Articles - Page 20

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. Here's Why CMS Is Your 'Unsung Hero' in 2025

janus-boye

There’s a little-known psychological condition called footballis doldrumus that affects millions of people each year.
This peculiar phenomenon strikes around mid-July – the “dog days,” as we say – causing North American football fans to incessantly pine for the pigskin. The hotter the summer, the more intense the craving. And this has been a hot one.
Symptoms include (but are not limited to): listing the season opener as a holiday on your Outlook calendar, leaving messages on refrigerator wipe boards that read “6 weeks left ‘til kickoff,” and waking up from a deep sleep and shouting first and ten for no apparent reason.
It’s a sinister malady that Joel Varty is undoubtedly familiar with, given his own experience on the field. When we met in New York City this past May, he told me about his son’s goal of playing football at the collegiate level, and perhaps one day in the NFL. I learned later that Joel played during college, and has a passion for coaching. 
As a victim myself of footballis doldrumus, talking with Joel was a bit like a support group on multiple levels. I resisted any mention of Tom Brady for fear of getting too off-topic (or sounding like an insipid fanboy), and we focused instead on the real-world challenges impacting the content management game.
In his role as Chief Technology Officer at <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/agility-cms-introduces-simplified-pricing-tiers-for-headless-content-management/">Agility</a> – <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/">a headless CMS</a> – Joel is facing a deep bench of competitors with similar strengths on the field. As many platform features become commoditized, executing the right plays to differentiate is essential to win.
When I learned that Agility was releasing new updates to its UI, I caught up with Joel to learn more about his company’s strategy and get his perspective on the marketplace. We talked about how composable is changing the game, why trust is critical to customer experience, and how he’s quarterbacking his own way to victory.
<h2>Coaching the long game in CMS </h2>
Like most content management veterans, Joel’s path to product was circuitous. While playing football at the <a href="https://www.uoguelph.ca/" target="_blank">University of Guelph</a> in Ontario, he parlayed a love of prose into programming and graduated with honors in English and Computer Science.
It’s not an uncommon story in the development world. Some of the best coders I’ve ever worked with started analyzing James Joyce before JavaScript.
Guelph is also where Agility’s CEO, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonvoigt/">Jon Voigt</a>, attended – and the two have been teaming up ever since. They both endured the rise and fall of the dot.com era, and that lead to a stint of website consulting gigs that encompassed the buildout of their own CMS.
“[I think] everyone has said, ‘hey, I can build my own CMS’ at some point,” he recalls with laughter. “We started ours around 2005 and kept doing it because we really like working together. But by 2017, we decided we didn’t want to build websites anymore – we just wanted to build a CMS, and we think headless CMS is the way to go.”
Joel also said that one of the catalysts for this shift in priorities was the maturity of the Agility CMS itself. Not only was it stable and trusted at a foundational level, but it now had enough customers running on it to make financial sense. As a totally bootstrapped company with solid profitability, they were able to sell off some of their existing contracts in 2018 and go all-in on the CMS.
<hr />
<h4>“I think where Agility shines isn't in a specific vertical market. It's with folks who have complex, unique needs – and you have to approach those in a special way. We love to teach our partners how to do that.”</h4>
<hr />
“It was really hard to let go,” Joel admitted. “Giving [our business] to partners was a double-edged sword, but it was great to stop competing with our partners. We were always the first party vendor building stuff, so we didn't feel it was fair to have a product we have an upper hand with.”
I asked Joel how they made the transition successful, particularly around client care. I’ve heard this projects-to-products story many times, but the failures often come from a lack of top-down leadership and cultural investment – like a self-inflicted form of pass interference. 
“We actually looked at our core values as a company, and really focused on teaching,” he said, “so we took the lessons we’ve learned and started teaching our partners how to do things. I think where Agility shines isn't in a specific vertical market. It's with folks who have complex, unique needs – and you have to approach those in a special way. We love to teach our partners how to do that.”
Teach... or coach? Either way, Joel and his team have made the knowledge transfer a big part of the Agility experience. This includes clear documentation, tutorials, transparent practices, and regular communication with their community of users. 
<h2>Outplaying sameness with service </h2>
At a recent event, I was discussing the headless CMS category with several attendees, and the subject of commoditization came up (as it frequently does). One of the pedaled analogies was that DXPs are akin to “apples and oranges” based on their feature sets, while headless CMSes are more like red apples versus green.
I asked Joel about this swelling box of apples and how he views the commoditization challenge.
“It’s interesting because there's almost more of a move to be enough of the same so that you're recognizable across vendors – like things have to be ‘same enough,’” he observed. “If you're too different, that's not actually a good thing, because it's hard to compare in a DX or composable space. So we strive to be ‘same enough’ while being unique.”
Commoditization is a real threat, but Agility is rising above the challenge by investing in its customer experience. This is embodied by its “White Glove Service,” which assures each client receives human interaction – which Joel admits is a challenge for most vendors as it inhibits scalability. But when the average lifetime of an Agility customer is eight to ten years, there’s value in this hands-on approach.
This felt like a key differentiator to me, so I asked if it was a key selling point for Agility.
“We haven't been using it enough,” Joel said. “We need to listen more to that part of our customers’ reactions. Our product was built based on customer feedback, and that's how we decide what we're going to do. It's 100% customer driven. We spent a lot of time and effort tracking what people say and want regarding features. And that's how we decide what we build into the product.”
To that end, Agility continues to provide transparency around its roadmap, engaging with its users via <a href="https://roadmap.agilitycms.com/tabs/3-launched" target="_blank">roadmap.agilitycms.com</a> around ideation. Joel said developers are very vocal within their community, but Agility strives to ensure that marketers and business decision-makers have a voice. That’s important, given the critical role of content operations within most enterprises.
“Our ideal customer needs to understand the value of content,” he explained. “Sometimes it's the developer, an information management role, a head of marketing, a CTO – maybe even the CEO of a smaller company. But if they can get the value of that content… then that’s going to be a good fit for Agility.”
<h2>Tackling the composable hype-cycle with trust</h2>
As a headless CMS, I asked Joel what he thought about the growth of composable and the advent of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wrestling-with-category-confusion-in-the-dxc-slackdown/">DXC (digital experience composition)</a> and other categories emerging in the space. On the one hand, DXC vendors like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/uniform-raises-28m-in-series-a-funding-round-for-composable-dxp/">Uniform</a> are solving the visualization challenges for headless CMSes. But are these TLAs (or “three-lettered acronyms” for the unindoctrinated) helping or hindering our understanding of the composable space?
“My opinion is those acronyms are holding us back as much as they bring us forward,” he said. “They give us something to talk about, but you always have to go beyond that. There's always some explaining that has to happen when you're talking to someone who actually wants to use this in their business. I think it comes down to having more trust between people.”
That trust is hard-earned, as Joel explained. <a href="https://www.cineplex.com/" target="_blank">Cineplex</a>, one of Agility’s customers since 2007, has relied not just on its CMS, but on the expertise of a team that understands their business imperatives. Over the years, trust in Agility has guided the cinema giant’s digital transformation, from site rebuilds to infrastructure changes. This ingredient of trust has shaped Joel’s perspective on composable, which is as much about the business considerations as the technology posture.
“I think the idea of enterprise software should mean long-term ROI, not just fast ROI,” he said. “How can you take a piece out and put it back in, or fix something that you don't like? That, to me, is like the best of composable.”
I probed further about the importance of composable standards and the rise of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH Alliance</a> over the last few years. The organization has advocated for best-of-breed technologies that meet the rigid standards of MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, Headless). Are relationships with vendors in DXC, e-Commerce, search, and other categories becoming an important growth channel for headless CMS?
“Yes, and the long-term goal is to have a combination of technology and relationships accelerated, where it's like a pre-built stack or grid that everyone knows works,” he said. “So CMS is going to be hosted here, and it will have this for search, this personalization, and this for commerce. We know how it all works together – and everyone trusts it.”
Joel admitted that we might be three or four years away from any broad market buy-in, suggesting that it’s still a hard sell given the institutional culture of some IT departments. This is why the efforts of thought leaders within the MACH Alliance community have been key to advancing the growth of composable.
“They won’t get it until they trust it,” Joel punctuated.
<h2>Agility’s new UI delivers more than a fresh uniform</h2>
I heard Agility’s plans for its new user interface some time ago, well before its scheduled GA. While modernizing a UI is an accepted part of any software lifecycle, it offers as many opportunities as challenges. Most people loathe change – so any modification can be met with temperamental responses. That’s why this UI "refresh" is as much about empathy and sentiment as it is about systems and processes.
I wanted to hear how Agility approached this undertaking, and what stood out for Joel.
“Interestingly enough, we started this new UI project about 18 months ago,” he revealed. “The last time we redid our UI was in 2015, and Jon [our CEO] and I knew that you always do it once and then refresh it after everyone's already had a chance to see it. We started base testing with cohorts of new or existing users, and we actually brought design in-house – which, for a smaller company, was a big deal. We also have this amazing person who A/B tested different things and conducted interviews to determine what makes [users] feel better. And we focused as much on that as we could and tried to be very consistent about how we handled content.”
As Joel detailed the process, it was clear his team didn’t cut things out or remove extraneous elements just to satisfy the simplification goal. To his point, CMS users claim to want all the features – even if they won’t be using them.
“There's a real balance there,” he continued. “But overall, we wanted things to be faster and easier across the board and ultimately make people feel better.”
I had a chance to peruse the new UI while comparing it to the classic version (which will continue to be available to users). Right off the bat, the visual design system is cleaner and more streamlined, offering a modern lightweight experience that feels more like an app. The main navigation panel provides more contrast, aimed at reducing eye strain during prolonged use. The authoring tools are still intuitive and familiar, a staple of Agility's previous UI. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/07/agility-new-ui-2023-1024x692.jpg" alt="New Agility software UI" />
You can read about the full scope of features <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/agility-unveils-refreshed-design-system-in-ui-delivering-enhanced-user-experience-and-accessibility/">in our previous post</a>, but a few stand out, including new filters that offer augmented search. Users will find the new org selector handy, and there’s a slick heartbeat indicator coming that will provide greater visibility around specific events and tasks. Also noteworthy are the drag-and-drop model editor and the table column reordering, both designed to simplify and accelerate tasks.
You can check out the UI for yourself by creating an Agility account at <a href="http://www.agilitycms.com">www.agilitycms.com</a>. While Joel and his team are still fine-tuning some details, scope creep has pushed the original launch date into late July – a frustrating reality of software launches.
“But I think it will be worth it,” he said. “Our company anniversary is July 19, so I'm kind of thinking maybe that's a good day.”
<h2>Keeping the game fun – even with AI on the field</h2>
I’ve already waxed extensively about Joel’s affinity for football. But that affection is grounded by a deep gratitude for his family and their shared pastimes. Much like his dual pursuits of literature and computer science, he blends a love for athletics and a passion for art and scholarship in his life outside Agility.
“I am super blessed with two really, really cool kids,” he said glowingly. “My son plays football, and I've been a dedicated ‘dad coach’ for that. But my daughter is super into theater, and I love directing, being on stage, or getting involved from a community standpoint. It's got nothing to do with technology – it's just having fun.”
As we rounded out our time together, the subject of AI meandered into the conversation. What does Joel think about the advent of this technology and its impact on content? He has, after all, helped shape the CMS space over the last two decades. What does the world look like now that ChatGPT is a growing fixture in the creative process?
“I look at it like this: ChatGPT needs us,” he said. “It copies ideas. Nothing comes out of thin air, and someone has to come up with the ideas.”
Kind of like a quarterback audibling on the field. Sometimes, human instinct takes over – no matter how rehearsed the play might be. And while AI may prove its worth as a key automation tool, it’s heartening to hear from a content veteran that people are still core to the process.
As a headless CMS in a densely-packed market, Agility is executing in all the right ways. And with so many seasons under its belt, the platform and its people have proven resilient in the face of change. That speaks volumes about its vision and go-to-market strategy, which gives it a strong position in the new composable game. 
I still reserve the mantle of GOAT for Tom Brady, but Joel definitely has my vote for the “CMS Hall of Fame.”

