Articles - Page 29

Brightspot Illuminates the Future of CMS with Human-Controlled, AI-Powered Storytelling 

matt-garrepy

“We all enjoy a good story. And we keep coming back to really good stories, regardless of whether or not we know how they end.”
In the first minute of the documentary-style film <a href="https://www.contentful.com/the-new-art-of-storytelling/" target="_blank">“The New Art of Storytelling: A Look at the Future of Content,”</a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jodie-whelan-b8726470/" target="_blank">Dr. Jodie Whelan</a>, Associate Professor of Marketing at York University, sets an undeniable tone with these words. It’s an observation that resonates throughout the masterful 15-minute production released by <a href="https://www.contentful.com/" target="_blank">Contentful</a>, a leading composable content platform.
Launched in conjunction with the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentful-announces-storylines-tour-in-five-major-cities/">Contentful Storylines Tour</a>, “The New Art of Storytelling” illuminates the connections between technology, content, and the humans that create and consume it. While the central theme is that stories matter, the film explores how stories are told and the ways audiences interact with them.
In the film, members of Contentful – along with industry thought leaders and global agencies such as <a href="https://www.valtech.com/" target="_blank">Valtech</a> – are interviewed about key trends, citing examples of transformation across the content space. Through their voices, the film projects its own narrative about the future of content – and how that future is composable.
<h2>Omnichannel is now omnipresent</h2>
In the film, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-maglio-254128bb/" target="_blank">Dr. Sam Maglio</a>, Associate Professor of Marketing and Psychology at the University of Toronto, conjured the late great media philosopher <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan" target="_blank">Marshall McLuhan</a> with this famous quote:
“The medium is the message.”
Indeed. Maglio reinforces how pertinent this is in an omnichannel world. Gone are the days when brands could craft one version of content to be used in most traditional media settings. Whether a brand is attempting to reach an audience through a quippy tweet or to unlock the Web3 marketplace in a major metaverse launch, the limits of reaching a consumer are growing larger – and the stakes are higher. 
“Content has come a very long way in a very short period of time because there [are] so very many ways that consumers access content nowadays,” Maglio said.
So what does that mean for brands? Everything.
Along with his peers, Maglio’s commentary in the film zeroes in on the evolution of consumer behavior and how brands are changing to meet consumers across multiple channels. Touching the customer cannot happen once or twice through ad interruptions or a sponsored Facebook post – the touch points must feel organic, and they must come often. It’s a fantastic account of where things are heading.
<h2>Why composable content?</h2>
The term “composable” is driving significant interest across the digital experience space. Many enterprises are looking to <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH</a> (Microservices, APIs, Cloud-first SaaS, Headless) and composable as key activators for reaching markets faster and responding quickly to change. It also mitigates the challenges of vendor lock-in and painful “rip and replace” upgrades or migrations.
On the content side, composable is enabling omnichannel strategies with structured components that can be used consistently across multiple frontends or endpoints, from web to digital signage to IoT devices. 
“Composable content seems like a win-win for everyone involved,” Maglio said in the film. “On the brand side, it makes sure they are delivering a consistent message across all platforms. They can author something once, create the content, and make sure they can have a consistent message delivered to all potential customers through all potential channels.”
In a <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/contentful-launches-new-capabilities-to-simplify-and-accelerate-delivery-of-digital-experiences-at-scale-301816101.html" target="_blank">news release</a> earlier this month, Contentful announced new capabilities to simplify and accelerate the delivery of digital experiences at scale. Some of the features mentioned include new pre-built integrations, a Live Preview feature that offers enhanced content visualization and optimization, and an AI Content Generator.
In the film, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lnicolefrance/" target="_blank">Nicole France</a>, Director of Content at Contentful, discussed how this use of composable technology influences developers, marketers, and ultimately consumers.
“There’s another really important aspect to composable content as well,” she said. “It’s as much about how we are using and structuring content to be reused and recomposed across any variety of channels and any number of permutations and combinations. But the flip side of the coin is it’s also about how we create the work environment in which the job of doing that actually takes place.”
With brand new features recently announced, a stellar lineup of speakers and workshops at the ongoing Storylines Tour, and now a beautifully executed documentary film showcasing exactly how Contentful and their partners are telling stories in new and compelling ways, the “future of content” looks robust.
Content-full, even.
You can check out the film at <a href="https://www.contentful.com/the-new-art-of-storytelling/" target="_blank">https://www.contentful.com/the-new-art-of-storytelling/.</a>
<h2>About Contentful 
</h2>
The Contentful® Composable Content Platform brings the building blocks of content together to create once and reuse for any digital experience. The API-first platform integrates easily with data sources and new functionality as digital experiences and technology evolve. With built-in orchestration, a robust app ecosystem, and app framework to easily extend the platform, Contentful frees teams across the business to work together to connect, create, and extend content more efficiently. Contentful helps companies unlock the power of digital content so they can build faster and deliver at scale, making their content a strategic business asset. Nearly 30% of the Fortune 500 and thousands of companies around the world rely on Contentful to help them bring their best ideas to life. For more information, visit <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3856597-1&amp;h=511813223&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.contentful.com%2F&amp;a=www.contentful.com" target="_blank">www.contentful.com</a>.

Lights, Camera, Action: Contentful’s Film “The New Art of Storytelling” Focuses on the Composable Future

mk-patterson

<a href="https://vercel.com/" target="_blank">Vercel</a>, the cloud platform for frontend developers, has released a new tool called <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/workflow-collaboration/visual-editing" target="_blank">Visual Editing</a> – designed to help frontend developers and marketers create and edit content directly on the Vercel site. These changes can then be synchronized and sent back to a user’s headless CMS without ever opening it.
The feature is being launched with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sanity-raises-39-million-focuses-growth-on-content-as-data-for-transformative-digital-experiences/">Sanity</a>, and its current version is in a limited private beta for Sanity CMS enterprise users.
<h2>Experience live changes instantly</h2>
Unlike a monolithic digital experience platform where users typically make content changes in a one-size-fits-all WYSIWYG editor, tech stacks with a headless CMS may find it difficult to find and edit content from the decoupled architecture. This is especially true for content-heavy marketing teams without the technical expertise to rely on a headless system.
With Visual Editing, each team can visually see the content they’d like to edit in an easy-to-use and easy-to-connect editor – and watch live edits be imported into the headless CMS. Marketing teams will no longer have to rely on developers to make changes, freeing up resources for both teams.
Activating this new feature is meant to be seamless. From a <a href="https://vercel.com/blog/visual-editing" target="_blank">Vercel blog article</a> announcing the tool, implementing Visual Editing with Sanity's modern CMS does not require any changes to how a site is programmed. CMS providers can simply add an additional argument when calling a CMS API, and visual editing becomes available.
<h2>Focus on user experience</h2>
Vercel has made many strides to enhance the user experience, including <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/concepts/incremental-static-regeneration/overview" target="_blank">Incremental Static Regeneration</a>, which allows users to create or update content without redeploying a site. Another feature called <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/concepts/deployments/preview-deployments" target="_blank">Preview Deployments</a> allows users to preview changes in an app during live deployment without merging changes to a Git project’s production branch. A tool called <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/workflow-collaboration/comments">Comments</a> was added recently to allow teams and invited participants to leave direct feedback.
Each change marks a new level of sophistication in providing users the tools they need to edit content quickly and without the constant starting and stopping often documented by any large content team in charge of deploying multiple sites or massive quantities of content.
<h2>What’s next for Vercel?</h2>
With many recent changes dedicated to improving user experience and actively deployed features that cement that commitment, there appears to be a lot of interesting innovation on the horizon. The announcement of its latest product feature has already delighted customers, marketers, and developers alike, even while still in beta. 
It's worth noting that Vercel is an <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230404006070/en/Vercel-Expands-its-Cloud-Offering-to-AWS-Marketplace-and-Joins-AWS-ISV-Accelerate-Program" target="_blank">AWS partner</a> and a <a href="https://machalliance.org/newsroom/MACH-Alliance-Announces-New-Members-Capgemini-Sitoo-and-Vercel" target="_blank">member</a> of the MACH Alliance, a nonprofit organization committed to expanding MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native SaaS, and headless) architecture.
<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.
<h2>About Sanity</h2>
Sanity is the platform for structured content that lets teams build exceptional digital experiences. By treating content as data, modern organizations use our APIs to build optimal editing workflows and share content between systems to increase digital velocity. Our mission is to be the most versatile system for creating and distributing digital content to any device, application or channel. Dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Oslo, Norway, Sanity is used by thousands of companies including Unilever, Puma, National Geographic, and Condé Nast. Learn more at <a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sanity.io%2F&amp;esheet=52763704&amp;newsitemid=20220628005411&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sanity.io&amp;index=8&amp;md5=f5b2de497d993d89c1f5d03eadc1fb60" target="_blank">http://www.sanity.io</a>.

