https://w3c.studio24.net/updates/on-not-choosing-wordpress/">a separate update on not choosing WordPress</a>. This post includes chapters on the challenges of Gutenberg. Specifically, the issue with Gutenberg for agencies that create bespoke websites is the development process. To quote Marie Manandise from Studio 24:
<blockquote>“It is very difficult to create custom blocks and make it profitable. And that is due to the necessity of using React for making any changes, including simple ("front-end") changes to the markup rendered by Gutenberg.”</blockquote>
In the post, Simon also addressed the topic of licensing and the different types of open source.
This tweet also sums up the issues around front-end complexity or “Reactification of frontend development.”
<figure class="kg-card kg-embed-card">
<blockquote>
"The use of React complicates frontend build. We have very talented frontend developers, however, they are not React experts - nor should they need to be. I believe frontend should be built as standards-compliant HTML/CSS with JavaScript used to enrich functionality" <a href="https://twitter.com/simonrjones?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@simonrjones</a>
— Ben Furfie (@frontendben) <a href="https://twitter.com/frontendben/status/1310137650955911168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 27, 2020</a></blockquote>
</figure>
My take:
It’s far from unusual for vendors or even champions of open source projects to respond negatively to not making the final cut. As a customer it’s good to be prepared for this and the tactics tend to come in different shapes and sizes.
In the case of a very public project done out in the open, it’s no surprise that the discussion made it to Twitter, <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24596769">Hacker News with 100s of comments</a>, and other websites. Simon from Studio 24 spent quite a bit of time responding to different questions and comments.
To quote Simon Jones:
<blockquote>“it's not easy working in the open but it's a really good thing to do.”</blockquote>
Finally, it is worth noting that while the WordPress community came out loud, the Drupal community responded much more understandingly and with positive feedback, even though they were also not on the final shortlist.
<h2 id="the-importance-of-accessibility">The importance of accessibility</h2>
As is now clear, accessibility became a major theme in this selection process. Still, accessibility was not more of a decisive a factor as the development process for example.
According to Studio 24:
<blockquote>“The reason we had to spend so much time looking into accessibility is because information about the level of accessibility of software is very hard to come by. CMS developers themselves are often not in a good position to give that information. It requires a lot of time and niche expertise to make that assessment. And also because none of the CMSes out there fit the bill, we had to be creative in coming up with a solution to meet the accessibility requirement.”</blockquote>
There’s now also an <a href="https://www.w3.org/WAI/atag/report-tool/">ATAG Report Tool</a>, which was released in June. The tool helps evaluators report on the accessibility of authoring tools and guides you through the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) requirements.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (a working group in W3C) are trying to use this tool to help create a list of accessible authoring tools (e.g. CMSs). This list doesn't exist yet since they don't have enough data.
In a recent talk on <a href="https://talks.hiddedevries.nl/2AxSl2/advancing-authoring-tool-accessibility">advancing authoring tool accessibility</a> by Hidde de Vries he looks at how better “authoring tools” can improve accessibility (for content editors and for web users), and share some of the new resources that the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is working on.
My take:
These days, it’s far from unusual for accessibility to be a topic when it comes to website design, also due to government regulations. Still, it’s quite rare that editor accessibility is such a decisive factor in selecting which platform to choose.
When we covered this case study in our recent <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/groups/cms-experts">CMS Expert group</a> meeting, we talked about accessibility not being high enough on the list for most customers.
Kudos to W3C as a standards organization for raising the topic!
<h2 id="final-thoughts-improving-the-cms-marketplace">Final thoughts: Improving the CMS marketplace</h2>
In our conversation with the CMS Experts, several vendors said that their clients are asking more and more for an accessible CMS. This increased focus on accessibility is now visible on roadmaps and will hopefully lead to tangible improvements soon.
On the agency side, one of the Boye members had to switch the CMS at the last minute in order to use an accessible tool.
As a community, we are big fans of this type open of sharing and reflection. While vendors move quickly and clearly keep innovating, more openness about the process can help us all push the marketplace forward.