Playing to Win in the Headless CMS Game: Interview with Joel Varty, CTO at Agility

matt-garrepy

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/uniform-raises-28m-in-series-a-funding-round-for-composable-dxp/">Uniform</a> continues to drive innovation in the digital experience composition platform (DXCP) space.
As a leading provider in the emerging category, the company just announced a series of enhancements to its <a href="https://uniform.dev/canvas">Uniform Canvas</a> and <a href="https://uniform.dev/mesh">Uniform Mesh</a> products. The new features round out Uniform's DXCP as the most robust visual workspace, empowering digital teams to deliver winning multichannel experiences.
The new product releases also complete Uniform's original promise of headless technologies. Now, brands can visually weave multiple API-powered technologies together to create high-performance digital experiences quickly and with greater agility. 
According to Uniform's press release, the new functionality will allow marketers to create web and app experiences faster and more flexibly. The enhanced features will also give developers broader scope for building lightning-fast experiences with innovative technology.
Below are some of the technical highlights and enhancements of Canvas and Mesh.
<h2>Putting power back in the hands of marketers </h2>
Canvas comes equipped with two new enhancements: Uniform Dynamic Pages and Uniform Redirect Manager. These powerful additions to the visual experience builder will offer marketers and merchandisers greater control over product-based experiences.
<ul>
<li>Dynamic Pages: Enables business users to efficiently adapt and iterate across thousands of webpages, such as product detail pages, to build visual experiences at scale without developer support. No-code templates and custom page creation drive seamless content updates, consistent branding, and improves speed to market.</li>
<li>Redirect Manager: Simplifies URL management through the creation of vanity URLs, activation of fast redirects using a modern content delivery network (CDN), and reliable page access. A visual tool helps business users quickly identify browser errors, improving accuracy and ensuring a smooth customer experience.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Freedom to innovate with best-of-breed tools</h2>
Mesh’s enhanced features underpin Uniform's DXCP capabilities by removing silos, eliminating weeks of manual coding, and freeing developers to work with their tools of choice. Features will allow users to: 
<ul>
<li>Utilize any data source: Build and reuse front-end components to boost implementation speed and flexibility.</li>
<li>Leverage no-code connections to any API: This includes headless services, legacy platforms, and single-use data sources, along with pre-built connectors for key services.</li>
<li>Use Edgehancers to enable cutting-edge performance: Automatically push content to a CDN’s edge to enhance page speed, user experience, and SEO performance – all without any custom code.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Accelerate time to market</h2>
Uniform is also launching a Component Starter Kit – an open-source and fully customizable collection of front-end components to streamline ideation for testing and production. Users can easily add these to a component development system like <a href="https://storybook.js.org/">Storybook</a> and connect to content sources using Mesh.
“The excitement surrounding the new release comes from its ability to empower digital teams and tackle the challenges marketers encounter when delivering high-performing digital experiences,” said <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/is-the-birth-of-dxc-the-death-of-dxp-a-conversation-with-darren-guarnaccia-president-at-uniform/">Darren Guarnaccia</a>, president, Uniform. “These latest capabilities elevate the visual workspace, enabling true enterprise scalability and seamlessly blends content, data, and technology at remarkable speeds. With enhancements to Canvas, Mesh, and the introduction of the Component Starter Kit, we’re fulfilling the promise of what headless tools initially aimed to achieve. The envisioned future is one where marketers can focus on storytelling and audience engagement, free from the constraints of traditional platforms and processes.”
<h2>About Uniform</h2>
Uniform DXCP speeds up time to value for composable experience architecture, lowers development costs, and makes it easy for business users to build digital experiences. A composable orchestration layer for legacy and modern headless systems or any API in Uniform DXCP eliminates the need for complex custom integration code. Instead, available for marketers, merchandisers, and other business users are no-code tools to build digital experiences with content from any source—without submitting developer tickets. Furthermore, Uniform DXCP’s high-performance personalization capability, delivered at the edge, raises conversion and CX for all channels.

Uniform Adds New Visual Editing and Integration Features to Enhance DXCP

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Big leadership changes are afoot at the <a href="http://www.machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a>, the group of independent tech companies that advocate for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems. The organization just announced changes to its Executive Board and leadership team, coming on the heels of its successful <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-two-conference-wrap-six-takeaways-from-the-composable-event-of-the-year/">MACH Two Conference</a> in early June. 
As composable technology adoption increases globally, the MACH Alliance provides vendor-neutral resources, education, and guidance through industry experts, helping to support companies on their journey to <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-releases-study-on-adoption-of-mach-technologies-by-tech-leaders-qa-with-sonja-keerl/">MACH</a> (Microservices, API-First, Cloud-Native SaaS, Headless). As a movement, having transparent and democratic governance is vital, and the new board intends to fulfill the Alliance's commitment to diverse representation across member categories, geographies, genders, and areas of expertise.
According to the press release, the Alliance now touts more North American representatives than European. This reflects an accelerated adoption of MACH in markets like the U.S. and Canada. Additionally, the board has shifted its primary technology focus to concentrate more on business, marketing, and strategy. This transition will aid in advancing its mission, promoting the overall movement, and further supporting its expansion into North America within the next 12 months.
<h2>New Executive Board appointments 
</h2>
The MACH Alliance Executive Board comprises representatives from ISV, SI, and Enabler members within the Alliance, with an almost equal split between female and male members. Board elections take place every year, each term lasting two years, and Executive Board members are permitted to serve a maximum of two terms.
The new Executive Board appointments include:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/naragon/" target="_blank">Kristin Naragon</a> – Chief Strategy &amp; Marketing Officer at Akeneo</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/briankwalker/" target="_blank">Brian Walker</a> – Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Bloomreach</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/krithikaganesamoorthi/" target="_blank">Krithika Ganesamoorthi</a> – Senior Manager, Solutions Architecture at Amazon Web Services (AWS)</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenerale/" target="_blank">Jen Jones</a> – Chief Marketing Officer at commercetools</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasmin-guthmann-a463a766/" target="_blank">Jasmin Guthmann</a> – Head of Corporate Communication at Contentstack (re-elected)</li>
</ul>
This new crop of members will join the existing MACH Alliance Executive Board, which includes:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/casper-aagaard-rasmussen/" target="_blank">Casper Rasmussen</a> – President and Global SVP Technology at Valtech</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-panella-b616911/" target="_blank">Jon Panella</a> – Group Vice President at Publicis Sapient</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbachdk/" target="_blank">Chris Bach</a> – Co-founder and CSO at Netlify</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-selvon-1488958/" target="_blank">Dom Selvon</a> – Chief Technology Officer at Apply Digital</li>
</ul>
<h2>Outgoing members of the Executive Board </h2>
As the new board appointees cycle in, the Alliance is parting with three very large pairs of shoes to fill:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellygoetsch/" target="_blank">Kelly Goetsch</a> – Chief Strategy Officer at commercetools</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjwilliams/" target="_blank">John Williams</a> – Chief Technology Officer at Amplience</li>
<li><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/gordana-vuckovic/" target="_blank">Gordana Vuckovic</a> – Advisor, TAZI AI Systems</li>
</ul>
Goetsch has been – and remains – an important changemaker within the MACH Community. He has played a critical role in the development of the Alliance since its inception and served as its founding president. During his two-year board tenure, he significantly contributed to furthering the industry’s understanding of MACH and will continue to be a very active member.
Similarly, Williams and Vuckovic have left an indelible mark on the Alliance and bolstered the MACH movement during their time on the Executive Board.
<h2>2023 Elections introduce new Heads of Councils</h2>
The Alliance announced the appointment of several new Heads of Councils during its 2023 elections. Voting took place between June 28th and 30th. Candidates from member companies nominated themselves and campaigned for MACH Alliance member votes, which were cast as part of a transparent, democratic process.
The new appointments include: 
<ul>
<li>Growth Council: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/thetalofer/" target="_blank">Tal Ofer</a> – Partnerships Director at Cloudinary</li>
<li>Marketing Council: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewwadsworth1/" target="_blank">Andrew Wadsworth</a>, Senior Director Business Development at Apply Digital, joined by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinabotea/" target="_blank">Irina Boteo</a>, VP Marketing at Uniform</li>
<li>Tech Council: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartguestsmith/" target="_blank">Stuart Guest-Smith</a>, Lead Principal Architect at BigCommerce, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertocarreramaldonado/" target="_blank">Roberto Carrera</a>, Strategy Architect at Apply Digital</li>
</ul>
<h2>New Education Council focuses on business and technical foundations</h2>
This year, the Alliance also announced the establishment of a new Education Council. The initiative will be led by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tareknseir/" target="_blank">Tarek Nseir,</a> SVP of Digital Engagement EMEA at EPAM Systems, who has been an active member of the Executive Board for the past year.
With this new council, the Alliance aims to turbocharge its efforts in the educational space, ensuring it remains at the top of the agenda. During the MACH Two Conference, Casper Rasmussen detailed some of the roadmap for the Alliance's ambitious education plans. The council will be critical in meeting that horizon, launching business and technical foundation tracks later this year.
<h2>Celebrating MACH Milestones</h2>
The board changes and election appointments come on the heels of several milestones for the MACH Alliance. Most notably: the celebration of its third anniversary. The organization recently attained 90 members, including <a href="https://machalliance.org/newsroom/mach-alliance-announces-paypal-is-the-first-company-to-join-new-supporter-membership-category" target="_blank">PayPal</a> and other global financial service providers – all while maintaining the purity of the MACH Alliance certification.
As previously noted, the MACH Two Conference – which was held from June 13-14 in Amsterdam – was a resounding success. The event brought together more than 600 leaders across the MACH community, providing a wealth of education workshops and sessions with real customer use cases and success stories.
“It has been an exciting and fun experience to strategically lead this organization for the last 12 months,” said Casper Rasmussen, President of the MACH Alliance. “We are looking forward to onboarding fresh thinking, new energy, and to welcome new individuals to our executive team. With this leadership team in place from August, we have the exclusive opportunity to really propel awareness, education and the advancement of MACH to the next level. My sincere thanks to our board for having been such an essential part of all our achievements to date.”
<h2>About the MACH Alliance</h2>
The MACH Alliance is a [501(c)(6)] non-profit organization, governed by an independent board and does not endorse specific vendors, members or otherwise. The Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems that are Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless. All MACH Alliance members meet certification principles that are published on the website. The MACH Alliance welcomes technology companies and individual industry experts who share the same vision for the future.