Vercel Launches New Visual Editing Feature with Sanity CMS

Big news from <a href="https://www.wix.com/" target="_blank">Wix</a> today as it enters the headless game. The leading global SaaS platform for creating, managing, and growing online presence just announced the launch of Wix Headless, which enables developers to implement Wix's array of business solutions in new ways.
With Wix Headless, users can leverage composable APIs and software development kit (SDK) with any tech stack across different platforms and devices. Developers can use a variety of <a href="https://www.wix.com/app-market/collection/wix-business-solutions" target="_blank">Wix Business Solutions</a> that can all be accessed from the SDK and managed from within Wix's comprehensive management platform. These APIs are in sync and can be used out of the box with Wix's additional solutions, such as contacts and checkout.
"Wix Headless enables developers to use Wix in ways that weren't previously possible, from scaling their online presences to managing multiple complex projects in one place," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shahartalmi/" target="_blank">Shahar Talmi</a>, GM Developer Platform at Wix. "We're constantly advancing our business solutions on Wix, and by providing developers  access to these APIs, with the ability to incorporate them into projects built on other platforms, we're accelerating the endless possibilities presented in the web development industry." 
<h2>New framework options and integrations</h2>
Wix Headless opens the door for using Wix Business Solutions with leading web frameworks, including React, Vue, Svelte, Qwik, and others – enabling more partnerships with leading full-stack solutions.
<a href="https://www.netlify.com/integrations/wix/#main" target="_blank">Netlify</a> is the first platform to partner with Wix in offering a quick start integration with Wix's <a href="https://www.wix.com/scheduling-software" target="_blank">Bookings</a>, <a href="https://www.wix.com/event/website" target="_blank">Events</a>, <a href="https://www.wix.com/ecommerce/website" target="_blank">eCommerce</a>, <a href="https://www.editorx.com/features/cms" target="_blank">CMS</a>, and Pricing Plans APIs. Some of the capabilities of these APIs include booking services for classes, courses, appointments, and subscriptions, managing events to create RSVPs, guest lists, selling tickets, and operating eCommerce businesses.
Wix has worked to develop products that enable more capabilities within the Wix platform. These tools include <a href="https://www.wix.com/velo" target="_blank">Velo</a>, which allows developers to use custom code, and <a href="https://support.wix.com/en/wix-blocks" target="_blank">Wix Blocks</a> – which enables the creation of highly customizable and reusable applications and widgets. It also includes the recent beta launch of <a href="https://www.codux.com/" target="_blank">Codux</a>, enabling designers to work directly on React code.
The launch of Wix Headless marks the first time the company is opening the backend to work outside the Wix platform, creating an even more robust portfolio of developer-centric solutions that enable easier scalability, more customization, and faster delivery of projects.
<h2>What can users expect?</h2>
According to the company's press release, Wix Headless will enable developers to:
<ul>
<li>Create custom solutions: Using APIs to access and manage business data in Wix's platform, developers can create custom solutions that integrate seamlessly with Wix Business Solutions, even if their delivery layer, site or app is not on Wix.</li>
<li>Multiple lines of business from one dashboard: Utilize Wix Business Solution APIs that are all integrated with Payments by Wix and can all be managed within the Wix dashboard.</li>
<li>Power multiple front-ends: Maximize how customers interact with a business by connecting multiple clients to a single Wix backend. For example, multiple websites, a mobile app, and a smartwatch app can all offer services for the same Wix backend business.</li>
<li>Connect additional sites or apps to existing projects on Wix: Developers with an operational Wix site can take advantage of the headless functionality without starting from scratch by keeping their existing Wix site and adding new sites or apps that access and service the same business.</li>
<li>Take advantage of a global payments infrastructure: Streamline payments with Payments by Wix to accept payments worldwide. Through Wix's provider platform, developers can connect to payment providers located in South America, North America, Europe, and more, without integrating multiple payment gateways.</li>
</ul>
Find out more information about Wix Headless <a href="https://www.wix.com/developers/headless" target="_blank">here</a>.
<h2>About Wix</h2>
<a href="https://www.wix.com/" target="_blank">Wix</a> is a leading platform to create, manage and grow a digital presence. What began as a website builder in 2006 is now a complete platform providing users with enterprise-grade performance, security, and a reliable infrastructure. Offering a wide range of commerce and business solutions, advanced SEO and marketing tools, Wix enables users to have full ownership of their brand, their data and their relationships with their customers. With a focus on continuous innovation and delivery of new features and products, anyone can build a powerful digital presence to fulfill their dreams on Wix.