What can we learn from the W3C CMS selection process

janus-boye

Contentstack, a headless Content Experience Platform (CXP), has <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/partnership-with-gatsby-to-build-fast-enterprise-mach-enabled-websites">announced</a> a strategic partnership with Gatsby – a modern React-based, open source framework for creating high-performance websites and applications. The partnership will enable customers to leverage the combined power of both platforms to build high performance, blazing-fast websites to deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences at scale.
The partnership between Gatsby and Contentstack is the latest in a year of significant moves across the CMS landscape, including the <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">recent purchase of Optimizely by Episerver</a>. As competition continues to increase, platforms are seeking more strategic avenues – including partnerships – to position their offerings.
For Contentstack, Gatsby represents a powerful channel of opportunity for accelerating website performance with a headless CMS that is purpose-built for omnichannel experiences. The partnership offers an enterprise-class, cloud-native solution to provide the best possible speed, security and flexibility for creating digital experiences.
<h3 id="going-headless">Going Headless</h3>
Over the last few years, headless CMS platforms have become far more prevalent, evolving from template-based platforms to API-driven and decoupled systems. Unlike traditional content management systems where the content is tied to the frontend, headless CMS platforms separate the content from the presentation – allowing creators to pull, store, and display their content any way they want, using the frameworks or programming languages they prefer.
As an API-first headless SaaS platform, <a href="/contentstack-introducing-headless-cms/">Contentstack</a> is at the intersection of content management and digital experiences, enabling business and IT to “remove the silos” and more easily collaborate. Their microservices architecture provides an extensible framework for scaling across endpoints, from websites to devices to frontend apps, giving content creators more control over an expanding world of channels and services.
Gatsby also takes a headless approach to content, leveraging modern web technologies such as React, GraphQL, and Javascript to provide a faster frontend experience powered by a headless CMS. The result is a dynamic, lightweight website that improves the user experience without compromising control from the CMS layer.  
"In today's digital world, speed matters – losing customers to a slow, low-performing website is not acceptable," said Peter Fogelsanger, Global Head of Partnerships at Contentstack. "Ensuring that the storytelling from the content creators is delivered to customers quickly and seamlessly is critical to every company's success. This partnership with Gatsby makes it possible. Businesses can bring together their marketing and development teams to deliver blazing fast websites and applications with the best, most up-to-date digital content for their customers."
Together, Contentstack and Gatsby are providing a complete solution for improving website performance and unifying both marketing and development teams. By adopting the MACH (Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless) approach delivered by both platforms, businesses can now create faster, more scalable websites that enhance the customer experience.
"Working with Contentstack allows marketing and content to harmonize with the development team," said Linda Watkins, Vice President of Partnerships at Gatsby. "When both business and technical teams are enabled by a microservices-based architecture, the agility in adapting and improving customer experiences is a game changer. Gatsby Cloud enables businesses to integrate seamlessly with Contentstack's API to manage content and control publishing. Our joint customers can more easily deliver the best digital experiences and truly stand out from their competition."
As part of the partnership offering, joint customers will have access to an API-connector between the Contentstack and Gatsby technology platforms. Contentstack <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/docs/developers/sample-apps/build-a-sample-website-using-gatsby-and-contentstack/">offers</a> a tutorial, providing step-by-step instructions on how to create a website using Gatsby and Contentstack. Gatsby also has an exclusive <a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.com/guides/contentstack/">guide</a> for integrating Gatsby with Contentstack.
<h3 id="about-gatsby">About Gatsby</h3>
<a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.org/">Gatsby</a> is a web development framework that brings together all the best, modern ways to build on the web. Specifically designed to help frontend engineers leverage the advantages of cloud native architecture, Gatsby provides the most collaborative, secure, and performant way to build websites with access to a broad ecosystem of tools and enhancements via easy to setup integrations. Used by Fortune 500 companies including ButcherBox, Capital One, DraftKings, IBM, and Impossible Foods, the company is backed by Index Ventures, CRV, Trinity Ventures, Dig Ventures, Mango Capital, Fathom Capital, and prominent angel investors.
<h3 id="about-contentstack">About Contentstack</h3>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/">Contentstack</a> is a headless SaaS Content Experience Platform (DXP) that enables enterprises to manage content across all digital channels. The preferred API-first CMS for SAP customers, Contentstack was designed from the ground up for large-scale, complex, and mission-critical deployments. Contentstack is a founding member of the MACH Alliance, an industry organization that advocates for an open and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystem that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless.