MACH Alliance Appoints New Members to Executive Board, Focuses on Diversity of Expertise and Growth in North America

<hr /> A CMS is a software application that enables a user – or groups of users – to create, manage, and publish digital content to a range of channels for audiences to consume. <a target="_blank" href="https://opensource.com/article/20/7/history-content-management-system">The first CMS platforms</a> were introduced in the early 2000s as a tool for managing websites. Even today, there is often confusion between the definition of a “website” and a CMS. The difference is quite simple: a website is a collection of web pages, while a CMS is the software that manages, stores, and publishes those web pages.A traditional CMS is often called a “monolithic” or “coupled” CMS, meaning that it contains all features in one singular system. Because websites have primarily been the core channel, these systems are also called “Web CMS” or WCMS platforms. In most standard architectures, a CMS consists of a front end and a back end. The backend is a collection of templates and pages within the system, where users can create, edit, and publish. Content is stored in a database and rendered in what is called a “presentation layer,” or the frontend website – which is displayed in a web browser. For the most part, a CMS empowers its users to be more productive, making it easy to create, modify, and format website content with low code/no code <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG">WYSIWYG</a> editing capabilities. These users can often collaborate inside a CMS around specific workflows, where administrators can set permissions for users based on different roles like “author” or “editor.” Modern CMS platforms typically have an API (application programming interface) that enables the system or its modules to integrate with other software. This can be simple like <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhook">webhooks</a> but are generally more advanced connections that push data – like form leads – to a <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/salesforce">customer relationship management (CRM)</a> tool or <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/hubspot">marketing automation system</a>.Most CMS platforms help to automate various features that optimize URL structure, enhance data structure to improve SEO, provide on-board analytics, and enable scheduling capabilities to publish or remove content from pages. Each platform brings slightly different features to its users, but they all revolve around creating and publishing content. <h3>What is a headless CMS? </h3>Unlike a traditional CMS or WCMS, a <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms">headless CMS</a> contains only the back end of a content management system, serving more as a content repository.The term “headless” refers to the concept of cutting off the “head” – the front end, such as a website presentation layer – from the “body,” or the back end. Monolithic or coupled CMS platforms contain both back end tools as well as website templates, making them inseparable. Headless CMS platforms use APIs to display content without relying on built-in templates and pages. This allows content to be published across multiple devices or endpoints. This is referred to as “<a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnichannel">omnichannel</a>,” where editors can create content once in a headless CMS and push it to different destinations, including websites, apps, digital signage, and even <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things">Internet of Things (IoT)</a> devices like smartwatches. Headless CMS platforms contain many of the same features for content management as traditional systems, from facilitating workflows to enabling permissions and collaboration. They are often seen as an attractive solution for modern stacks that are focused on omnichannel strategies. They also have a disadvantage around their lack of front end visualization.  Some examples of headless CMS platforms include <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/agility">Agility</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/buttercms">ButterCMS</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentstack">Contentstack</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentful">Contentful</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/kontentai">Kontent.ai</a>.<h3>What is the difference between an open source CMS and a proprietary CMS?</h3>An open source CMS is a content management system that has made its source code freely available for anyone to use, modify, or build upon. The software belongs to the open market as opposed to being the property of a single company. This enables a community of developers and users to contribute to and customize the software to meet a wide variety of applications and use cases. While most open source CMS or Web CMS platforms have distinct features, they all have key advantages. One is the availability of open source plugins or “widgets” that expand the functionality of the CMS. Another is the prevalence of open source communities that continue to develop, maintain, and innovate with the source code. Unlike open source, a proprietary CMS is a product that is legally owned by a company or organization. It is copyrighted, meaning that a license must be procured to purchase or subscribe to the software using SaaS (software as a service) delivery.  Proprietary CMS source code is closed to the public. While many proprietary platforms have their own communities of users, they do not contribute to or help maintain the software as they do in open source. There are many advantages to open source. First, open source CMS platforms are generally free. Users only pay for hosting, additional plugins, or support. They can also use the source code without any restrictions, allowing developers to innovate and customize at will. However, proprietary systems generally offer more security and stablity, and provide better support, accountability, and access to professional services. Some leading examples of open source CMS are <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/wordpress">WordPress</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/drupal">Drupal</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/joomla">Joomla</a>. Proprietary CMSes include <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/optimizely">Optimizely</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/solodev">Solodev</a>. <h3>What are the advantages of using a content management system?</h3>There are many benefits to using a CMS. Here are a few highlights:  <ul><li>Manage multiple websites and integrate with third-party systems.</li><li>Assign permissions and controls for a single user or teams of users. </li><li>Create, edit, manage, and publish content with ease.</li><li>Reduce reliance on front-end developers for website changes.</li><li>Push content across websites or to a wide range of destinations</li></ul><h3>How do you choose the right CMS?</h3>There are many factors that influence the purchase of a content management system. Here are a few factors to consider:<ol><li>What kind of content model are you creating?</li><li>Are you planning to publish across multiple channels, or just web?</li><li>Do you need coupled or headless? Proprietary or open source?</li><li>What are the hosting, training, and support costs associated with the CMS?</li><li>Are there specific workflows or processes the CMS needs to accommodate?</li><li>Does the CMS have a robust API? How does it integrate with other technologies?</li><li>How easy is the content editing experience in the CMS? Is it low code/no code? Does it require significant training?</li><li>Do developers have access to code for customizations? </li><li>How many users will you have working in the CMS? Are your teams distributed? </li><li>What kinds of analytics do you require? What do your KPIs look like?</li><li>Do you need a cloud-first SaaS CMS, or an on-premises CMS for compliance? </li><li>What kind of technology or frameworks do you require in your CMS?</li><li>Is there a community of users associated with the CMS?</li><li>What kind of training, support, or professional services does the CMS provide?</li></ol><h3>CMS Selection Services</h3>With hundreds of choices, picking the right CMS can be challenging – and a costly endeavor. If you are in the evaluation process, talk to one of our CMS Critics today about our CMS Selection Service. Our seasoned staff of experts can help you limit the field, test the right options, and pick the right platform based on your needs. From demo to decision, we give you the confidence to make the right choice for your next CMS.<a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/cms-selection-service">Start your CMS selection today</a>

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-to-host-headless-commerce-summit-for-talks-on-building-world-class-e-commerce-experiences/">Netlify</a> continues to net more of the composable ecosystem.
Yesterday, the web hosting and development platform announced the purchase of <a href="https://www.stackbit.com/" target="_blank">Stackbit</a> – a visual editor that empowers enterprises to build and manage composable websites more efficiently with a key feature: live previews.
"This acquisition brings the power of Stackbit's visual editor to our product portfolio, expanding our offerings to now empower marketers and non-developers to rapidly create, innovate, and iterate," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathias-biilmann-christensen-a5a3805/" target="_blank">Matt Biilmann</a>, CEO at Netlify.
The Stackbit news follows Netlify's purchase of <a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.org/" target="_blank">Gatsby</a> earlier this year, a popular open source static site generator built on Node.js using <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-publishes-jamstack-community-survey-shows-developers-are-driving-the-future-of-remote-work/">React</a> and <a href="https://graphql.org/" target="_blank">GraphQL</a>. Gatsby had cultivated a strong reputation in the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/">Jamstack</a> community, becoming a preferred frontend library for building composable architectures with a headless CMS. With Stackbit, Netlify aims to bring visual editing to its toolkit, providing a more complete platform for users. 
<h2>Powerful visual editing for composable websites</h2>
Over the last few years, web development platforms have focused on improving enterprise tools with a focus on developer productivity. Now, companies are looking for ways to deliver unparalleled value to marketers and product managers by leveraging collaboration orchestration. This has been reflected by the growth of digital experience composition (DXC) – an emerging category within the broader digital experience space. 
The acquisition of Stackbit expands Netlify's product portfolio, empowering users to design, create, and edit experiences within composable platforms. According to Netlify's announcement, Stackbit will deliver a range of tools and features that simplify the web development process and enable deeper collaboration between developers, marketers, and other stakeholders.
With Stackbit, users can connect any content source and use any tech stack. It also supports key tenants of composable architectures by eliminating bottlenecks and lock-ins around specific vendors or frameworks. For customers like Telus, one of Canada's largest telecommunication companies, Stackbit enables marketers, product managers, and project managers to create and update new and existing websites and applications.
Based on Netlify's press release, Stackbit is easy to use and can aggregate content from any <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/">headless CMS</a>, content source, or custom data source – creating a singular, streamlined workflow for front-end content changes. Stackbit can also update objects within a UI and write changes automatically to the originating source.
<h2>Key benefits of Stackbit and Netlify</h2>
With Stackbit, Netlify plans to empower enterprise teams to build best-in-class websites, online stores, and applications. According to Netlify's website, Stackbit will expand Netlify’s product portfolio, providing a variety of benefits for enterprise teams, including:
<ul>
<li>No-code website editing: Using Stackbit, marketers, product managers, and non-developers can easily update and edit their websites in real time. They can also create pages, drop in components, and adjust layouts and styles on demand.</li>
<li>Design flexibility: With Stackbit, teams can easily customize the design and layout of websites using themes or create their own designs. This flexibility allows marketers to maintain consistent branding and improve the user experience.</li>
<li>Streamlined collaboration: Stackbit reads and writes content to and from your CMS, database, e-commerce catalog, or custom data source – making collaboration more efficient. </li>
<li>Compatible with any tech stack: Stackbit works seamlessly with any CMS application, content source, headless frontend platform, or framework.</li>
</ul>
To learn more about Netlify and the Stackbit acquisition, visit <a href="https://www.netlify.com/blog/netlify-acquires-stackbit-to-bring-no-code-creation-to-its-platform/">netlify.com</a>
<h2>About Netlify</h2>
Netlify is the platform for enterprises to build highly-performant and dynamic websites, e-commerce stores, and web apps. By uniting an extensive ecosystem of technologies, services and APIs into one workflow, Netlify unlocks new levels of team productivity, while saving time and money. With more than 4M developers and over 475 Enterprise customers, Netlify is the creator of the Jamstack movement, bringing together all modern web frameworks, serverless functions and edge computing into one platform to deliver unmatched user experiences, serving the needs of developers, architects, and marketers.