Wix Headless Offers Developers Composable, API-First Solutions

cms-critic-staff

Wix logo with image of a headless man's torso and floating bowler hat

As a self-diagnosed cinephile, I can’t deny the power of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000131/" target="_blank">John Cusack</a>.
He’s just… well, he’s John Cusack.
Talk about a body of work: in addition to his brief appearance in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088128/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Sixteen Candles</a>, Cusack would go on to star in comedic hits like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146882/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">High Fidelity</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119229/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Grosse Point Blank</a>. He later dabbled with Westerns and psychological thrillers and even produced a string of veritable rom-coms.
And, of course, who can forget the modern classic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1231587/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Hot Tub Time Machine</a>?
IMDB listings aside, Cusack is perhaps most revered for his role as Lloyd Dobler in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098258/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank">Say Anything</a> (the one with the boom box). It’s the last wave of 80s celluloid, set against the backdrop of a proto-grunge Seattle – and it singlehandedly crystallizes the teenage angst of the era.
I recently saw Cusack in person at a local film festival, where he accompanied a screening in a small, intimate theater. After the show, he was interviewed on stage, where he talked about the massive transformation engulfing the film industry – and how today’s tools enable anyone to tell stories with just an iPhone and an idea.
Despite this degree of newfound accessibility, Cusack also expressed frustration with large corporate studios that still own the mindshare in the market. He said they’re too risk averse, banking on “superheroes in tights” over independent films. At the same time, these large studios are producing and distributing epic work on a scale that smaller studios can’t compete with.
Across the CMS market (that’s content management system, not “Cusack Movie Syndication”), there’s a similar plot playing out. In a composable world where newer headless and decoupled technologies are powering choice, larger integrated platforms continue to provide an abundance of benefits. Organizations are making decisions based on a bevy of factors, such as complexity and vendor lock-in, but there seems to be more confusion in the script than ever.
That’s why people – both on the customer and the vendor side – continue to be important to the educational process, particularly as buyers weigh a shift towards the complexity of composable.
I recently caught up with Rich Chivers, CEO of <a href="https://www.zengenti.com/" target="_blank">Zengenti</a> – the company behind <a href="https://www.contensis.com/" target="_blank">Contensis CMS</a> – and we chatted at length about the confusion and challenges that the terminology presents, and why customer experience is still the star of the show. He also gave us a sneak peek at what’s coming from Contensis.
<h2>Coming to terms with the “composable” term</h2>
Since I last spoke with Rich in 2022, composable has taken center stage, particularly from a marketing perspective. While Contensis pitches itself as a platform that is beyond headless and more than hybrid, the company also provides some modicum of hands-on implementation. This gives Rich some unique optics, and I wanted to learn how he viewed the composable explosion through that lens.
“If we go way back to web 2.0 with Ajax, this [composable] stuff was being done – it just wasn’t branded in the same way,” he said. “I think composable is becoming something that people can hang on to. And it's a nice term that describes what we've been trying to get to forever. But for us, it's not really new.”
This reflects what I’ve been hearing from other CMS and DXP platforms up and down the spectrum. In fact, at the <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff23/program" target="_blank">2023 Boye &amp; Company CMS Kickoff</a> in January, several established vendors reinforced their use of APIs for over a decade, allowing them to integrate with third-party systems and power headless strategies.
Granted, this was before the Wild West of omnichannel, where CMS was primarily focused on the web. As <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/deane/" target="_blank">Deane Barker</a> of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-partners-with-google-cloud-to-take-experimentation-to-the-next-level/">Optimizely</a> observed <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/deane_do-you-really-need-a-headless-cms-activity-7051550183737757696-j-9O?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop" target="_blank">during a recent podcast</a>, if you buy a web CMS today with a good headless API, you can solve more than one problem.
Rich echoed these sentiments. “We don't believe the CMS should be a CRM or an e-commerce platform altogether. It’s actually about getting the [customer] the right tool for the job – and integrating those services in the right way is how you should do things. Fundamentally, we've been delivering that for the last five or ten years.”
As Rich went on to note, composable is a great idea that solidifies what Contensis has been working towards – and in his words, it's fundamentally about APIs.
<h2>Is headless a kind of CMS… or a feature of CMS?</h2>
“It’s a really interesting question.”
After bouncing back and forth around the benefits of APIs and the Contensis position as a hybrid platform, I asked Rich how he felt about the moniker of headless. This was a heated topic of debate at the CMS Kickoff as well, bringing multiple POVs to the podium.
“If you think about what headless means, ultimately, we're saying that a developer can gain access to their content through an API in a meaningful manner – so of course, to answer the question, yes, you could quite happily say any CMS offering a great API can be headless. I don't think it's monolith versus microservice, the same sort of scales that move both ways all the time, becoming the separation between pure content and visualization. There's this constant sort of, ‘we want pure content we can deliver in any way’ versus ‘build a landing page and have it look like this.’ And, you know, we're curating. So going back to the headless question, yes – I think ultimately, it could be described as a feature of a CMS platform.”
But there’s more to it than that. As Rich detailed, Contensis is platformed for its headless capability, but it came from a heritage of head-centric features – and that was fraught with challenges.
“We effectively took what we had as a monolith provider and started again. I think for [any] monolith provider that's been used to delivering web content to a page with their templating system, they almost have to start again, because there's too many concepts wound up otherwise.”
One of the best observations Rich made was about the nature of CMS and what it means in a market of DXPs. It’s not clear – and to some extent, the emergence of visualization tools and other technologies to aid headless are further adding to the morass.
“There's all these sorts of gray areas,” he said. “Literally, where do you sit? Where do you position yourself, right?”
This is why listening to the customer is so essential.
<h2>Tipping towards growth with headless</h2>
Like many of his leadership contemporaries in the CMS market, Rich has a rearview mirror of experience that helps inform his vision. While the idea of a pure headless CMS is still relatively new, he’s been working with APIs for quite some time – and that brings some unique perspective to his outlook. 
I asked him to characterize the use cases that Contensis is seeing in 2023 and where headless fits in. His answer was resoundingly clear, but there was an interesting caveat about market maturity and persistent confusion.
“I'd say 95% of the opportunities we see today have definite requirements that you couldn't deliver without headless CMS from our end,” he said. “However, there’s a lot of misunderstanding out there. We bid for a Canadian university last year, and the tender process was actually cancelled in the end. They wanted an API first platform where they could do this, and they could do this. But then they wanted to drag and drop interfaces to do X, Y, Z. So they want both, but it's impossible to achieve because they're fundamentally different, right? We see a lot of people who come to us that still don't understand what [headless] actually means.”
Because of this knowledge gap, Rich and his team continue to engage with people to help them through the process. This is where a higher-touch, more consultative approach continues to prove valuable – particularly in the public sector, where Contensis serves a number of customers.
“We don't necessarily see us having massive growth in that area, but certainly from a business perspective, we're starting to see much more engagement from organizations who are properly understanding the problems, and then going, ‘yeah, how can we do this?’” he remarked. “But especially in the public sector, that need for handholding is really [essential to] the process. We're selling the idea of headless and the benefits it can bring, and helping them get to that place where they can realize it.”
<h2>Expanding beyond Blocks to Canvas</h2>
Rich and his team ushered in 2023 with a bang, introducing <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contensis-launches-blocks-new-container-first-website-builder-qa-with-richard-chivers/">its new Blocks platform</a> – a container-first way for developers to package and deliver code while managing releases through a familiar Contensis interface. A “block” is essentially a package of code built as a Docker image that runs on the Contensis cloud infrastructure, allowing site owners to deploy and manage easily. It’s still early days, but he seems bullish about it.
“Blocks is giving us the ability to be to take a full philosophical approach to headless,” he said. “You can use any stack for development you want, but you still have a management layer around it. You have all of the benefits of whatever frontend stack or backends you want to use, and deliver it through this new way of working.”
From a developer’s perspective, Rich said the company is seeing what they’ve been dreaming up for the last few years come to fruition. This includes a new feature called Canvas, an editor they’ve built from the ground up for creating long-form content in a really elegant, connected manner that will enhance the writing and creation experience. It’s slotted for the platform’s next release at the end of May.
“What’s different is it's an object-modeled format, so it's still JSON,” Rich said. “You write a blog in long form, but you can also decorate and attach. As a developer, you can consume this and use the parts you’re interested in, throw away [other] bits, and still use it as a full object model. Sometimes, people just want that slight bit of extra flexibility.”
In terms of the rest of the platform, Rich said we can expect big changes ahead. One big area of focus is the platform’s <a href="https://www.contensis.com/help-and-docs/user-guides/content-modelling/site-view/an-overview-of-the-site-view-interface" target="_blank">Site View</a> interface for powering navigation.
“Think tree navigation per CMS,” he said. “It's very common in the monolithic world, but not very common in headless. We create an API, which people can consume, to deliver all that. But we have some big changes coming around permissions and different bits and pieces, and we've had to do a complete rewrite from the ground up to make that possible because of performance. We’re almost providing this… composable platform within a platform.”
<h2>What’s next for Contensis? </h2>
In addition to its upcoming release and platform enhancements, I asked Rich what’s on the horizon as the composable debate rages on. I wanted to know the key differentiators in a shifting world of technology stacks – and how Contensis is positioned to compete for mindshare in a crowded market.
“I think the one big difference compared to a lot of other vendors is that we actually do get close to the problems,” he said emphatically. “We make sure we can solve those problems in a really elegant way because we’re connected – and we see them. For example, if we’ve got an engaged customer and they have an issue they’re just not sure how to solve, they can pull in one of our product owners or development team members to take a look with their own eyes rather than it just being ten problems they’re trying to solve in a lab. When it comes to delivery, we do deliver for our customers.”
As I mentioned earlier, Contensis and Zengenti bring a sort of “rare bird” quality to their position, allowing their team to support a product while engaging with customers in a meaningful way. This speaks to the company’s culture and the leadership that Rich provides. At the same time, he’s an early-rising, self-professed code fanatic that loves solving problems and making complex things simple – and seeing what customers can create.
“Some of this Blocks stuff we’ve been doing, there are examples where people have done certain things that we just never expected. You look at it and go, 'Wow, we never considered that as a way you could use it or what you could do.'”
As Contensis continues to write its own script for headless and composable, its proven commitment to customer experience will be an important part of the company’s evolution and how it will shape its place in the market. Giving customers the right tools to solve problems is a critical part of its promise, and it sounds like Rich and his team are hyper-focused on this goal.
No one knows what the future looks like, but having insight from the past is what great leaders rely on. Unfortunately, there’s no Hot Tub Time Machine to get you there – you have to experience it, learn from it, and keep expanding the story.

Contensis CMS Writes New Script for Composable and Headless: Interview with CEO Rich Chivers

What's the story, morning glory? It's a Magical Mystery Tour... 
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/" target="_blank">Contentful</a> is joining with customers, partners, and other composable evangelists and advocates to inform and educate on the power of composable content.
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/storylines/" target="_blank">The Storylines Tour</a> will be making stops in five major cities, beginning in May and continuing through October. The first stop was Thursday in New York City.
<h2>What to expect from the Storylines Tour</h2>
More than just a crash course on composable technology, Contentful is paving the way for learning through the power of storytelling. Major brands like Google, Audible, Kraft Heinz, KFC (and many more) are sharing the ways they have used digital experiences to enhance their brands and delight and inspire customers.
Contentful customers and partners have been invited to speak and present on the wins they’ve seen by embracing composable content, with different tracks available for attendees to make the most of this one full-day conference.  
Each stop on the tour will include a keynote, workshops, and a networking happy hour. Headlining the first stop in New York is <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/videogamesprof/" target="_blank">Dr. Kris Alexander</a>, a TED Conferences speaker and professor of video games at Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as the Director of the Red Bull Gaming Hub. An agenda has also been posted for the first event. Contentful will provide updates and additional information on speakers and the agenda for later stops the dates draw closer.
<h2>Composable is going global</h2>
Interested in attending a stop on the Storylines tour? Chances are it’s coming to a city near you – or better yet, one you’d really like to visit.
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/storylines/new-york/" target="_blank">New York City</a> – May 4
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/storylines/paris/" target="_blank">Paris</a> – May 25
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/storylines/london/" target="_blank">London</a> – June 29
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/storylines/silicon-valley/" target="_blank">Silicon Valley</a> – October 5
<a href="https://www.contentful.com/storylines/silicon-valley/" target="_blank">Berlin</a> – October 19
Questions? Email <a href="mailto:storylines@contentful.com">storylines@contentful.com</a>.
<h2>About Contentful</h2>
The Contentful® Composable Content Platform brings the building blocks of content together to create once and reuse for any digital experience. The API-first platform integrates easily with data sources and new functionality as digital experiences and technology evolve. With built-in <a href="https://www.contentful.com/help/orchestration/" target="_blank">orchestration</a>, a robust app ecosystem, and <a href="https://www.contentful.com/platform/extensibility/app-framework/" target="_blank">app framework</a> to easily extend the platform, Contentful frees teams across the business to work together to connect, create, and extend content more efficiently. Contentful helps companies unlock the power of digital content so they can build faster and deliver at scale, making their content a strategic business asset. Nearly 30% of the Fortune 500 and thousands of companies around the world rely on Contentful to help them bring their best ideas to life. For more information, visit <a href="https://www.contentful.com/" target="_blank">www.contentful.com</a>.