Contentstack and Gatsby Announce Partnership to Power Ultra-Fast Websites with Headless CMS

Hyland, an enterprise content management (ECM) and process management provider, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-enters-definitive-agreement-to-acquire-alfresco/">announced</a> that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Alfresco Software – an open source content services platform.
Both vendors appeared on the <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/explore/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-content-services-platforms#:~:text=In%20its%202019%20Magic%20Quadrant,vision%20and%20ability%20to%20execute.&amp;text=For%2010%20years%20in%20a,(ECM)%20and%20content%20services.">Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM in 2019</a>, with Hyland ranking as a “Leader” in the overall category. With Alfresco firmly in a challenger position, the combination brings a number of market-leading advantages to Hyland’s global growth strategy – particularly as it looks to the cloud.
“With this acquisition, Alfresco brings significant geographic and industry experience to Hyland, as well as an open-source community as a new source of product innovation,” said Jay Bhatt, president and CEO of Alfresco. “Both companies share the same passion for customer success and innovation and together will offer increased value for customers and partners.”
Hyland’s news is the latest in a recent “buying spree” that’s been playing out across the digital experience landscape. In just the past few months alone, <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">Acquia received a major investment from Vista Equity Partners</a>, <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">Episerver announced</a> plans to buy Optimizely, and just last week <a href="/nordic-capital-invests-in-siteimprove-plans-international-expansion-and-development/">Nordic Capital acquired 70% of Siteimprove</a>.
A leading ECM provider, Hyland is best known for its Onbase and Perceptive content management products, which securely centralize enterprise content and deliver relevant information to users across a wide variety of industries – including healthcare, finance, insurance, higher education and manufacturing.
Headquartered in Boston, Alfresco offers a modern, cloud-native Digital Business Platform that delivers enterprise content services and solutions to connect, manage, and protect critical information for organizations. Alfresco’s cloud capabilities may be a big ingredient in Hyland’s recipe for success as they eye a more cloud-centric strategy to scale their growth.
<h3 id="a-legacy-of-strategic-acquisitions">A Legacy of Strategic Acquisitions</h3>
Alfresco is one of Hyland’s many purchases, which have included a number of smaller digital optimization tools. Just this year, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-rpa-software-provider-another-monday/">Hyland acquired</a> Another Monday, the robotic process automation (RPA) software, <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-completes-acquisition-of-streamline-healths-ecm-business/">Streamline Health ECM</a>, and <a href="https://news.hyland.com/hyland-acquires-blockchain-credentialing-provider-learning-machine/">Learning Machine</a>, a company that develops and markets blockchain-secured digital credentialing solutions. Other acquisitions include OneContent, Perceptive (which became one of their flagship products) and <a href="https://www.hyland.com/en/company/acquisitions">many more</a>.
“We continue to grow our business and advance our platform organically and via acquisitions,” said Bill Priemer, president and CEO of Hyland. “This acquisition will expand our global reach, enabling us to help more organizations achieve their digital transformation goals and become more informed, empowered, and connected.”
Alfresco has also had its own share of acquisitions, <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/news/press-releases/alfresco-acquires-content-services-specialist-technology-services-group">purchasing</a> its long-time services partner, Technology Services Group (TSG), to leverage their deep expertise in the insurance, manufacturing, life sciences, and compliance verticals. They also purchased <a href="https://www.alfresco.com/news/press-releases/alfresco-acquires-integration-specialist-pernexas">Pernexas</a> to add their portfolio of SAP capabilities.
<h3 id="why-the-alfresco-acquisition-is-important">Why the Alfresco Acquisition is Important</h3>
Over the years, Alfresco has grown into a respected and innovative enterprise content management provider with an array of proven solutions. But perhaps their most prudent and prescient decision was embracing the cloud – and partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to scale their service offerings. Within the ECM industry, this has proven to be a uniquely strategic asset, and one that Hyland can use to accelerate their journey to a more modern, cloud-native posture. If properly integrated, this could be a game changer for Hyland – the kind that puts them in the leadership position on the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
<h3 id="about-hyland">About Hyland</h3>
<a href="https://www.hyland.com/">Hyland</a> is an enterprise content management (ECM) software platform, combining integrated document management, business process management, and records management in a single application. Hyland software allows organizations to manage, control, and share digital content with employees, business partners, customers, and other constituencies.
<h3 id="about-alfresco">About Alfresco</h3>
<a href="https://www.alfresco.com/">Alfresco Software</a> is a commercial, open-source software company. The Alfresco Digital Business Platform accelerates the design and delivery of “cloud-first” solutions for the enterprise that are process and content-intensive. It is a single, integrated platform built from the ground up to digitize processes, manage content, and securely govern information. Alfresco helps more than 1,300 industry-leading organizations, including Cisco, Pitney Bowes, Capital One, US Department of Navy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and NASA, to be more responsive and competitive.