Netlify Acquires Stackbit, Adding No-Code Visual Editing to Its Platform

There's no doubt that data is gold to every enterprise. But analyzing mountains of it to divine actionable insight is becoming more challenging by the day. This is where innovators like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/amplitude-announces-new-testing-and-analytics-tools-for-making-smarter-product-decisions-at-scale/">Amplitude</a> – a leading digital analytics platform – are proving essential to unlocking data-driven decisions.Now, Amplitude has announced another breakthrough with the launch of Snowflake-native Amplitude, a Snowflake Native App that utilizes Snowpark Container Services – currently available in a private preview. Snowflake-native Amplitude allows joint customers to access self-serve behavioral insights directly within their Snowflake instance.The news was announced at Snowflake Summit 2023, the cloud data warehouse provider's annual user conference. Amplitude is one of a select group of partners developing Snowflake Native Apps that utilize Snowpark Container Services, and the new capability builds upon Amplitude and Snowflake’s partnership and data-sharing integration. This application marks Amplitude’s first warehouse-native offering. Warehouse-native Amplitude will help more organizations uncover the behavioral insights they need to make better product decisions without leaving their data platform of choice.Amplitude also announced several new capabilities, including AI-assisted data governance and automated instrumentation and reporting, to help teams access clearer insights faster. <h2>Unlocking the power of the enterprise data cloud</h2>Based on IDC data, only 32% of the data within an enterprise is being used. Additionally, with the deprecation of third-party cookies, marketers are looking to their data teams to drive more value from their first-party data stored in their data warehouse. Snowflake-native Amplitude unlocks the ROI of data in the data cloud. Joint customers can now mine additional value from their data by empowering their entire organization with access to self-serve insights from Amplitude — all without leaving their Snowflake instance. Snowflake-native Amplitude also simplifies data governance by using existing Snowflake security and access controls and eliminating the need to store or duplicate data in multiple places.“Today, siloed data makes it difficult for teams to get the insights they need to drive their business forward,” said Justin Bauer, Chief Product Officer at Amplitude. “We want to make it easier for teams to seamlessly and securely integrate customer and product insights with their Snowflake data. Now every Snowflake customer can unlock the benefits of self-service analytics to better understand each step in the customer journey so they can drive active user growth, increase retention, and improve monetization.”<h2>New features including AI and partner integrations</h2>Snowflake announced the launch of Snowpark Container Services to expand the scope of Snowpark. This was designed to help organizations run third-party software and full-stack applications – all within their account. By accessing and running commercial software and apps directly in Snowflake, customers can seamlessly enhance the value of their data using cutting-edge tools without moving or compromising security.“We continue to invest in our expansive partner ecosystem, accelerating how users build in the Data Cloud by reimagining what they can run within Snowflake, without tradeoffs,” said <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrischild/">Chris Child</a>, Senior Director of Product Management, Snowflake. “With the launch of Snowpark Container Services, we’re making this a reality. Amplitude’s proven track record of helping teams measure and understand customer behavior to improve customer experiences combined with the ease of use, scalability, and unified governance of the Snowflake Data Cloud will help us deliver more value for our joint customers.”This news comes alongside Amplitude’s announcement of several new capabilities to help technical and non-technical teams gain self-serve access to trusted data and clearer insights. With user experience improvements and automated insights, it’s never been easier to get started with Amplitude. New capabilities and integrations include:<ul><li>Automated instrumentation &amp; reporting: Instantly track user activity and baseline metrics like daily active users, average session length, and geolocation with Amplitude’s enhanced SDK so teams can start reporting on day one.</li><li>Industry-specific reporting templates: Customers can quickly discover product insights tailored to their business with new reporting templates that include industry-specific key metrics.</li><li>AI-assisted data governance: Maintain and continually improve data quality with automation and intelligent suggestions.</li><li>Expanded partner integrations: Quickly and easily send data to other parts of your stack with new and expanded integrations with Braze, Hubspot, Intercom, Marketo, and more.</li></ul>“As the amount of customer data within data platforms continues to grow, self-serve access to insights is a must-have,” said <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmwallace/">David Wallace</a>, research director of customer data and analytics at IDC. “Snowflake-native Amplitude will allow teams to quickly and easily access more of their customer data while maintaining the security and governance benefits within their Snowflake instance.”As previously noted, Snowflake-native Amplitude is available in preview, and users can sign up for an Early Access Program.<h2>Q&amp;A with Justin Bauer</h2>Following the announcement, we had a chance to connect further with Justin Bauer, Chief Product Officer at Amplitude, to ask a few questions about the new service.  <hr />CMS Critic: How big of a deal are the AI capabilities mentioned in the announcement? AI-related features are leading most of the news cycle, and we're curious about how strategic the innovation is, and how it might provide a competitive edge for Amplitude.Justin Bauer: Amplitude has been early to the AI/ML Game. We have one of the most unique and comprehensive datasets on product and customer behavior, which allows us to develop powerful models that will impact how companies develop digital products. We already incorporate a number of ML capabilities to help our customers identify issues early, predict behaviors and personalize campaigns.With new advancements in Generative AI, we're looking to help our customers maintain &amp; improve their data quality more easily, generate analysis faster, and even summarize recommendations from their insights. Our new data governance capabilities are just an early example of that. We are also piloting a new feature in beta that uses conversational AI to dramatically shorten the time it takes for Amplitude users to answer questions. They can simply type “How many active users per day?” or “How many users are new versus returning?” into the analysis search bar and generate suggested analyses that help users analyze, explore, and learn.This is still early days, but we think AI has the potential to accelerate growth in the digital analytics category.<hr />CMS Critic: When will the new service be GA?Justin Bauer: Snowflake-native Amplitude will be GA in Q1 2024, but all of Amplitude's other new features are being rolled out this week. <hr />CMS Critic: Is there a cost advantage or economic optimization that might be a selling point?Justin Bauer: Snowflake-native Amplitude has some big cost benefits for organizations because there’s no need for you to export data to Amplitude or build new data pipelines. We run SQL queries directly on the data in an organization's warehouse and provide insights right from their source of truth. Maintaining and managing all of this data directly in Snowflake drives down costs for our joint customers. This process also eliminates the need to move data between systems, so teams can minimize data drift, which is what we call the divergence of two data sets over time. If data drift isn't prevented, it can create big data quality problems down the line. Another benefit is that we're making it easier for teams to manage data access controls, security, privacy, and governance directly in their warehouse. This means they can lift and shift over to Snowflake more easily, while keeping existing security and privacy controls intact.<hr />CMS Critic: Are the integrations one-click or require additional setup?Justin Bauer: We can't claim one-click, but how about 3-5? We do everything we can to make these integrations easy to get set up. And they're all configuration based, meaning you click instead of code to get them up and running.<hr /><h2>About Amplitude</h2>Amplitude is a leading digital analytics platform that helps companies unlock the power of their products. Almost 2,200 customers, including Atlassian, Jersey Mike’s, NBCUniversal, Shopify, and Under Armour, rely on Amplitude to gain self-service visibility into the entire customer journey. Amplitude guides companies every step of the way as they capture data they can trust, uncover clear insights about customer behavior, and take faster action. When teams understand how people are using their products, they can deliver better product experiences that drive growth. Amplitude is the best-in-class analytics solution for product, data, and marketing teams, ranked #1 in multiple categories in G2’s 2023 Summer Report.

Amplitude Announces Snowflake-native Amplitude App: Q&A with Justin Bauer, Chief Product Officer