Contentful Announces Storylines Tour in Five Major Cities

Today, <a href="https://conscia.ai/" target="_blank">Conscia.ai</a>, the Digital Experience Orchestration (DXO) platform, announced <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/bartomlo/" target="_blank">Bart Omlo</a> as its new Global Head of Sales. 
According to its <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/consciaai-the-pioneer-of-digital-experience-orchestration-dxo-appoints-bart-omlo-as-global-head-of-sales-301812271.html?tc=eml_cleartime" target="_blank">news release</a>, Omlo will be responsible for driving Conscia.ai's revenue growth and expanding its customer base by leveraging his knowledge and expertise in an evolving digital experience space. He will work closely with the executive leadership team to identify new market opportunities, develop partnerships, and build a world-class sales organization.
"We are beyond excited to have Bart join our team at Conscia," said <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/from-legacy-to-composable-whats-the-best-way-forward/">Sana Remekie</a>, CEO of Conscia.ai. "We are truly impressed with his track record of building world-class sales organizations, his in-depth understanding of the evolving digital experience space, and [we] are confident about his ability to help scale our business globally. We look forward to reaching new heights together and taking the headless and composable industry by storm."
<h2>Deep experience in enterprise content management, headless, and more</h2>
Omlo brings nearly two decades of experience in enterprise content management to his new role at Conscia. Most recently, he served as vice president of sales at <a href="https://www.kentico.com/" target="_blank">Kentico</a> and later as CEO at <a href="https://kontent.ai/" target="_blank">Kontent.ai</a> – where he was integral to <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kontent-ai-raises-40-million-to-bring-the-power-of-ai-to-content-management/">raising $40 million</a> in Series A funding for the startup.
<h2>A bright outlook at Conscia.ai</h2>
With Omlo’s experience and Conscia’s movement to build best-of-breed architectures to deliver connected, omnichannel digital experiences for customers, Conscia believes they can take DXO to new heights. Conscia.ai's zero-code, API-first, DXO platform empowers businesses to orchestrate consistent and connected user experiences throughout the customer journey.
Conscia says organizations that have taken the first step towards modular and headless architectures are grappling with a lack of business user control to orchestrate experiences – and wish to reduce their day-to-day reliance on IT teams to deliver personalized customer experiences.
"I am excited to join Conscia and work with such a talented and passionate team to drive growth in the Digital Experience Orchestration space," said Omlo. "Composability is the future and I am thrilled to be a part of a company that is at the forefront of this trend by offering an innovative solution which allows organizations to stay in control of their omnichannel digital experiences while future-proofing their tech stacks."
<h2>About <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3852302-1&amp;h=3995890254&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fconscia.ai%2F&amp;a=Conscia.ai" target="_blank">Conscia.ai</a></h2>
Conscia is the pioneer of the Digital Experience Orchestration (DXO) platform that facilitates assembly of intelligent, data-driven experiences within a composable tech stack. It provides a centralized UI to manage personalized, omnichannel experiences with intuitive control for A/B testing, performance tracking, and integration with best-of-breed tools for business teams. For IT teams, Conscia offers a frontend and backend-agnostic, zero-code API 'Orchestration as a Service' that simplifies the frontend code and enables a truly headless architecture. With powerful features like a universal backend API connector, a native decision engine, observability, monitoring, analytics, and legacy modernization, Conscia.ai offers the most comprehensive solution on the market to accelerate the move to and adoption of composable architectures for business and digital teams.
Conscia has created 'Composable Recipes' showcasing connections to Contentstack, Contentful, Storyblok, Kontent.ai, Agility CMS, Segment, Talon.One, Cloudinary, Commercetools, BigCommerce, AWS Opensearch, Elasticsearch and many more best-of-breed solutions over the last few months. Conscia is a validated partner of AWS and now available for purchase on AWS Marketplace.

Conscia.ai Appoints Bart Omlo to Global Head of Sales

Conscia.ai logo with a black-and-white headshot of Bart Omlo

Weglot - The easiest way to translate a website

The easiest way to translate a website

#18164c

<hr /> <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin">Rosalind Franklin</a> was a pioneering British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was crucial to understanding the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. However, she is best known for her pivotal role in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA – even though her contributions were not fully recognized during her lifetime. As she once famously observed, “Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.” Given her astounding role in uncovering the component structure of life, it's apropos that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/adobe-experience-cloud-adds-new-headless-cms-capabilities-updates-to-commerce-integration/">Adobe</a> – the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/blog/the-latest/adobe-named-a-leader-in-2023-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms#:~:text=The%20Latest-,Adobe%20named%20a%20Leader%20in%202023%20Gartner%C2%AE,%E2%84%A2%20for%20Digital%20Experience%20Platforms&amp;text=Gartner%20published%20the%20latest%20Magic,has%20been%20named%20a%20Leader.">Gartner MQ Leader</a> for DXPs – decided to refer to a new feature in its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.adobe.com/?clickref=1101lwIXbvhb&amp;mv=affiliate&amp;mv2=pz&amp;as_camptype=277929&amp;as_channel=affiliate&amp;as_source=partnerize&amp;as_campaign=chelen">AEM</a> suite called <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/experience-manager-cloud-service/content/forms/forms-overview/latest-innovations.html?lang=en">Next-Gen Composability</a> as "<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.hlx.live/home">The Project Franklin</a>" initiative.A bit of background on the skunkworks: Franklin was introduced in January as a lightweight CMS architecture designed to launch new sites faster and accelerate page performance. It also provided a more intuitive way to create and publish content using simple tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.google.com/docs/about/">Google Docs</a> or <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/word">Microsoft Word</a> for authoring. The news was officially announced last month at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/summit/adobe-summit.html">Adobe Summit 2023</a>, but Adobe is already experiencing success with a pilot customer (keep reading for more details). <h2 id="what-is-next-gen-composability?">What is Next-Gen Composability?</h2>Content management jargon can take on many forms, with enough variations to make any head spin. With Next-Gen Composability, Adobe is attempting to make things simple. Really simple.When implementing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) in the past, developers and marketers would be tasked with learning new publishing tools, workflows, and more – often requiring several different learned processes across multiple channels. With Next-Gen Composability, AEM can now leverage commonly used tools like Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace and implement content built from those tools directly into the experience manager.Producing and editing content in channels that marketers are already familiar with can reduce the back and forth that plagues many enterprise CMSes. With these hurdles now removed from the equation, building websites and producing content should become faster and more reliable – and further reduce dependence on technical support teams. It should also reduce the overall friction with implementing AEM. <h2 id="lightning-fast-pages-with-high-google-lighthouse-scores">Lightning-fast pages with high Google Lighthouse scores</h2>The cloud-native infrastructure behind Next-Gen Composability is designed for speed. The tools built into the program require each web page to render a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview/">Google Lighthouse</a> score of 100 on live pages – made possible by fast caching and an edge delivery engine.Along with enhanced page performance, content can be built quickly with Next-Gen composability because teams can use tools they already know – and all with a few clicks. For content creators, this should eliminate many obstacles throughout the publishing workflow, giving them greater speed and agility. <h2 id="supercharged-forms">Supercharged forms</h2>Forms continue to be one of a website's most important engagement tools. They're also a huge pain for content creators.According to Adobe's website, with Next Gen Composability, users across an enterprise can create forms using their preferred tools, such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets – without extensive training on new UI workflows.What’s more, Next Gen Composability is designed to load forms with unmatched speed, achieving a near-perfect Google Lighthouse score on live pages, practically guaranteeing top performance and user experience.<h2 id="tried,-tested,-and-approved">Tried, Tested, and Approved</h2>The first to implement Next-Gen Composability within AEM was Adobe partner <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.netcentric.biz/insights/2023/04/next-gen-composability-reimagines-content-management">Cognizant Netcentric</a>. They used the new feature to produce <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.netcentric.biz/">cognizantnetcentric.com</a> – drafting their content in Google Workspace.In a blog article reflecting the project’s success, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-weissenborn/">Katrin Weissenborn</a>, a commercial marketing manager at Cognizant Netcentric, commented on the ease of use and overall satisfaction with Next-Gen Composability:“Next-Gen Composability has completely transformed the way we work, our web publishing has never been that fast and easy before. Whenever I spot something on the website that I want to change, I just do it myself in record time, no need to brief content editors. As soon as the change is live, I just tag my content editing colleagues directly in the content repository so the change will also be done in other languages to ensure a consistent user experience throughout.”<h2 id="about-adobe">About Adobe</h2>Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.adobe.com&amp;esheet=52479752&amp;newsitemid=20210819005739&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=www.adobe.com&amp;index=3&amp;md5=16bfbb09ccdd811085bcdfd56783339b">www.adobe.com</a>.