Hyland Acquires Alfresco, Focuses On Cloud and Global Expansion Of Enterprise CMS

In a year that’s already seen major shifts in strategy from enterprise software vendors, Sitecore is shaking things up with the appointment of <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2020/09/sitecore-names-steve-tzikakis-as-chief-executive-officer">Steve Tzikakis as its new CEO</a>. 
Effective immediately, Tzikakis will take the reins from Mark Frost, who over the last three years successfully led Sitecore through a radical transformation of its business, transitioning to a multi-product company with managed cloud and SaaS offerings. Frost worked closely with the Sitecore Board of Directors during the past several months on the transition plan and will remain on in an advisory role. 
Tzikakis is an experienced digital transformation technology leader with a strong track record for translating vision and strategy into world-class, go-to-market execution – and the ability to bring together teams and ecosystems to drive rapid growth. A 13-year veteran of SAP, Tzikakis spent the last five years as President of SAP’s South Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, spanning more than 43,000 customers, 19,000 partners, 4,700 employees, and 85 nationalities. While in this role, Tzikakis doubled business in the region. 
This announcement follows a <a href="/sitecore-updates-experience-platform-and-experience-commerce-releases-new-sitecore-content-hub/">major release to Sitecore’s flagship products</a>, Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10 and Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10, as well as the launch of <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2020/07/sitecore-leverages-ai-for-smarter-management-of-images-and-video">Sitecore Content Hub 3.4</a> – which offers enhanced Digital Asset Management (DAM) and smarter orchestration of images and video.
“Global Markets today are undergoing monumental shifts, and the need for digital experiences that fabricate and define Human Connections are becoming more important,” <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tzikakis_today-is-a-very-special-day-on-my-journey-activity-6706590350095523840-ndmi">said</a> Tzikakis. “Our customers and partners can expect to see us accelerate our global expansion plans and innovation of more market-leading cloud and SaaS solutions, while further increasing our customer-centric DNA.”
Given Tzikakis’ background and experience, it’s clear that Sitecore is shifting its focus to global reach and brand awareness. This may be due in no small part to rising opportunities within digital transformation. The market’s reaction to COVID-19 has resulted in significant turmoil and budget slashing, but areas like eCommerce have been bright spots as businesses adapt to new B2B and consumer behaviors. With a new product model and the introduction of managed cloud and SaaS, the company seems poised for growth.
<h3 id="about-sitecore">About Sitecore</h3>
Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform that empowers the world’s smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers. A highly decorated industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Carnival Cruise Lines, Kimberly-Clark, L’Oréal, and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalized experiences for their customers. Learn more at <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore.com</a>.