If <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/vojtechboril/" target="_blank">Vojtech Boril</a> has a crystal ball in his possession, it’s time to come clean.
Maybe it was sheer luck that his company, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kontent-ai-introduces-industrys-first-headless-cms-with-native-ai-capabilities/">Kontent.ai</a>, would embrace the “AI” domain in 2022. Or was their official <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/taking-kentico-kontentai-next-generation-digital-petr-palas/">spinoff from Kentico</a> some mystical prognostication of things to come?
I wasn’t sure, but Vojtech settled the question for me.
“Bringing AI into the CMS world has been part of our vision for a long time,” he said. “Our company name – which we chose a year ago – is good proof that this launch is not just a quick reaction to the new ChatGPT trends.”
Tarot cards and tea leaves aside, this is an exciting time for Vojtech and Kontent.ai. Since introducing <a href="https://openai.com/" target="_blank">OpenAI’s</a> large language model late last year, many content management vendors have entered the AI race. In several cases, they leverage ChatGPT as a basic plugin or integration.
But last week, Kontent.ai announced the early availability of the first native AI capabilities to a headless CMS.
Native, you say? How so? I had a thousand questions – none of which <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/from-chatbots-to-contentops-how-ai-is-coming-to-your-cms-whether-you-like-it-or-not/">ChatGPT</a> could answer.
Thankfully, <a href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/first-look-at-native-ai-capabilities-in-kontent-ai/" target="_blank">during a recent webinar</a>, Kontent.ai offered an informative first look at these AI features. This filled in many blanks, but I still connected with Vojtech to ask why he thinks these new capabilities are game-changers. As the Vice President of Growth &amp; Marketing, he combines content and platform POVs into one brain. He's also an avid runner with some intimidating pace times – so he's accustomed to staying ahead of the pack. 
<h2>A first look at native AI capabilities</h2>
One would assume that a content management vendor would produce quality content to promote its products and services. That’s not always the case, but Kontent.ai has consistently delivered the goods. Last week’s webinar on its native AI was no exception and provided a solid overview of the new features.
The session – hosted by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrubytomas/" target="_blank">Tomas Hruby</a>, Lead Product Manager, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-torpy-82087b4a/" target="_blank">Jordan Torpy</a>, Product Marketing Manager – opened on the new “Gold Rush” into the AI market, and how ChatGPT has ignited every CMS vendor to jump on the bandwagon. Both commented on seeing many different approaches across the digital experience market, which has undoubtedly informed their innovation.
According to Tomas, ChatGPT seems easy to repurpose, but in reality isn’t that simple. Large language models become challenging to master for prompt creation and obtaining accurate results. He called these skills more of an “art,” contrary to the promise of automation.
In the webinar, the duo focused on three key challenges with current AI solutions: understanding context, composing AI, and integration. Jordan provided an example of how large language models struggle to incorporate brand guidelines, tone of voice, and other factors exclusive to a given company. This training is time-consuming and difficult to orchestrate for content creation.
One of the big concerns for enterprises is around the unknowns of integration. For example, does the customer or vendor maintain the AI capabilities? Is it a plugin built by an open source community? They also discussed the increased API surface area that may be vulnerable to attacks – and that many enterprises are reluctant to share proprietary content with public models.
In each case, it’s clear there are gaps with current AI solutions – and Kontent.ai’s native capabilities promise to bridge those gaps to usability.
<h2>The vision for AI in a headless CMS</h2>
Given the challenges that AI presents when integrating into a CMS, what was the vision guiding Kontent.ai’s native capabilities? Tomas and Jordan boiled it down to a couple of key pillars during the webinar.
First, Kontent.ai is a fully integrated experience designed for what they call “fluent content creation.” As a native set of platform features, the AI respects internal formatting across your work, making it all more conformant. Content creators will also find the AI tools highly intuitive from a UI perspective, and available where they would expect them to be.
The second pillar is delivering accurate suggestions. This is a big one, as most large language models provide questionable results. Much of this concerns prompt design, or the ability to feed the AI with the proper context. With Kontent.ai, the native capabilities are built with context in mind, so it respects your company’s brand guidelines or tone of voice, and doesn’t “hallucinate” as it often does with open learning models.
Kontent.ai also provides what Tomas calls a “hidden sophistication” driven by complex pipelines designed to streamline tasks like converting notes into formatted content.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/kontent-image-3-1024x620.jpg" alt="Composite of Kontent.ai native AI user experience with multiple windows of functionality" />
<h2>What really sets native AI apart?</h2>
First and foremost: Kontent.ai’s native capabilities are not a plugin. This is a marked difference from other platform strategies that leverage basic connectors to ChatGPT. Tomas states this distinction will allow users to work more efficiently and effectively as part of a CMS toolkit.
Another big difference is that the solution is fully GDPR compliant. This is achieved in large part by the <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us">Azure</a> backbone. Kontent.ai has a strong Microsoft relationship and is leveraging its AI services stack via ChatGPT 4 and a new service called <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/semantic-kernel/overview/">Semantic Kernel</a> – an open source SDK for building custom AI apps and orchestrating complex pipelines.
Finally, Kontent.ai delivers peace of mind around privacy and control. Enterprise users can be assured that their sensitive content and data is secure and not publicly available to any OpenAI learning pipelines. The native AI capabilities are aware of content and context only within your system, and it’s not even used to train future LLM iterations.
I asked Vojtech to give me the big picture around these key differentiators through the content creator’s lens. What really stands out?
“A key difference is that our AI capabilities are native to our platform and provide a fully integrated experience for content creators,” he said. “We’re not adding a prompt window to our CMS. Instead, we’re adding new capabilities that perfectly fit with the tasks a content creator does on a daily basis.”
He cited an example: “We have a skill called ‘Improve writing.’ To use it, you select some text you want to improve to better suit your tone of voice, style guide, or other similar criteria. Then, you choose a piece of content already in your Kontent.ai project that meets your standards. Kontent.ai will then adjust your original text to match the style and tone of your chosen text.”
During the webinar, there was a great demo of this feature. The use case featured a single paragraph with a noticeably sarcastic tone of voice compared to the rest of the article. The native AI was asked to improve the writing by injecting prompts for a more professional tonality, as required by brand guidelines. It did – in minutes. The entire process was convenient, accurate, and a huge time saver.
As Vojtech further noted, what’s great is that content creators don’t need to fiddle around with making the right prompt, or string several different prompts together. Everything they need is in Kontent.ai, and it’s all a natural extension of the work they already did in the platform.
<h2>What’s the price tag for native AI?</h2>
Currently, Kontent’s new AI capabilities are fully functional, but only available to early adopters via a special access program – and seats are limited. The company is interested in collaborating with enterprise customers, so they’re inviting companies to provide their use cases.
The solution isn’t quite out of the box (yet). According to the webinar, most users can be up and running in roughly two weeks. The services should be generally available later this year.
Regarding cost, that’s still unknown – but the company seems to be focused on aligning it with real utility and value. As Vojtech pointed out, “We know everyone can go and use ChatGPT for free, so we didn’t just add a prompt window to Kontent.ai. Instead, we created tailor-made capabilities that solve real problems content creators face.”
The Kontent.ai team is working on pricing models, which will hopefully be available before the service is in GA. If you’re interested in early access, visit the <a href="https://kontent.ai/events-and-webinars/first-look-at-native-ai-capabilities-in-kontent-ai/">Kontent.ai</a> website for more details.
<h2>What other AI features can we expect?</h2>
There were some interesting questions about Kontent’s AI roadmap during the webinar. The hosts discussed the current advantages of reducing time and research. But they also described how AI might be capable of assisting with tedious, large-scale CMS tasks such as mass migrations.
One area where ChatGPT and other large language models are still struggling is translation. With accuracy being such a critical requirement, it’s still reliant on other workflows to deliver quality results. Still, this seems to be an area ripe with opportunity.
I asked Vojtech if other capabilities might be more near-term on the roadmap, and what the process looks like for onboarding new AI features.
“We've been working on [the capabilities that are part of this launch] for the past couple of months, but simultaneously we're working on many other prototypes,” he said. “Anything that reaches our development team through prioritization typically goes through a thorough research phase. We even have a dedicated UX research team, which is not always the norm in companies of our size.”
I also wanted to know how customers have responded in the rollout's early phases.
“We are absolutely thrilled with how the AI launch has been received,” he said. “We have some great initial feedback from existing customers, prospects, and major analysts. I've also had the chance to talk to some of our existing enterprise clients in person already, and there are specifically two main areas they appreciate the most. One, that our AI capabilities are fully native to the product, which currently makes us very unique in the CMS market. And two, the security aspect of being GDPR-compliant and knowing their content is not populated into global GPT environments.”
He also said that the webinar has resulted in registrations going through the roof – a clear sign that interest is swelling into action.
<h2>Consulting the crystal ball about the future of AI</h2>
As informative as the webinar was, I wanted to know how important the AI investment was to Kontent.ai. We might still be early in the hype cycle, but what does the future look like?
“This AI launch is only the beginning of our AI product focus,” Vojtech said. “As I mentioned, our rebranding to Kontent.ai a year ago was not just a coincidence, and we are serious about pioneering fully native AI capabilities as part of the CMS user experience.”
Vojtech also shared that the company is working on further improvements to contextualizing AI-generated content. They're also exploring how to improve navigating, creating, reviewing, and categorizing content.
“I believe AI has the potential to revolutionize content operations by streamlining processes, automating tasks, and enabling users to do more and faster,” he explained. “However, ‘more and faster’ should not be the only goal. Ultimately, it's rather about creating more contextualized, meaningful, and relatable content than just producing more. That's exactly how we envision our customers to benefit from our AI. We're not trying to replace their content contributors. Instead, we're on a mission to help them be more productive and be able to focus on the work they love while utilizing AI to do repetitive tasks for them.
Wrapping things up, I got a bit existential about AI’s impact on people. As Vojtech pointed out, only the future will show whether it’s good for humanity. In the meantime, he said, it’s important to think critically about the ethical implications as AI becomes a normal part of life. This includes data privacy, security, and other factors that must be carefully addressed.
“I am an optimist,” he added, “and I believe that humanity can strike a balance in the development of AI – harnessing its benefits while ensuring it does not pose a threat to our well-being.” 
I hope that optimism is coming from the same crystal ball.

Kontent.ai Pioneers Native AI in Headless CMS: Interview with Vojtech Boril

Kontent.ai logo with headshot of Vojtech Boril

At the end of May, Janus Boye and his <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/martech-briefing2023">Boye &amp; Co organized two meetups</a> in Europe with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sjbrinker/">Scott Brinker</a>, the famous author of the <a href="https://chiefmartec.com/2023/05/2023-marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-11038-solutions-searchable-on-martechmap-com/">Marketing Technology Landscape infographic</a>, Editor at <a href="http://chiefmartec.com/">chiefmartec.com</a>, and VP Platform Ecosystem at HubSpot. Janus also invited some other speakers to showcase the reality of martech development in different types of companies. Since Kentico was sponsoring the event, I was lucky to attend both of them and can summarize the most interesting takeaways.
<h2>MarTech Supercollision</h2>
Let’s start with Scott Brinker's presentation, “<a href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/martech-briefing-hamburg-2023">MarTech Supercollision</a>,” covering several marketing technology topics. He discussed companies' varying levels of maturity with marketing technology, emphasizing the need for investment in people in addition to technology. Scott also explored the concept of composability in marketing, including its importance in creating personalized customer experiences. He analyzed the three different trends in MarTech, calling it “Supercollision” because each would be big enough to shake the industry. Still, they are now happening all at the same time: data, composability, and AI.
Scott has been exploring the MarTech landscape since 2011. There has been a 7,258% growth in the number of martech solutions in the last 12 years. The 2023 infographic contains 11,038 solutions – that’s an 11% increase from 2022, even though there was a 7% churn rate.
And as we discussed during the event, we can expect an even bigger influx of new niche solutions since the development of AI has completely shaken and democratized software development. It’s unexpectedly easy to brief an AI tool to create the right app for your needs and put it to the market.
In my insightful interview with Scott after the event, the conversation also revolved around the rapid influx of tools and innovations in the market and how companies can embrace these changes. Scott emphasized the importance of maturity in utilizing MarTech, stating there's a wide distribution in how mature companies are with leveraging marketing technology. He referred to Avinash Kaushik's 90/10 rule, where 90% of the investment should be in people and only 10% in technology. Scott stressed the importance of investing in people, not just in terms of individual skills training but also in evolving the organization to support what those people want to do.
We also discussed the concept of composability in martech. Scott explained that while there are different levels of composability, most companies are currently at a stage where they are composing relatively lightweight but very useful things. He emphasized the importance of creating a supportive culture that encourages people to experiment with applying these tools. He also highlighted the need to adjust processes to remove some friction, making it easier for people to use these tools.
I found Scott’s analogy of composability to LEGO clever for explaining it to non-tech marketers. However, I argued that in many cases, companies do not need to buy thousands of small bricks to build a LEGO ship. They can use pre-built sets, put them together, and have fun with the result instead of spending hundreds of hours sitting with the most expensive building kits. Sure, there are people who love to spend this time building it from scratch, and it’s fine. It’s just not the majority.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/scott-brinker-lego-analogy-1024x502.png" alt="Buy, build, adapt composable images from Scott Brinker's presentation" />
<h2>What about people?</h2>
I already mentioned that Scott emphasized the importance of people during our interview, but there was also another presentation called “The hidden success factor behind MarTech” by <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelika-gust-5a4192205/">Angelika Gust</a>, Head of Marketing at S-Bahn Berlin, focusing on this.
Angelika argued that martech should actually be called “Communication Technology (CommTech)” since it should help anyone in the company, not just marketing people, communicating with the customers. And very often, she said, these hidden champions, employees with direct or indirect customer touchpoints, are not digitally native and savvy.
To maximize the potential of MarTech, companies should focus on transforming these employees into enthusiastic MarTech users. Angelika underscores the need for roles like Data Translator and MarTech Operationalizer, who can bridge the gap between MarTech specialists and other employees. She also highlighted the importance of addressing fears like job loss due to AI advancements.
<h2>The digital experience maturity journey</h2>
The journey towards digital experience maturity is a shared endeavor, as evidenced by the contributions of our own Kentico partners and customers at these two events. Co-founder of <a href="https://www.actumdigital.com/">ACTUM Digital</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/janhavel/">Jan Havel</a>, along with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/delfinvassallo/">Delfin Vassallo</a>, Marketing Director at <a href="https://www.actumdigital.com/cases/uponor-case-study">Uponor</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/roelkuik/">Roel Kuik</a>, Kentico Practice Lead at <a href="https://www.avivasolutions.nl/">Aviva Solutions</a>, alongside <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-van-dijk-b176b611/">Michael van Dijk</a> from APS IT-diensten, all shared their unique experiences of re-platforming.
The key takeaway from these presentations is the vital importance of ensuring that technology is in harmony with the specific needs and objectives of the business. By doing so, companies can optimize their technology solutions for the greatest impact. This alignment boosts operational efficiency and enriches the user experience and satisfaction, improving engagement metrics.
Furthermore, these insights highlight the necessity of flexibility and the courage to shift towards different goals and strategies when needed. Whether it's crafting a user-friendly interface for content editors, establishing a unified component library, or tackling industry-specific challenges in B2B e-commerce, the capacity to adapt and pivot is crucial.
In summary, these insights reinforce the mantra of "Listen to understand." Companies can make well-informed decisions about their technology implementations by attentively listening to the needs of the business, the users, and the industry. This approach, combined with a commitment to employee satisfaction and a willingness to embrace change, can substantially enhance business performance and user experience.
<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/critics/jenda-perla/">Jenda Perla</a> is VP of Marketing at Kentico, and a CMS Critic contributor.