Adobe Experience Manager Evolves Franklin, Launches Next-Gen Composability Feature

<h5>TL;DR – Recently, there was an epic but friendly debate in the Boye &amp; Company CMS Experts Slack channel about the confusion surrounding DXC as a category. We asked the three main voices in the conversation – Rasmus Skjoldan, Andrew Kumar, and Sana Remekie – to discuss their thoughts on Zoom. Matt McQueeny helped moderate the conversation.</h5>
<hr />
Of the great mysteries that scientists, philosophers, and theologians grapple with, one question is often overlooked:
What, exactly, is professional wrestling?
I’m not referring to school leagues or Olympic competitions – I’m talking about the <a href="https://www.wwe.com/" target="_blank">WWE</a> and its brand of sportstainment. And I don’t mean to be glib or insulting with any comparisons; heck, I’ve been to a live wrestling event many moons ago, and it was kinda fun (particularly the people watching). 
But really, what is it? Is this a legitimate sport replete with feats of athleticism? Or is it truly just performance art following a well-oiled script? If you ask <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_Hogan" target="_blank">Hulk Hogan</a>, the iconic figurehead of the modern experience, he might say, "Well, let me tell you something, brother…" and launch into a dissertation about sport versus stage. 
As humans, we’re classically conditioned to put things in boxes so they’re easier to understand. Sometimes, that’s not so simple. This has long been the case in the software industry, where confusion often precedes clarity when new ideas takes the mat – like <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/blog/2023/1/whats-the-real-story-about-digital-experience-composition" target="_blank">Digital Experience Composition (DXC)</a>. 
A short while ago, members of <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/groups/cms-experts" target="_blank">Boye &amp; Company’s CMS Experts</a>, a peer group focused on content management, were treated to a sort of WWE-styled “Smackdown” in the community’s Slack channel. In truth, it was a friendly exchange of ideas, with no bodyslams or half-nelsons to report (those are wrestling moves, BTW).
Still, it was spirited. And for several days, this epic “Slackdown” generated significant interest from across the DXP and DXC spectrum. It all started with a simple, poignant question from <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rasmusskjoldan/" target="_blank">Rasmus Skjoldan</a>, Chief Evangelist at <a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/?mgcid=19746730468&amp;utm_campaign=&amp;utm_content=&amp;utm_campaign=brand-protect-jf_us_2023&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_content=19746730468&amp;utm_term=magnolia%20cms&amp;gad=1&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjw0ZiiBhBKEiwA4PT9z53dpcpsB0M2J-tIRhHdpnwYRHUwbjghkhAGI6_Azq8wWtHBU4ic8xoC4N0QAvD_BwE" target="_blank">Magnolia</a>, a leading DXP:
“I feel like some of the Digital Experience Composition positioning going on isn’t super helpful to customers, to be very blunt about it. What’s genuinely in it for them?”
This drew several DXC defenders to the ring, but the most vocal participants were <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewkumarxyz/" target="_blank">Andrew Kumar</a>, VP of Customer Solutions at <a href="https://uniform.dev/" target="_blank">Uniform</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/sana-remekie/" target="_blank">Sana Remekie</a>, CEO of <a href="https://conscia.ai/" target="_blank">Conscia.ai</a>. It was entertaining to watch these adroit leaders wrestle with a red-hot topic, but it was incredibly informative for the fans in the stands – so much so that I partnered with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/critics/matthew-mcqueeny/">Matt McQueeny</a> at <a href="https://konabos.com/" target="_blank">Konabos</a> to take the show on the road.
A few days later, we invited Rasmus, Sana, and Andrew to join us for an informal follow-up on Zoom to wrestle down some answers.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/04/dxc_boye_debate_debrief_720.png" alt="Zoom photo of Matt Garrepy, Matt McQueeny, Rasmus Skoldjan, Andrew Kumar, and Sana Remekie" />
<h2>In this corner… DXP</h2>
<a href="https://www.forrester.com/analyst-bio/joe-cicman/BIO14164" target="_blank">Joe Cicman</a>, an analyst at Forrester, has been on a quest to decipher the Digital Experience Platform. As he noted <a href="https://www.forrester.com/blogs/dxp-you-keep-using-that-term-i-dont-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/" target="_blank">in a recent blog</a>, DXP is still misunderstood from a compositional perspective. The definition can be nebulous based on whether it’s delivered by a single vendor or assembled by an enterprise – or, in some cases, both.  
I like Joe's observation in the same post: “Every day I asked myself, ‘How is it possible for one vendor to create one product that works across multiple industries and grows in scope as a company’s digital remit grows?’ After talking to the vendors, turns out … it’s not possible.”
That might be the vein Rasmus tapped: confusion is everywhere. While DXC is emerging, DXPs continue to evolve in their own space. As he pondered in Slack, would it not be better to reenergize, modernize, or even reinvent the more established DXP label and category than trying to teach customers about another new acronym?
Add this to the confusion: Magnolia was included in an early DXC report by <a href="https://www.gartner.com/analyst/56850" target="_blank">Mike Lowndes of Gartner</a> as a vendor in this emerging field. So how does this color Magnolia’s positioning?
“When I speak to our composable die-hard customers, they are much more passionate about getting projects done, getting rid of the worst legacy apps, and reaching business goals than they are in the vendor/analyst-centric views on what’s in or out of categories,” Rasmus said. “Magnolia is seen as a DXC by some – which is fine, of course. We definitely cover that space with our own twist. To me, it just feels more like a use case than a real software category.”
That might be true. But vendors and buyers still refer to those MQ reports with biblical reverence.
Gathered in our cozy Zoom room, Matt McQueeny asked Rasmus why he felt compelled to engage with the community around these opinions.
“I'm very focused on looking at all this from the customer's perspective,” he said. “Every time I see a proposal for a category change, I'm just always asking myself, 'okay, who's actually behind this and who's to benefit from it?' Even for DXP, I sometimes have question marks around whether that really helps customers. So I felt that introducing new variations would be a significant sort of – not a disruption – but more confusion. And that's what I’m quite passionately against because I want to keep the focus on what has real value for customers.”
<h2>DXC enters the ring</h2>
TLAs (three-lettered acronyms) might be the bane of our technology existence. When I was consulting at IBM GTS, we were unpacking a catchy new triptych every week from across the cybersecurity theater. Heck, even “IBM” is an acronym... it's a bit like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception" target="_blank">Inception</a> with TLAs. 
I asked Sana Remekie about her take on this acronym acrimony – and how she perceived Rasmus’ call to quell the challenges by refocusing on the established DXP category.
“There's lots of three-letter acronyms popping up all over the place,” she said. “I think the movement towards composability and having that best-of-breed architecture is real. Customers are asking for a choice in terms of all the packaged and business capabilities that they need to build their overall architecture, and there's agreement across Gartner and Forrester on that. They may call it different things, but everybody’s starting to agree that we should give customers the ability to create and assemble their own solutions.”
So how does this momentum towards composability and DXC impact the more traditional definition of DXP – particularly as an established category? 
“Some folks are saying very clearly that a single DXP – what they call a monolithic DXP – should no longer be a thing at all,” she added. “Customers should be able to create their own DXPs by picking best-of-breed applications from across the ecosystem. With this phenomenon, we're now giving choices to the customer and power to the SIs to make those choices for the customer. Sometimes it's an IT team within the organization making those choices with, hopefully, the business in mind. And sometimes they say, ‘alright, Deloitte, Accenture, Valtech, go make that choice for me – go directly to those vendors and put together a solution that is composable.’ That happens a lot as well.”
<h2>Finding the right place to “poke the DXP bear”</h2>
As the wrestling match commenced, we turned to Andrew Kumar for more insight on what ignited the debate on Slack. He took us on a brief trip in the wayback machine to his days at <a href="https://www.telus.com/en" target="_blank">Telus</a>, where the company assembled what we now call a composable or <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH</a> architecture. 
“There weren’t these sexy marketing terms that exist today,” he said. “But in 2016, we [already] had this concept, and we created our own internal site builder on top of Contentful – and that's now part of DXC.”
Andrew also talked about the importance of the different roles and responsibilities that DXC needs to support and the tendency to lump the audience of potential users under a generic “business user” mantle. This might be a limiting descriptor, as the pool could include a wide range of team members from marketing, content ops, merchandisers, UX designers, product managers, or even data analysts.
Clearly, there’s room to improve the positioning and messaging around the DXC terminology – to find the right TLA, so to speak. And this confusion makes sense when we’re still in the early growth phases.
“Adoption and demand are still very, very nascent, but it's starting to get viral,” he said. “Despite being so nascent, it is disrupting and really ‘poking the bear’ on the big players in DXP. It's really shaping and adding maturity to headless and MACH – and these kinds of technical terms are now growing in maturity.”
Poking the bear sounds dangerous, but that’s what market challengers do. TLAs aside, Andrew went on to say that he would not recommend a “rip and replace” from DXP to DXC, but to take incremental steps towards composable.
“There are some bridges in place,” he said. “Uniform has one that can help Sitecore and AEM customers start to make those leaps. But there’s still a place for a DXP.”
<h2>What’s old is new</h2>
By this point in the match, we had wrestled multiple messages from our participants. Without question, DXC is the shiny new object blazing trails. At the same time, DXPs are evolving their posture to remain marketable. Andrew noted, “They’re decoupling and decomposing themselves, playing ball with others and having that multi-manufacturer style where you can build with OEM parts from all over the place.”
Pivoting back to Rasmus in the DXP corner, we inquired about his response to Andrew regarding the long history of APIs connecting different platforms – and how there are even use cases of Contentful feeding into Magnolia.
“I can totally back up that it's not really anything new,” he remarked to Andrew. “Magnolia has been producing a solution that is fundamentally a composable DXP for a very long time, since 2013 or 2014. We've had clients compose platforms out of multiple best-of-breed applications they put together in a joined platform for a long time.”
While Rasmus reinforced his criticism of a new TLA being injected into the ecosystem, he did express his support for how the narrative was being projected.
“If I look at some of the stuff I felt Uniform did super well, it was just a very clean story they came out with,” he said. “I totally love that. And it felt like a really novel spin that they would be the glue between all these different applications and allow the marketer the freedom to assemble, curate, and aggregate all their content and put together experiences based on many different services. I do see really good stuff about DXC. It's just not a category – and I don't think it will become a category.”
OK, so if it’s not destined to be officially blessed, where do we go from here? As Andrew pointed out, the roadmap might rest with user behavior.
“In some enterprises, there could be 60 times more technical folks that don't write code, but they're still making meaningful contributions to digital experiences. That is a huge user base. And that's where the DXC is really going to make its mark, and really going to – and this is probably an unpopular opinion – start to take over the DXP. It's serving so many more users in a more democratic low code, no code interesting way. It's empowering to that user base.”
<h2>A DXC by any other name is a… DXCP? DXO? EDP?</h2>
While pondering the future of a DXC category, Andrew quickly pointed out one basic flaw with the acronym: <a href="https://dxc.com/us/en" target="_blank">DXC Technology</a> is the name of a well-established global agency (which happens to sponsor <a href="https://dxc.com/us/en/manutd" target="_blank">Manchester United</a>). To that end, he feels “DXCP” might be a more suitable mantle – which Uniform has already been using across its communications.
He also talked about the long shadow cast by large competitors and the importance of establishing authority as a new category. “It’s really a challenge for new players to enter [the DXP market]. There's just so much <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/adobe-experience-cloud-adds-new-headless-cms-capabilities-updates-to-commerce-integration/">Adobe</a>, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-partners-with-google-cloud-to-take-experimentation-to-the-next-level/">Optimizely</a>, or <a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/" target="_blank">Magnolia</a> dominance. They've been around for so long. There’s no space for new entrants without a large insurmountable challenge.”
Sana also shared her perspective on the DXC category conundrum, which echoed my recent conversations with other vendors under the DXC umbrella. While <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/occtoo-dives-deep-to-unify-data-and-kill-integrations-a-conversation-with-ceo-niclas-mollin/">Niclas Mollin at Occtoo</a> is positioning around the Experience Data Platform, Sana is building a beachhead for Conscia as Digital Experience Orchestration.
“Conscia's not a DXC, even though we're playing in the space,” she explained. “There's a lot of confusion, so we said, you know what? We don't want to call ourselves a DXC because that would mean that we're tied too closely to a specific front end. So we’re going to act as the central piece of the composable ecosystem, which connects all the dots from the back end to the front end and is agnostic of both – and we’re able to orchestrate API's and experiences.”
<h2>And the winner is…</h2>
Er… not clear. We’re still wrestling with the answers, and the analysts have yet to canonize anything. But if we can smell what <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwayne_Johnson" target="_blank">The Rock</a> is cookin', we might be in for more confusion as DXC continues to find its footing. 
What’s abundantly clear to us, however, is that DXC is building real momentum, and DXP continues to drive demand. With the advent of AI and other innovations, the DXP market is still predicted to grow to over <a href="https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/digital-experience-platform-market" target="_blank">$30 billion by 2030</a>. While our guests shared strong opinions about DXC's future as a category and the underlying challenges, each seemed committed to demonstrable value over category woes.
At the end of our session, Matt McQueeny noted that we ended up where we always end up: with a clear mandate to focus on the business and the customer. 
The best part of this conversation was each participant's undeniable respect and reverence for one another, despite their competitive position or conflicting ideologies. Collectively, this industry powers millions of websites, apps, and experiences. Yet, the top minds shaping its trajectory represent a tightly-knit community of shared innovation – and we had three of the best participating in this forum.
We'll give Andrew Kumar the final word: “It’s definitely a fun time to be in this space. It can be confusing, but there's a lot of innovation and disruption happening – and it's ultimately for the business and end customer's benefit.”
I can hear Hulk Hogan saying, “Amen, brother…”
<hr />
Big thanks to: 
<ul>
<li>Rasmus Skjoldan. Andrew Kumar, and Sana Remekie for participating</li>
<li>Matt McQueeny for helping to moderate, facilitate, and transcribe this session</li>
<li>Janus Boye for creating a community to host these kinds of debates</li>
</ul>