Sitecore Names Steve Tzikakis as Chief Executive Officer

2020 has been both a challenging and active period for content management platform providers. Despite battling the persistent headwinds of COVID-19 and the looming specter of economic uncertainty, it’s clear that businesses are embracing digital transformation at all levels of the market – and shifting resources from physical to virtual.
This has been a transformational period for some vendors, particularly those focused on digital experience (DX). In fact, <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/five-fifty-the-quickening">a recent study by McKinsey</a> suggests that we’ve just experienced 10 years of eCommerce growth in the last 3 months.
As the study suggests, that pain you feel in your neck might just be digital whiplash.
Market challenges aside, this has clearly been a dynamic news cycle for the CMS industry. Soon after Acquia <a href="/acquia-launches-new-open-digital-experience-platform/">released its new Open Digital Experience Platform</a> with the vision of bringing marketers and developers closer than ever, Sitecore announced a major release to its flagship products: Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10 and Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10.
What’s more, both releases follow the recent launch of <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/company/news-events/press-releases/2020/07/sitecore-leverages-ai-for-smarter-management-of-images-and-video">Sitecore Content Hub 3.4</a>, which offers enhanced Digital Asset Management (DAM) and smarter orchestration of images and video.
Based on these releases, it seems like the pandemic hasn’t slowed down the rise of digital experience. On the contrary, with DX becoming the lifeblood of many organizations, companies are working harder and faster than ever to provide the best customer experiences online. Sitecore’s latest updates reflect this goal, bringing marketing and IT teams together and allowing them to work more efficiently.
<h3 id="what-you-can-expect-from-sitecore-s-new-releases">What you can expect from Sitecore’s new releases</h3>
As a legacy leader in the CMS space, Sitecore commands a strong footprint in the enterprise market. This is both an advantage and disadvantage, as their monolithic ecosystem has been challenged over the past few years by mid-level market solutions with smaller pricetags. As digital and content professionals demand greater freedom and control over their martech stack, they have embraced API-driven and <a href="/contentstack-introducing-headless-cms/">headless platforms like Contentstack</a> to shape experiences across a broadening landscape of endpoints and devices.
What’s evident is that Sitecore is responding to their market shifts, investing heavily in the transformation of their products and services to meet a changing world – one where flexibility is essential. At the enterprise level, there continues to be demand for well-architected, highly integrated solutions that provide the trusted scalability for distributing content across a multitude of channels, and making the “Holy Grail” of personalization less of a myth to marketers.
If you’re not familiar, Sitecore is composed of four integrated products: Sitecore Experience Platform, Sitecore Experience Commerce, Sitecore Experience Manager, and Sitecore Content Hub. When combined, they form Sitecore Experience Cloud: the end-to-end content, commerce, and personalization platform.
<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5T7qzvHbEcE7rzExxw3BkwoQQBUel03jMcvE_mKuofsJTpiINkmy4uQLWIsh6u7sBE7QYlujU4stKWnS2v0jT1QeNN7SyMsNRgPrsJ1Vbh3YafLk4T3VDP1BLANbQkWvOQ0HdiTRT2tfsyyQwg" alt="" /></figure>
If you’re interested in diving deeper into each of Sitecore’s products, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/products">click here</a> for more details.
<h3 id="sitecore-experience-platform-xp-10">Sitecore Experience Platform (XP) 10</h3>
The new Sitecore XP 10 comes with updates such as enhanced analytics reporting, ASP.NET Core headless development, and Sitecore Containers – which provide greater efficiencies across teams. Now, IT and marketing can accelerate customer success by aligning workflows and timelines, evolving customer experiences quickly, and deploying data-informed updates or new experience elements faster than ever.