Scott Brinker's "MarTech Supercollision" and Key Takeaways from the Boye & Co Briefings in Europe

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Martech supercollision of text and background moving towards center of light

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It turns out an “ING” can be quite a thing.
Case in point: the role of a Chief Marketing Officer. For most of us, the word “Marketing” in this mantle concisely explains the individual’s responsibilities.
But drop the “ING,” and it’s a different story. Well… sort of.
In my conversation with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifergriffinsmith/" target="_blank">Jennifer Griffin Smith</a>, Acquia’s new Chief Market Officer, we discussed the distinction between these titles, and why the leading DXP added her – and this new role – to its roster.
We also covered what she sees on the roadmap for <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-taps-its-modular-open-source-legacy-to-drive-the-composable-future/">Acquia</a>, how composable is shifting the conversation, and why she’s excited about showing customers the “art of the possible.”
<h2>A marketing trailblazer in tech</h2>
Jennifer joined me via Zoom from a comfortable, unassuming home office. Originally from Europe, she’s been in the States for quite some time.
“As you can tell by the accent, I'm British,” she said. “We came for two years, and here we are 14 years later.”
For more than two decades, Jennifer has focused her superpowers on marketing for technology companies, with a deep focus on go-to-market strategies for both public and private companies. In her previous stints, she served as Chief Marketing Officer at <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">Alfresco</a> (acquired by Hyland), Software AG, and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/progress-launches-sitefinity-dx-14-0-enhances-digital-experience-delivery-with-global-scale/">Progress Software</a> – which owns the Sitefinity CMS.
In her most recent CMO gig at <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/brightcove-video-connector-will-bring-video-content-to-sitecore/">Brightcove</a>, Jennifer led the video streaming platform’s global marketing organization. This included product marketing and strategy, customer GTM programs, and new business, brand, and marketing communications. 
Given her legacy of leadership at content and digital experience vendors, I asked her what made the Acquia opportunity so enticing.
“I've spent some time with Acquia as a consumer, not just as a marketer or a business person,” she said. “I'm fascinated by the changes in how we want to purchase, learn, and engage with content. And I think, the way I live – my life – has changed so drastically in the last five years. Most of that is obviously through the pandemic, but just in my own need for time, and levels of service I expect, whether I'm researching a college, purchasing a shirt, or a car. Whatever it is, my expectation has changed. Then I look at the demographic of my 12-year-old son and the younger generation, and it will change again. I'm genuinely fascinated by digital experiences, and how we can bring it together as a consumer.”
<h2>From Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Market Officer</h2>
Getting down to brass tacks, I wanted to understand the new role of Acquia’s Chief Market Officer. How did Jennifer see it – and more importantly, what signal is Acquia sending with this expansion to its C-Suite?
First, it’s worth noting that the rise of the Chief Market Officer is a relatively new phenomenon, much like Chief Experience Office, Chief Revenue Officer, and Chief Growth Office. In a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2020/06/06/a-new-c-suite-role-the-chief-market-officer/?sh=7325514b6d9c">2020 Forbes article</a>, Christine Heckart – then the CEO of Scalyr – noted that “heads of marketing must, first and foremost, be chief MARKET officers, not marketing.”
Jennifer reflected on my question but started with a caveat: “Each CMO position is unique, and it's based on where the company is, and what the board and the CEO feel like they need. So it's hard to compare, because companies are different. But in my experience, most of what’s required in marketing is about the execution, right? And it gets into ‘how do we get the best return on our spend? What's your CAC? What's your ROI?’”
Again, the “ING” is the key here – and for most organizations that have embraced the Chief Market Officer role, it delineates the focus on tactical marketing execution from the strategic market objectives and KPIs that drive growth.
“Now look,” she continued, “everything results in pipeline, bookings, revenue – however you want to measure it. But I think over the years, we’ve become too focused on the execution piece. When we first had our conversations, I loved that Acquia reflected what I've learned in my many CMO roles: you cannot be successful in any of your program execution if you don't understand your market.”
The relentless creep of the marketing team ecosystem also stymies this execution. To Jennifer's point, we’ve accrued a range of discretely focused areas like product marketing, communications, brand, field marketing – and most are solely concerned with execution. And as Jennifer pointed out, most of these marketing professionals have never consumed the product, nor understand what a customer does with it.
So back to the question at hand: what does it mean to be a Chief Market Officer at Acquia?
“For me, the Chief Market Officer is hyper-focused on the market and the customer and how we can really help them,” Jennifer said. “But then it spans a much bigger role across connecting different teams all for the outcome of the customer, and making sure everybody understands what we're building. Because we're not building it for us.”
What seems clear about Acquia’s decision to hire a Chief Market Officer is that it has reached a pivotal point in its growth – one that demands a deeper commitment to the market while maintaining the execution of its marketing. With Jennifer, they get the winning balance of a seasoned marketer with an analytical mind geared toward growth.
<h2>Riding the composable wave </h2>
Jennifer assumes her role at a precarious time in the digital experience industry. The term “composable” has become a bit of a hot potato as <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/">headless content management systems</a> align with other technologies to provide flexible, best-of-breed solutions to build their own DXPs. Organizations like the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH Alliance</a> have gained traction by providing a membership ecosystem of pure MACH (Microservices, APIs, Cloud Native SaaS, Headless) solutions – partially in response to “headless hybrid” platforms and all-in-one monoliths.
At the same time, enterprise DXPs have endeavored to position their offerings as more composable, taking a product-based approach powered by robust APIs. Acquia’s open source <a href="https://www.drupal.org/" target="_blank">Drupal</a> heritage already embraces tenants of the <a href="https://dri.es/the-assembled-web" target="_blank">modular assembled web</a>. So it may have a key advantage in the market mele.
I asked Jennifer what she sees as the biggest challenges for Acquia as it positions itself within this narrative.
“Composable to me, in my world, just means flexible, right?” she said. “It means I can build something that will be unique to me. But some of our customers of a certain size would be frightened off by that because they don't have the resources to build it – and they want something that is very easy to use, secure, and scalable, but gives them the solution right there.”
Jennifer also explained that utility is essential, and data is the key to everything. This applies to the broader tech stack of integrations that Acquia is building value around, from CMS to CDP. “I love our CDP,” she noted, “because it goes way further than any other marketing campaign reporting analytics tool that I've used and seen.”
Knowing she’s new to the job, I probed gingerly around the topic of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/from-chatbots-to-contentops-how-ai-is-coming-to-your-cms-whether-you-like-it-or-not/">AI</a> – which is firing like a bullet heard 'round the DX world. While she said Acquia is pioneering more solutions on its open source roadmap, she reinforced the litmus test around value.
“How do we offer a usable AI technology that makes a difference to [customers]? What do they need to move their business, right? What do they need today, and what will it be tomorrow? And not in a way that is so futuristic that we just talk about it. We need to deliver something that brings value to them.”
<h2>Showing customers the “art of the possible”</h2>
If there’s one thing that Jennifer is resoundingly enthusiastic about, it’s community – from employees to customers to partners. In her short time at Acquia, she’s already experienced how Acquia is differentiating in the service category.
“Honestly – and I'm not just saying this – I've never been in a company where I've met so many customers and partners, and not had a complaint,” she said. “I went to my first customer and partner event in London, and I got to sit and talk to so many different people, and just hear what's important for them. Everything from a financial services company to a software company, even a university – and they actually shared what they've learned more broadly with other customers."
Quite a testament, and something that Jennifer is looking to build on. In her mind, this positive community feedback is manifesting into momentum for the company, demonstrating how they can support customers in attaining the impossible – and realizing the “art of the possible.”
“I'm excited about using our community and our customers to really tell these stories,” she expressed eagerly. “And unlike some of our bigger competitors, we can do it nimbly – and make it real, quicker.”
<h2>Building a culture of diversity and inclusion</h2>
At the recent <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-two-conference-wrap-six-takeaways-from-the-composable-event-of-the-year/">MACH Two</a> event, I was inspired by the emphasis the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-expands-advisory-board-launches-new-mach-book-resource/">MACH Alliance</a> places on diversity and inclusion as core values. Technology companies have often embraced a more progressive stance, but it’s one thing to say it – and quite another to lead by example.
As a woman who has served in multiple C-Suite positions, Jennifer continues to shatter the silicon ceiling in the DX industry. She was quick to point out the importance of “talking the talk and walking the walk,” but this has always been an important focus of her work, and she’s managed to blend her corporate responsibilities with the growth and advancement of her teams on a human level.
“At one of my jobs, I was Chief Marketing and Culture Officer, because myself and the CEO had a fundamental belief that brand is inside out,” she said. “This was an open source company, and if we couldn't build a culture of people excited about what we're doing – if we couldn't nurture a community internally – we had no hope of building it externally.”
Jennifer also talked about Acquia’s focus on its people. This includes a Day One program where Acquia plants a tree for every new employee. It's just one of the company's many commitments to ESG initiatives, personal development, and nurturing diversity across its team.
We also reflected a bit on the impact of the pandemic on the work environment, and how Acquia is preparing for its next growth phase with a distributed team across the globe. Jennifer shared how Covid put everyone on equal footing, allowing people to achieve greater balance in their personal and professional lives.
“Acquia is a fully hybrid working environment, and my team is all around the world. I love that we can work very well virtually. Don’t get me wrong – I like seeing people face-to-face, too. But I really believe that Acquia walks the walk. And because of that, people are open. We might not all agree on everything, but we just have this culture of being in it together, which is so refreshing. It really is.”
Refreshing indeed. With an “ING.”

Acquia and the Art of the Possible: Interview with Chief Market Officer Jennifer Griffin Smith