Wrestling with Category Confusion in the DXC "Slackdown"

<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a>, a leading composable digital experience platform, has announced the details of its annual customer conference <a href="https://hopin.com/events/contentcon-2023-b457f92b-1b36-4b14-ab98-2e9997fd6326/registration" target="_blank">ContentCon</a>, which will be held May 8-10, 2023. The conference will host in-person attendees at the <a href="https://www.hotelvanzandt.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwov6hBhBsEiwAvrvN6BrprCkd8CfhkkHMLTmec3hO_vjpADrx_azcyRskPIA22yckdrggGhoCUDIQAvD_BwE" target="_blank">Hotel Van Zandt</a> in Austin, Texas, with an exciting lineup of speakers, workshops, and networking opportunities.
Attendees who cannot make the trip to the Lone Star state can also register to attend virtually and for free.
<h2>Who’s who at ContentCon?</h2>
Contentstack just revealed its keynote speakers for the event, which include an all-star lineup of strategic business leaders, thought leaders, and composable evangelists.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/heylgo/" target="_blank">Laura Gassner Otting</a> – Best-Selling Author, Catalyst, and Executive Coach
Laura inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep great ideas in limbo by helping audiences think bigger and accept greater challenges that reach beyond their current, limited scope of belief.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/julietteolah/" target="_blank">Juliette Olah</a> – Senior Senior Manager, Editorial Content at <a href="https://www.booking.com/?aid=2062892&amp;label=147268094501561094234084590185684619184&amp;anid=147268094501561094234084590185684619184" target="_blank">Booking.com</a>
Juliette leads and inspires happy teams who delight audiences with awesome content. Juliette's keynote will cover The Art and Science of Content Strategy.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbilton/" target="_blank">Richard Bilton</a> – Director of Technology at Leesa Sleep
With a background in sales, development, and eCommerce, Richard helps businesses see the value of the website as their superstar salesman that never sleeps. Richard will share How Leesa Sleep is Realizing the Personalization Dream.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjmontgomery/" target="_blank">Mindy Montgomery</a> – Associate Director, Product Management, ASICS
Mindy has deep expertise in consulting and transforming industries through technology. Mindy's keynote will be a guide to surviving RFPs, titled It Takes a Village to Raise a Platform.”
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurrevanruth/" target="_blank">Jurre van Ruth</a> – Strategic Program Manager, ‘Composable DXP’, at PostNL
Jurre helps PostNL, a mail and logistics solutions provider, build the future of delivery from the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Jurre's keynote will address Headless as an Accelerator for Innovation.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehasampat/" target="_blank">Neha Sampat</a> – Founder and CEO at Contentstack
An outspoken advocate for equality &amp; women leaders, Neha was named Female Tech Trailblazer in 2020, CEO of the Year by Aragon in 2018, and an “SF Business Times 40 under 40” honoree in 2015.
<h2>What to expect</h2>
While promoting the event on its website, Contentstack stated it is “calling all status-quo-busters to join the composable future.” This customer-focused event promises to empower new Contentstack users or seasoned veterans to elevate their skills and expertise in composable technology and composable leadership.
Contentstack knows something about customer satisfaction. One of its promises to users is <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-launches-new-marketplace-to-accelerate-composable-digital-experience-innovation/">“Care Without Compromise,”</a> which helps customers find solutions often using cross-vendor resolutions.
Throughout the event, attendees can stop by the Contentstack Help Bar for expert advice or attend an expert-led workshop to hone their knowledge about the composable space. Participants can also expect vibrant discussions at one of the many networking events.
For more information on logistics and details of the event, please <a href="https://hopin.com/events/contentcon-2023-b457f92b-1b36-4b14-ab98-2e9997fd6326/registration" target="_blank">register here</a>.
<h2>About Contentstack</h2>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a> – the Content Experience Platform (CXP) category leader – empowers marketers and developers to deliver composable digital experiences at the speed of their imagination. Companies such as ASICS, Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences with uncompromising scale and dependability. Famous for its Care without Compromise™, Contentstack has achieved the industry's highest customer satisfaction rating. Contentstack is also a founder of the MACH Alliance, setting the industry agenda for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. Learn more at <a href="http://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">http://www.contentstack.com</a>.