Sitecore XP 10 features new innovations around usability and performance. The updated editing environment offers an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, and provides real-time insights for multisite and multilingual experiences as content is created and published – giving marketers the knowledge they need to drive improved conversions.
In addition, Sitecore XP 10 includes enhanced reporting that enables marketers to make informed decisions with more granular visibility, specifically with how personalization is driving performance. It also includes improvements to out-of-the-box forms and enhancements to email and marketing automation.
With full container support, XP 10 eliminates that problem with smooth deployment flows between environments through consistency, isolation, and reproducibility.
XP 10 also makes collecting, analyzing, and acting on enhanced customer data faster for marketers, providing even deeper insights for audience segmentation to strengthen personalization capabilities across channels and grow customer loyalty.
Other XP 10 updates include:
<ul>
<li>Enhanced data capabilities coupled with the ability to extend targeting with auto-personalization.</li>
<li>Horizon editing interface, providing in-context insights across multilingual and multisite experiences.</li>
<li>Updated connector functionality for sending current visitor Experience Database® (xDB) information to Salesforce Marketing Cloud in real-time, enhancing Salesforce marketing automation.</li>
</ul>
<h3 id="sitecore-experience-commerce-xc-10">Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC) 10</h3>
The new Sitecore XC 10 release truly reflects the market shift towards eCommerce. It provides more tools to drive higher average order value and revenue with dynamic product bundling and new promotion capabilities.
For example, using the new product bundling capability, brands can sell related and complementary products and services together at one price, driving higher order value and selling more products and services.
Sitecore has also been doubling down on their container infrastructure for deploying their solutions. To accelerate time-to-value and increase agility, Sitecore XC 10 includes broad support for <a href="https://www.docker.com/">Docker</a> and <a href="https://kubernetes.io/">Kubernetes</a>, making the deployment process more lightweight and faster than ever. Containers are generally complex, particularly Kubernetes, and require an advanced level of expertise to manage successfully.
<h3 id="sitecore-content-hub">Sitecore Content Hub</h3>
Formerly Stylelabs – which was acquired by Sitecore in 2018 – the new Sitecore Content Hub provides a 360º view of your content landscape, helping you manage every dimension of your marketing content through a single, integrated solution.
More than a DAM, Content Hub provides a broad array of features. Along with housing all of your digital assets, media, and content elements, Content Hub allows users to “feed” their Sitecore personalization with AI/ML content tagging and Image Similarity. The entire system is designed to integrate with Sitecore CMS and Experience Commerce, so you can seamlessly organize your assets and plan around content production and operations – and power your campaigns for the right channels, regions, and audiences.
The other cool aspect of Content Hub is its marketing resource management, allowing teams to sync more effectively and collaborate across workflows. Content Hub also features product content management, so you can control versions of catalogs and eCommerce items and more personalized web-to-print capabilities.
If you’d like to try out Sitecore, you can request a demo <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/request-a-demo">here</a>.
<h3 id="about-sitecore">About Sitecore</h3>
Sitecore delivers a digital experience platform that empowers the world’s smartest brands to build lifelong relationships with their customers. A highly decorated industry leader, Sitecore is the only company bringing together content, commerce, and data into one connected platform that delivers millions of digital experiences every day. Leading companies including American Express, ASOS, Carnival Cruise Lines, Kimberly-Clark, L’Oréal, and Volvo Cars rely on Sitecore to provide more engaging, personalized experiences for their customers. Learn more at <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/">Sitecore.com</a>.

Sitecore Updates Experience Platform and Experience Commerce, Releases New Sitecore Content Hub

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