Headshot of Jennifer Griffin Smith next to the Acquia logo

A lot of things happen under the hood when modernizing software. As the saying goes, we aren't always privy to how the sausage is made. But when it comes to UI, everything's above the fold, making it one of the most important expressions of a platform's evolution.
Yesterday, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/agility-cms-introduces-simplified-pricing-tiers-for-headless-content-management/">Agility</a> – a headless CMS that positions itself as the premium content platform – announced the completion of a comprehensive design system refresh in its new user interface. The company is "putting the finishing touches" on its new UI, and plans to have it fully running on June 30th. Until then, the classic UI will be available to current users.
According to the company's press release, Agility's design, product, and customer success teams spent the last three months listening to customer feedback and implementing improvements to elevate the design and accessibility of its platform UI.
"The design system refresh in our new UI is a reflection of our dedication to listening to our customers' needs,” said  <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelvarty/" target="_blank">Joel Varty</a>, CTO of Agility, emphasizing the company's commitment to innovation and customer-centric solutions.
<h2>A refreshing refresh of UI and enhanced CMS features</h2>
Agility's design system refresh is more than just a visual upgrade – it introduces a number of new features and enhancements aimed at empowering users with increased efficiency and an upgraded user experience. This comes a few weeks before the new UI will have full feature parity and become the default within the platform.
"The implementation of these new features is a direct response to our customers' needs," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jina-zohori/" target="_blank">Jina Zohori,</a> Head of Customer Experience at Agility. "Our goal was to improve the overall accessibility and usability of the UI design system, and we are confident that the enhancements we've made will have a significant positive impact on our users' workflows."
Here are some of the highlights users can expect from the new UI:
<ul>
<li>New Filters: The interface now boasts enhanced filters, allowing users to precisely search content items, pages, assets, and more. This feature significantly improves efficiency and user experience.</li>
<li>New Advanced Global Search: The upgraded global search functionality offers users a powerful and flexible data searching and filtering experience within a single component, enabling swift access to the desired information.</li>
<li>New Org Selector and Instance Manager: Simplifying navigation and management across multiple instances and organizations, the new org selector and instance manager streamline user workflows and enhance overall usability.</li>
<li>Navigation Panel Enhancement: Responding to user feedback, Agility has introduced a darker, high-contrast navigation panel, reducing eye strain and improving focus during prolonged usage.</li>
<li>Heartbeat Indicator: With a new heartbeat indicator, users now receive visual updates on ongoing events and tasks, ensuring they remain informed and engaged with key activities.</li>
<li>Collapsible Properties and Activity Feed Sidebar: The refreshed UI features collapsible properties and an activity feed sidebar, maximizing screen space for the main content and providing users with a more immersive experience.</li>
<li>Pagination instead of Infinite Scroll: Agility has replaced infinite scroll with a pagination feature, resulting in improved navigation, reduced lag, and easier return to specific content points.</li>
<li>Horizontal Breadcrumb Navigation: The introduction of horizontal breadcrumb navigation enhances tracking and navigation within complex directory structures, simplifying user journeys.</li>
<li>Table Column Reordering: Users can now effortlessly reorder table columns, significantly enhancing data analysis and comprehension capabilities.</li>
<li>Visual Model Editor with Drag-and-Drop: Agility's updated visual model editor empowers users to create and edit models interactively through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, further enhancing usability and productivity.</li>
<li>New Asset Manager: The newly integrated asset manager significantly improves the organization and accessibility of digital assets, ensuring efficient project resource utilization and seamless collaboration.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Leveraging customer feedback to build a more effective UI</h2>
According to the company's press release, Agility remains committed to continuously enhancing its product offerings based on user feedback and evolving market demands. The UI refresh is a testament to Agility's dedication to delivering exceptional user experiences and ensuring maximum accessibility for all users.
"We are excited to unveil the design system refresh in our new UI, which is a result of intensive collaboration with our customers," said According to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dluxdesign/" target="_blank">David Babijaev</a>, Product Designer of Agility's new UI. "By incorporating their feedback, we have created a more intuitive and user-friendly experience that will empower our users to achieve their goals efficiently and effectively."
If you're interested in learning more about Agility's new UI, the company is offering a session entitled "Unleash the Power of Agility: Mastering the New UI" on July 26th at 12 PM EDT. Users can sign up through their Agility account.
<h2>About Agility</h2>
Agility is a leading provider of Headless CMS solutions, offering businesses an ultimate content management system that is personalized, scalable, and future-proof. With its API-first approach and flexible architecture, Agility enables brands to effortlessly create and distribute captivating content across various channels. Their commitment to delivering personalized white-glove service and addressing unique challenges makes them the top choice for enterprise-level businesses in need of composable solutions. Experience the transformation of your content management strategy and the achievement of your business goals with Agility: Your Voice, Your Way.

Agility Unveils Refreshed UI, Delivering Enhanced User Experience and Accessibility

Agility logo against a digital wave background

<a href="http://www.machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance,</a> the not-for-profit industry body that advocates for open and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystems, just announced the launch of its new Women in MACH mentorship program. 
In previous articles, we've covered the Women in MACH initiative, which has become integral to the MACH Alliance’s roadmap. Mentorship has been earmarked as one of three core pillars for the Women in MACH movement in 2023 and will be offered as a unique benefit to MACH Alliance members.
The new program was on center stage at the recent <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-two-conference-wrap-six-takeaways-from-the-composable-event-of-the-year/">MACH Two Conference</a> in Amsterdam, where more than 100 people signed on as mentors during the event. This groundswell of interest reflects the community’s appetite to promote change and increase diversity and inclusion.
“From the very beginning, the MACH Alliance has been committed to encouraging companies across the MACH ecosystem to strive for best-of-breed architectures,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jguthmann/" target="_blank">Jasmin Guthmann</a>, Vice President &amp; Executive Board Member of the MACH Alliance. “Why stop there? We saw a golden opportunity to expand our advocacy mission to nurture the professional growth of women, and the Women in MACH mentorship program is the perfect avenue to do that. Our intent is to grow the Women in MACH mentorship program into an overarching mentorship program for increased diversity, equity and inclusion by early-2024.”
<h2>MACHifying mentorship</h2>
The MACH Alliance has been a champion of mentorship since its founding in 2020. The new mentorship program builds on the MACH Alliance’s fall 2022 <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-publishes-women-in-mach-manifesto-for-gender-equality/">Women in MACH event</a>, where over 100 high-profile attendees collectively authored its <a href="https://machalliance.org/insights/women-in-mach-manifesto-for-gender-equality" target="_blank">Women in MACH manifesto,</a> urging companies to prioritize gender equality.
According to the organization's press release, its mentor/mentee matching will be 1-1 and cover six key areas:
<ul>
<li>Sales and marketing</li>
<li>Career development</li>
<li>Product and R&amp;D-related topics</li>
<li>Change management</li>
<li>Leadership</li>
<li>Team building</li>
</ul>
“We’ve said it before and we continue to emphasize that MACH is a modern category, and that calls for an equally modern approach to drive forward a new era in enterprise tech,” said <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">Casper Rasmussen</a>, President, MACH Alliance. “That requires rethinking the faces and voices that are leading the charge. We’ve seen firsthand what tremendous leaders and contributors women are in this space. This mentorship program is just one way we’re working to pave the way for the success of women and other diverse individuals to continue to succeed.”
To learn more, visit <a href="https://machalliance.org/women-in-mach-mentoring" target="_blank">Women in MACH Mentorship program.</a>
<h2>About the MACH Alliance 
</h2>
The MACH Alliance is a [501(c)(6)] non-profit organization, governed by an independent board and does not endorse specific vendors, members or otherwise. The Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems that are Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. All MACH Alliance members meet certification principles that are published on the website. The MACH Alliance welcomes technology companies and individual industry experts with the same vision for the future. Learn more at <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">machalliance.org</a>, <a href="https://machalliance.org/insights/mach-certification-a-seal-of-confidence" target="_blank">read here </a>about MACH certification and follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/machalliance" target="_blank">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/machalliance/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.

MACH Alliance Launches Women in MACH Mentorship Program

AI continues to drive platform innovation, and builders are being treated to new features daily. While generative technologies like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/from-chatbots-to-contentops-how-ai-is-coming-to-your-cms-whether-you-like-it-or-not/">ChatGPT</a> are powering apps with a range of capabilities, having the right infrastructure for product development and deployment is a key requirement. 
To that end, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/vercel-launches-new-visual-editing-feature-with-sanity-cms/">Vercel</a> – the frontend cloud for deploying applications quickly and easily – <a href="https://vercel.com/blog/introducing-the-vercel-ai-sdk" target="_blank">just launched</a> a new software development kit for AI apps built with React and Svelte. This includes the Vercal AI SDK for easily streaming API responses from AI models and the Chat &amp; Prompt Playground for exploring models via OpenAI, Hugging Face, and more.
According to the company's website, several AI platforms – including Scale, Jasper, and Jenni – have launched using Vercel and Next.js, its React-based web development framework. Next.js provides the essential tooling and configuration required for React, as well as additional structure and optimizations. 
<h2>Ready for AI with a purpose-built SDK</h2>
The <a href="https://sdk.vercel.ai/" target="_blank">Vercel AI SDK</a> is an <a href="https://github.com/vercel-labs/ai" target="_blank">open-source</a> library with developers in mind. With the SDK, users can build conversational, streaming, and chat user interfaces using JavaScript and TypeScript. According to the company's post, the SDK supports React/Next.js and Svelte/SvelteKit, with support for Nuxt/Vue coming soon. 
Vercel’s AI SDK embraces interoperability and includes first-class support for <a href="https://openai.com/" target="_blank">OpenAI</a>, <a href="https://js.langchain.com/docs/" target="_blank">LangChain</a>, and <a href="https://huggingface.co/" target="_blank">Hugging Face</a> Inference. Regardless of a user's preferred AI model provider, they can leverage the Vercel AI SDK to create cutting-edge streaming UI experiences.
The AI SDK also includes "streaming first" UI helpers that enable real-time dynamic data representation in applications. Vercel also included callbacks for storing completed streaming responses to a database within the same request, allowing more efficient data management when handling text responses. 
From a cloud scalability perspective, the AI SDK is already integrated with Vercel products like Serverless and Edge Functions. This allows users to build AI applications that deploy instantly, stream generated responses, and are cost-effective. 
<h2>A playground for chat</h2>
In late April, Vercel launched an interactive online prompt playground called <a href="http://play.vercel.ai/" target="_blank">play.vercel.ai</a>, allowing developers to compare various language model results in real time. Users can then tweak parameters and quickly generate Next.js, Svelte, and Node.js code.
Last week, Vercel added a new chat interface to this playground, allowing developers to compare chat models simultaneously. The company also added code generation support for the new AI SDK, allowing users to go from playground to chat app in just a few clicks. 
<h2>About Vercel</h2>
Vercel is the cloud platform for frontend developers, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration. By providing the toolkit frontend teams love, Vercel unlocks developer potential and enables you to go from idea to global application in seconds. Vercel enables customers like Under Armour, Nintendo, The Washington Post, and Zapier to build delightful user experiences on the Web.