Contentstack Presents the ‘Future of Composable’ at ContentCon, May 8-10

Things are heating up for the <a href="https://machalliance.org/">MACH Alliance</a> as it prepares to host its annual global conference in Amsterdam. 
Kicking off the summer season, <a href="https://the.machalliance.org/machtwo/" target="_blank">MACH TWO</a> will be held June 13-14, 2023, and promises “48 hours of solid MACH” for attendees at the <a href="https://delamar.nl/en/" target="_blank">DeLaMar Theater</a> – located in the heart of one of Europe's most iconic cities.
MACH TWO will focus on the "art &amp; science" powering the future of business. The event will feature keynotes, workshops, and networking opportunities focused on MACH principles – and practical applications for executive leaders, technology decision-makers, and MACH practitioners.
The two-day event will offer a range of speakers across a variety of industries, each sharing examples of successfully “MACHifying” their tech stacks.
<h2>Meet the speakers</h2>
While more presenters are expected to be announced, the MACH Alliance has released the bios of five technology and business leaders speaking at the conference.
<h4><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffdesandre/" target="_blank">Jeff DeSandre</a> – Chief Information Officer, AmerCareRoyal</h4>
Jeff is a results-driven technology executive with 15+ years of experience leading complex IT transformations. As CIO of <a href="https://amercareroyal.com/" target="_blank">AmerCareRoyal</a>, Jeff spearheads innovative digital transformation initiatives that optimize operational efficiency and enhance customer experience. With a strong background in consumer goods, Jeff's strategic direction and technology solutions ensure alignment with business objectives. Jeff also sits on the advisory board for UCX.
<h4><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/anca-iordanescu-3756971/" target="_blank">Anca lordanescu</a> – VP of Engineering, IKEA Retail</h4>
Anca is an award-winning engineering leader. As the VP of Engineering at <a href="https://www.ikea.com/us/en/" target="_blank">IKEA</a> Retail, Anca is leading the charge to transform IKEA into a retailer that provides products to consumers wherever and whenever they want by implementing agile, simple, and future-focused technologies. With a Ph.D. in Computer Science, Anca previously modernized the IT landscape at Maersk Line from a monolithic to a decoupled, microservice-based architecture. Actively involved in the "Women in Tech" community in Sweden and various programs around mentorship, diversity, and uplifting women and girls in the technology sector, Anca has been recognized as a top 100 Woman in Tech – and winner of the Digital Transformation Leader award 2022.
<h4><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjmontgomery/" target="_blank">Mindy Montgomery</a> – Associate Director of Product Marketing, ASICS Digital</h4>
Mindy has 20 years of experience in IT, strategy, and product/business management. As Associate Director of Product Marketing at <a href="https://www.asicsdigital.com/" target="_blank">ASICS Digital</a>, she leverages her expertise in delivering innovative solutions across various industries and focuses on developing foundational infrastructure that advances ecosystem-wide solutions and creates exceptional customer experiences.
<h4><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmnotenboom/" target="_blank">Hans Notenboom</a> – Tribe Leader B2B Platform Experience &amp; Conversion, Philips</h4>
Having spent the past 30 years working at the intersection of IT, innovation, marketing, new media, and digital technology, Hans is responsible for delivering the <a href="https://www.usa.philips.com/" target="_blank">Philips</a> global platform experience for healthcare customers – connecting digital marketing, eCommerce, and self-service portals. By decoupling internal complexity and technology from external customer experiences, Philips’ goal is to increase speed and agility and improve its ability to personalize the customer experience and create internal efficiencies. 
<h4><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-valade/" target="_blank">Dylan Valade</a> – Head of Global eCommerce Technology, PUMA</h4>
Dylan is a technology leader with 20 years of experience defining digital transformation strategies and rolling out systems worldwide. He's a survivor of crises, mentoring teams through recessions, a bull market, and the pandemic-fueled e-commerce growth spree. At <a href="https://us.puma.com/us/en" target="_blank">Puma</a>, Dylan takes charge of budgets, infrastructure, applications, and business processes, serving millions of users on the web, apps, and marketplaces. He expanded PUMA's direct-to-consumer business from 7 to 25 markets and provided management consulting for digital transformation with packaged and custom software. Previously, Dylan created a SaaS content management system and multi-tenant hosting platform, leveraging it to start five businesses. 
<h2>MACHing your way to Amsterdam? </h2>
Fantastische! CMS Critic will see you there.
If you haven’t registered for MACH TWO, it’s not too late. Find logistics details, conference insights, and more when you <a href="https://the.machalliance.org/machtwo/" target="_blank">register here</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 machalliance.org, read here 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 Announces Speakers for MACH TWO Conference in Amsterdam, June 13-14