Vercel Introduces SDK for Building AI Apps with React and Svelte

In Hollywood, sequels are a roll of the dice. Few manage to capture the magic of an original film, and most burn up on re-entry. I won’t partake in any “sequel shaming,” but the list of losers is long.
But then there’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” a film that surprisingly managed to <a href="https://boardroom.tv/highest-grossing-sequels-of-all-time/">earn $1.4 billion globally</a>. While not the biggest franchise follow-up (that still belongs to Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame”), it cemented its place at the top.
At this year’s <a href="https://the.machalliance.org/machtwo/">MACH Two Conference</a> – the sequel to the <a href="https://machalliance.org/">MACH Alliance’s</a> inaugural event in 2022 – Tom Cruise wasn't piloting any box office blitz. But as the final session wrapped, there was more Maverick in MACH than anyone could have predicted.
I had the opportunity to attend the much-anticipated event in Amsterdam this week at the swank <a href="https://delamar.nl/en/">DeLaMar Theater</a>. And while dodging airport delays with international connections was nerve-racking, it was well worth the effort.
Because MACH Two was, in a word, awesome.
Don’t take my word for it. As <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-to-host-headless-commerce-summit-for-talks-on-building-world-class-e-commerce-experiences/">Netlify</a> co-founder <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbachdk/">Chris Bach</a> observed, it was the “crème de la crème of events, and I wanted to talk to everyone.”
While the MACH Alliance is still a relative newcomer to the tech landscape, its signature conference has already attained world-class status. Along with an impressive lineup of 36 speakers, the event featured expert practitioners, technology vendors, integrators, and brands willing to share their MACH journeys.
Betwixt the lively keynotes, there were numerous workshops, a co-lab zone, learning circles, social groups, afterparties, and more. Even the tasty plant-based bites provided by Food Line-up – Europe’s first <a href="https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/" target="_blank">B Corp</a> caterer – were <a href="https://the.machalliance.org/machtwo/?overlay=Sustainability-pledge">sustainably produced</a> (and you know how boring conference food can be).
Over the two days of the conference, I connected with Alliance leaders, sponsors, and attendees to discuss MACH and how it’s shaping the composable landscape. While innovation and technology were central to the content, it was evident that the “Art &amp; Science” of this event’s theme had more to do with people and community.
I met so many great people and there are too many stories to tell, so I tried to compress everything into six big takeaways that made MACH Two a winning sequel.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/mach-two-image-1.jpg" alt="MACH Two presentation" />
<h2>1. Interest in MACH and composable is growing in a big way</h2>
During Tuesday’s opening keynote, the lower bowl of the DeLaMar Theater was solidly packed. This echoed what MACH Alliance president <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">Casper Rasmussen</a> said during his opening remarks: “The footprint has grown.”
To be sure, last year’s shindig was smaller – which makes sense when you’re throwing a party for the first time. During the planning phase for MACH One, a few Alliance members admitted to me that they weren’t sure if anyone would show up.
But that wasn’t the case this year. With just over 600 attendees from numerous countries, things sometimes got elbow-deep.
Since last year’s event, the Alliance has grown to nearly 90 members, with a pipeline of new applications streaming in. <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/aws-joins-mach-alliance-as-enabler-member-reflects-growth-of-cloud-native-solutions/">AWS joined</a> as an Enabler in 2022, bringing industry-leading brands to the ecosystem ­– and that trend has continued. In fact, as the show was opening, it was <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/stripe-joins-mach-alliance-bringing-organization-to-nearly-90-members/">announced that Stripe</a> had joined the ranks.
At one point during the opening session, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-diliberti-73801140/" target="_blank">Danielle Diliberti</a> of Sommsation (who shared MC duties with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nialledwards/?originalSubdomain=uk" target="_blank">Naill Edwards</a> of Lego Group) asked for a show of hands to see who was attending their first MACH event. It looked to be around 60% – evidence that interest is swelling, and the market sees more potential than it did just 12 months ago.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/mach-two-image-2-1.jpg" alt="MACH Two ASICS presentation" />
<h2>2. MACH has moved from early adoption to real impact</h2>
One of the most notable transformations from MACH One to MACH Two is the shift from ideas to successful implementations. Across both days, the event featured customer stories from an array of verticals, all told through the voice of the internal MACH champion. In every example, we saw the realization of the MACH journey through working architectures and KPIs.
Each use case was brilliant, from Interflora to IKEA to M&amp;M. But as a runner, I was a bit partial to ASICS, the international sportswear brand. With a global omnichannel platform serving Japan, Europe, North America, and Australia, it was a perfect example to showcase the potential of MACH at scale.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjmontgomery/" target="_blank">Mindy Montgomery</a>, Associate Director of Product Management at ASICS, gave a fantastic overview of how her company evolved beyond a purpose-built eCommerce solution and broke its monolithic dependency. Starting with a change in mindset, her team built a modern DXP to support loyalty, search, promotions, design systems, and other functions across its digital business. She’s now looking to make parts of the stack available via headless for other company initiatives.
One concept that kept surfacing with ASICS and other brands is the concerted move to a product-led philosophy. As Montgomery explained, removing the small, feature-based approach was critical to embracing MACH. She also emphasized the importance of having a trust-based relationship between product and engineering to improve delivery.
AI made its way into numerous stories, and ASICS was no exception. Montgomery admitted that the emergence of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/from-chatbots-to-contentops-how-ai-is-coming-to-your-cms-whether-you-like-it-or-not/">ChatGPT</a> forced them to pause and rethink their product search initiative. The company is now considering a generative AI application to augment its shoe finder experience.
One key takeaway: while AI might be changing the game, composable could make the pivot much less painful.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/mach-two-image-3.jpg" alt="MACH Two Media Q&amp;A" />
<h2>3. More education, tools, and transparency are on the way</h2>
During a dedicated media Q&amp;A on Tuesday, I had an opportunity to engage with a panel of Alliance leaders and ambassadors. In addition to Casper Rasmussen, the group included <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellygoetsch/" target="_blank">Kelly Goetsch</a>, MACH Alliance Chair &amp; CSO of commercetools; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jguthmann/" target="_blank">Jasmin Guthmann</a>, Alliance VP &amp; Head of Corporate Communications at Contentstack; <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/balakrishnancs/" target="_blank">Balki Subramanian</a>, VP Digital Experiences, Mars; and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anca-iordanescu-phd-computer-science-3756971/" target="_blank">Anca Iordanescu</a>, VP Engineering at IKEA.
When asked about what’s changed since MACH One, Rasmussen said, "MACH is at an intersection, " leading to more opportunities. He suggested that it also requires a carefully managed expansion that relies on improving interoperability and standards for new and current members.   
Kelly Goetsch also reflected on the last year of growth, saying MACH “now feels like the default,” and that “we’re no longer advocating from the sidelines.” Jasmine Guthmann also suggested that the MACH philosophy will play a bigger role moving forward, helping reinforce the organization's spirit.
There was a clear consensus around the need for more education, a key requirement for improving adoption. Along with a cache of thought leadership content and other knowledge resources, the Alliance just launched a new MACH TCO tool, and plans to release a maturity assessment tool that focuses on 6 key pillars, such as governance.
Later this year, we can expect new educational programs for brands and members, and Rasmussen hopes to offer some degree of certifications based on different levels of MACH expertise. This would include foundational programs, developer and architecture modules, and even a “MACH Expert” certification.
Rasmussen also talked about the evolution of MACH principles. He said that two years ago, we didn’t talk about MACHifying operations or enterprise resource planning. To that end, the framework needs to be flexible, as definitions and criteria will continue to change over time.
The panel shared a few other insights worth mentioning. First, there’s been a noticeable growth of MACH requirements in RFPs. In fact, one brand mentioned that MACH membership had become a baseline requirement when picking technologies – positioning MACH as a standard for the future.
The other topic was transparency. At both evening mixers, I heard from multiple ISVs and SIs about their concerns regarding the membership selection criteria and wanting more visibility into the process. According to Rasmussen, 53% of membership applications are rejected – but the majority resubmit. He noted a clear evolution in those resubmissions, suggesting that companies understand the gaps and adjust to meet the criteria. That said, the panel recognized this need for even more transparency and expressed a commitment to deliver it.
<h2>4. Relationships and trust continue to drive value</h2>
One of the persistent gaps in composable strategies is the responsibility model. Monoliths provide one throat to choke, while composable architectures might require seven.
Researching, procuring, and managing multiple technology partners can be challenging and time-consuming. More importantly, when things go sideways – and they always do – who takes responsibility? Who owns the issue?
For vendors like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-launch-aims-to-simplify-front-end-hosting-interview-with-dean-haddock-senior-product-manager/">Contentstack</a>, its “Care without Compromise” provides an SLA-like template for handling problem resolution. But not all vendors have that kind of framework in place.
Over the last few days, I spoke to numerous SIs and ISVs about their composable partnerships and how they handle the hard stuff. I kept hearing the importance of their human relationships and the clear reliance on trust.
In one such example, an agency praised a headless CMS and its dedicated customer service manager, crediting them for their ongoing success. In another conversation, I used the word “vendor” to describe a platform, and was politely asked to use “partner” instead.
I heard several attendees talk about the need for more guidance when handling these partnership challenges. There may not be a common template or SLA yet, but it’s evident that MACH members are investing in the quality of their relationships to deliver and maintain high-value customer outcomes.  
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/mach-two-image-4.jpg" alt="MACH Two Impact Awards" />
<h2>5. The Impact Awards is a win for the MACH movement</h2>
It was an honor to help judge the MACH Two 2023 <a href="https://machalliance.org/mach-impact-awards" target="_blank">Impact Awards</a>. Over the last month, I read through dozens of detailed entries, each with a compelling story of composable transformation. They were bold, ambitious, innovative… and sometimes downright scary.
I say that with the greatest reverence, but I won’t pull any punches on the level of complexity in some of these use cases. But that’s just it: MACH isn’t for the faint of heart. Building a composable stack requires the right use case and a thoughtful implementation strategy. As Kelly Goestch once said on LinkedIn, “I love MACH, but regularly tell people 'MACH is not for you' – and then promptly refer them to Shopify.”
American Bath Group, winner of the "Best Overall Change Project,” truly brought the rain from an innovation perspective. Not only did they embrace MACH tenants at a foundational level, but they embodied the MACH mindset from planning to best practices. From an architectural perspective, this was all reinforced by its agency partner, Konabos, and its headless CMS, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kontent-ai-raises-40-million-to-bring-the-power-of-ai-to-content-management/">Kontent.ai</a>.
The <a href="https://machalliance.org/mach-impact-awards">winners in each category</a> were all well-deserved. At the same time, the bulk of the 150+ entries showcased how far MACH has progressed. <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-releases-study-on-adoption-of-mach-technologies-by-tech-leaders-qa-with-sonja-keerl/">Sonja Keerl</a>, former president of the MACH Alliance, spoke about the importance of demonstrating real change when selecting the Impact Awards – and American Bath Group delivered the most compelling results from end to end. You can read the <a href="https://kontent.ai/customers/american-bath-group-success/">complete case study here</a>.
Even if you didn’t take home a statue, the Impact Awards represent a win for the MACH movement. With this much adoption and successful implementation, we can only expect more entries next year.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/06/mach-two-image-5.jpg" alt="MACH Two mentoring program presentation" />
<h2>6. Women in MACH, mentoring, and other initiatives are becoming top of mind</h2>
Above all, the MACH Alliance is a community that strives to put people first. That was made abundantly clear throughout MACH Two, just by watching the networking and interactions between attendees – many of whom were experiencing a MACH event for the first time. Even the Whova conference app encouraged social engagement, with groups sprouting organically around various business and personal interests.
Aligning with this cornerstone of its mission, programs like <a href="https://machalliance.org/women-in-mach">Women in MACH</a> took on an elevated level of visibility within the physical event space and throughout the MACH Two communications. The group is still relatively new but has already established an important role within the Alliance community.
While credit is due for making this effort, there’s still work to be done across the tech industry to shatter the silicon ceiling. We need more allies to support programs like this – and for businesses to truly walk the talk.
Surely, we can do better by emphasizing STEM education and career mentoring at the earliest stages. But here and now, we need more female tech leaders in MACH and a continued focus on diversity. In his closing session, Casper Rasmussen called for more female representation, and this is where the Alliance is acting as a conduit for change. 
In addition to people, there’s our planet, and several attendees inquired about the roadmap for weaving sustainability and green technology initiatives into the fabric of the MACH Alliance. Rasmussen also touched on this in his final presentation, suggesting that more can be done with partners like AWS to enable greater sustainability in the cloud – and that more is coming.
<h2>Accelerating ahead to MACH Three</h2>
I'm still feeling the sonic boom of MACH Two. It might be hard to top the success of this sequel – but with so much growth and potential ahead, MACH Three could be an even bigger story.
As more brands evaluate MACH and composable strategies, hearing successful use cases from actual stakeholders might be the best way to overcome reluctant executives. Couple that with a community of ambassadors and members – many of whom are willing to share their time and expertise – and you might build consensus at MACH speed.
While no specific date or location has been publicized, MACH Three is tentatively planned for 2024 in North America. We’ll keep you posted on the details as they emerge.

MACH Two Conference Wrap: Six Takeaways from the Composable Event of the Year

MACH Two featured image with photos from the event in a collage

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