MACH Alliance MACH Two logo against geometric background

If you haven’t been to the British Virgin Islands, go. They are a jewel in the crown of the Caribbean. Beyond the sugary sand beaches and predictable tourist bars, a rugged, untamed beauty makes it all feel... undiscovered.
A few years back, I took a snorkeling excursion to the <a href="https://www.bvitourism.com/the-islands/virgin-gorda" target="_blank">Baths on the island of Virgin Gorda</a>, a nature park that offers a labyrinthine journey through a network of caves and secret pools. That might sound a bit daring, but there’s no spelunking involved. Just bring a good pair of shoes.
At the other end of this trek is a spectacular beach called Devil’s Bay. As you emerge from the rocks, it unfolds like a dream, with unspoiled turquoise water shimmering like diamonds in the sun. It’s worth the hike to experience it.
As I explored the crystalline depths, I encountered an octopus. It was a little bigger than my hand but full of vigor. I followed it for what seemed like hours, darting about the submerged rock formations, constantly changing its shape and size.
When I think about the octopus (or plural, octopi – that’s fun to say), the first thought that enters my head is “alien.” It’s not hyperbole: <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/scientific-paper-claims-octopuses-actually-161100373.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAlDc3OtmWaNnugy1CE9jDhDNBqXMsAtCICpCq5Kq276uYXmXNInrAgucHJDs2i3qlWggBfdZtzxrRqcvSIiG-VpDK7TZi4l-I2xm-GG4I4B8RcNFZij_oc_JsnQ7l2DVWTeMIuANjQLBrTCH9uhlnNTJZ0nQjIdG4zO9uovndmu" target="_blank">a scientific paper</a> released last year postulates that these critters exhibit "extraterrestrial biological features." If that sounds more like science fiction than fact, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz1R6tOBryY" target="_blank">watch this video</a> of octopi making spectacular escapes from impossible places. They are cunning, intelligent, and able to reach places other species can’t.
It’s clear why this unique creature influenced the name Occtoo. The etymological allusion is obvious, but I wanted to ask <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nmollin/" target="_blank">Niclas Mollin</a>, co-founder and CEO of this new breed of business, how this permutation came about – and why it’s so apropos to his company’s ethos.
“We had a lot of ideas,” he said, bouncing around concepts of infinity and its relationship to persisting data. But under it all, the octopus motif seems to align with the company’s values to reach, connect, and unify – like a cephalopod’s long, sticky arms.
As it so happens, a design company located in their shared workspace helped bring the brand to life – and the rest, as they say, is history. Since its launch in 2019, the startup platform has grown to almost 50 employees across 14 countries, with a hub in central Sweden.
During the course of our conversation, I asked Niclas about the murky depths of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/8-cms-trends-to-watch-in-2023-from-mach-to-metaverse/">digital experience composition</a> (DXC) and how Occtoo is shining through the confusion. We also discussed the importance of the MACH Alliance as a force for shaping the composable landscape and what’s on the roadmap for his vibrant young company.
<h2>Swimming in rivers and oceans of data</h2>
Building businesses from the ground floor is nothing new for Niclas. He’s a steely entrepreneur that exudes confidence, masterfully translating business value into something scalable.
He mustered those traits as a founding member of <a href="https://www.inriver.com/" target="_blank">inRiver</a> – a product information management (PIM) system that simplifies multichannel commerce by making it fast, easy, and visual in nature. The platform enables customers to create, maintain, and distribute product information across multiple sales channels.
inRiver started flowing in 2008, and Niclas spent nearly a decade building it into a powerhouse PIM. Along the way, he saw the opportunity for Occtoo to emerge, specifically as fragmented and siloed data became a key inhibitor to building modern apps.
“There was a big challenge with flowing data and making it available in real time,” he said. “We couldn’t take so long to launch digital experiences. So I decided to explore if we could build something that can help customers innovate faster and launch in a more capable way.”
While not all startups have the good fortune to start with an international customer like <a href="https://www.cartier.com/en-us/home" target="_blank">Cartier</a>, Niclas was able to leverage his network of partnerships to prove out Occtoo’s utility. In the first two years, they landed <a href="https://www.fenixoutdoor.se/" target="_blank">Fenix Outdoor</a> and other leading brands, helping the company reach 500% revenue growth between 2020 and 2021.
This led to an investment by Sweden-based <a href="https://industrifonden.com/" target="_blank">Industrifonden</a> and <a href="https://www.42cap.com/" target="_blank">42CAP</a> for €2 million in early 2021, no doubt buoyed by the rapid acceleration of digital transformation by the Covid-19 pandemic in areas like eCommerce. This continued in November of 2022, with an additional infusion of €4.6M in a round led by <a href="https://newion.com/news/occtoo-raises-e4-6m-to-help-digital-teams-build-relevant-experiences-with-their-low-code-composable-experience-data-platform/" target="_blank">Newion</a>.
<h2>Building customer experiences at lightning speed</h2>
Occtoo is purpose-built around data, hence its claim to the mantle of “The Experience Data Platform.” But therein lies its competitive distinction: Occtoo helps companies build experiences faster by harnessing real time data from internal and external sources – from CRM to ERP, PIM to DAM – and combining it all in a low-code platform. With everything persisting in one place, you can assemble product and editorial content using data from various relevant places.
Sounds cool. But how?
APIs, baby – which, according to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecka-l%C3%B6thman-ryd%C3%A5-b8638a55/" target="_blank">Rebecka Löthman Rydå</a> of Industrifonden, can be rendered in Occtoo “as easily as creating a Slack channel.” These APIs also power additional capabilities like headless personalization, allowing for greater experimentation and optimization.
One of Occtoo’s strongest attributes is its ability to tap legacy and siloed data and make it available and reusable across an omnichannel of frontend screens and devices. At the same time, it’s bi-directional, allowing you to collect behavioral data from app users.
Occtoo’s cloud-native SaaS posture makes it a composable play that accelerates everything in the ecosystem, enabling a faster time to innovation – something critical in our rapidly evolving digital economy. Occtoo also offers a visualization UI that allows for simplified management.
On this point, Niclas analogized Occtoo to an iceberg. “We spent the first couple of years building, [figuring out] how to store data, our graph database – so customers don’t have to think about it,” he said. “Now, Occtoo Studio is the user interface. You can see it, activate it, and front-end developers can get the APIs. It’s all visual.”
<h2>The integration killer</h2>
In my <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/is-the-birth-of-dxc-the-death-of-dxp-a-conversation-with-darren-guarnaccia-president-at-uniform/">recent interview</a> with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dguarnaccia/" target="_blank">Darren Guarnaccia</a>, president at Uniform – a digital composition experience platform (DXCP) –  he emphatically denounced integration glue code as “the lowest value code.” No disagreement from me, but many SIs subsist on costly, long-term engagements and retainers to manage a hornet’s nest of integration code.
Like Uniform, Occtoo is appealing to both enterprises and SIs with the practical equation of time = money. By eliminating the friction around combining and activating data from any source, you can effectively kill the reliance on costly, time-consuming integrations that can sometimes take three, six, or even 12 months to build.
I know enterprises are seeing the benefit, but I asked if SIs were on board with "anti-glue code" solutions like DXC – and if they’re already seeing potential with these tools.
“Yes,” Niclas said unequivocally, “because glue code isn’t fun. The amount of time spent on projects is becoming an issue, but SIs also need to do something with their offerings, as there’s more than just commerce. We need to be asking, 'how can we help with the customer journey?'"
He also believes the SIs realize they can deliver their first DXC-powered project successfully and will be positioned to deliver more projects – and Occtoo has the perfect solution to make that happen.
“If you have Octoo in the offering, you can spend more time working on the dynamics of project cost. That creates more dollars to reallocate to do more – and that’s incentive for the SI. We have all the data needed in Occtoo, and launching the next digital initiative is five times faster.”
Five times faster. Not too shabby when considering time to market. Or your bottom line.
<h2>To be a DXC, or not to be… is that the question?</h2>
Earlier this year, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellygoetsch/" target="_blank">Kelly Goetsch</a> – Chief Strategy Officer at <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/commercetools-acquires-frontastic-adds-composable-frontend-capabilities-to-headless-commerce/">commercetools</a> and co-founder of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH Alliance</a> – hosted a sort of DXC Family Feud on LinkedIn. The purpose: bring some definition to the emerging “digital experience composition” category. The contestants included Niclas, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/uniform-raises-28m-in-series-a-funding-round-for-composable-dxp/">Lars Petersen</a> (CEO of Uniform), and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/from-legacy-to-composable-whats-the-best-way-forward/">Sana Remekie</a> (CEO of <a href="https://conscia.ai/">Conscia.ai</a>).
The word “family” is apropos because everything about this webinar felt amicable. As Sana observed, this was her first time amongst frenemies. Kelly further amplified this point, suggesting all three panelists might be competing for market share – but only after a category, Wave, or Magic Quadrant had been codified. 
As I shared with Niclas, my experience with each of these leaders has been one of true composable ambassadorship for DXC, where rising tides lift all ships. He agreed and took it one step further.
“Lars came out of CMS, Sana out of search, and Occtoo out of enterprise data,” he said, noting the different layers of the stack. “When we talk to each other, we’re not competing at all. We’ve even pitched together [and] provided elements to help Uniform build cool frontends.”
That camaraderie sounds great, but the big challenge plaguing these innovators is a continued lack of clarity. While Gartner mentioned DXC as an important trend in its recently published Magic Quadrant for DXPs, the lack of “category guardrails” can still confuse potential buyers. Add to that a parsing within the proto-category, from Occtoo's "Experience Data Platform" to Conscia's "Digital Experience Orchestration." 
Niclas didn’t seem troubled by this, perhaps because of his clear focus on data.
“CMS is great, and you need to have that. The commerce engine has its purpose. But you have to include PIM data, enterprise ERP data... and this is where the magic happens [with Occtoo]. We want to help take care of the real business data, the kind that resides in internal facing systems. Persisting the data, the ability to unify data from different sources, and the ability to make it available from one API.”
I asked Niclas where he sees demand. Are RFPs specifically calling out DXC or Experience Data Platforms as a requirement?
“We’re in the early days,” he said. “but now we’re moving towards [being] a best-of-breed solution.”
And with a customer list that includes Cartier, Marquet, and other leading brands, they’re already carving out demand for their service.
<h2>MACHified for a composable world</h2>
As a member of the MACH Alliance, Occtoo has undergone a rigorous approval process to meet the organization’s certification benchmarks. Additionally, Niclas serves on the <a href="https://machalliance.org/insights/staying-focused-why-we-re-expanding-the-mach-alliance-advisory-board" target="_blank">Executive Advisory Board</a>, which is helping to shape the future of the Alliance and serve its growing member community – which now includes 80 vendors, SIs, and enablers.
I asked Niclas what the MACH Alliance means for Occtoo and the industry at large.
“It has a fantastic role to play,” he said. “It puts a light on it, and it would be hard to do [this] alone. The collective power is amazing and the team has done an amazing job.”
Niclas also reinforced what I’ve heard from multiple members and outside analysts: that the Alliance needs to continue its investment in education and certification, so it doesn’t dilute its value. This will continue to be a challenge as more monolithic DXPs shift to composable offerings and focus their marketing on the hype.
As Niclas created one of these MACH-certified composable solutions, I probed to see what he thought of these chess moves by more monolithic DXPs.
“It’s good – they recognize they can’t have data locked in,” he responded. "This is a tricky topic, but I believe that a DXP needs to be constantly evolving to include new technology and approaches – hence, interoperability is going to be key, even if this is a suite bought from one vendor or multiple vendors. The MACH Alliance is important to validate which vendors adhere to MACH principles."
The good news, as Niclas predicts, is that DXPs can use Occtoo to aid their transition to a modern posture. "This is the path moving forward. We can tap into legacy players, and it works – if they admit they are good at one part, and not another. DXPs have strengths.”
<h2>Eight arms towards the future</h2>
Design has been an important attribute of Niclas’ entrepreneurial makeup, from brand to business value. I asked what the roadmap looks like for his still fledgling company and what it takes to design an entirely new category – especially at a time when the economics are, shall we say, rattling the cage.
“You need to be a little crazy to do it,” he said, bending a wry smile in my direction. “When I left inRiver, I [swore] I would never build a category again. I love the building part, but it’s frustrating. Change is hard, and there’s a lot of resistance.”
Resistance may seem futile, but not to this business builder. He is undeniable in his quest to "empower people with data," and he’s focusing his passion on the possibilities – as crazy as they might seem.
Maybe those risks are less daunting when you have more time to explore. As we parted ways, Niclas shared how his two kids (a daughter and son, 20 and 18) have left a wake of space, allowing him and his wife to travel, hike, and even enjoy a glass of wine in the middle of the week.
As I think about Occtoo and its future, I’m reminded again of the octopus. In some ways, its otherworldly abilities to change form and reach impossible places are the very essence of being composable. DXC may feel a bit like wading into alien waters. But a new world of potential awaits below the surface – and leaders like Niclas are taking us there.
If you haven’t yet explored it yet, go.

Occtoo Dives Deep to Unify Data and Kill Integrations: A Conversation with CEO Niclas Mollin

Occtoo featured graphic with headshot of Niclas Mollin and Occtoo logo

This week, <a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">Acquia</a> – a leading digital experience platform (DXP) – announced a strategic partnership with global consulting firm <a href="http://www.kpmg.com/us" target="_blank">KPMG</a>.
Together, the companies plan to deliver the Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform to enterprise customers across the industries and clients served by KPMG. The combined capabilities will enable marketing, content, and IT teams to scale secure digital experiences.
“As pressure intensifies on marketers to win customers and keep them engaged, they’re looking for a platform to bring together insights from first-party customer data and content,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondgalloway/" target="_blank">Jason Galloway</a>, US Marketing Consulting Practice Lead at KPMG. “We’ve already worked with Acquia to provide their customer data platform to support data-driven marketing. Moving forward, we anticipate Acquia DXP will become a key offering for KPMG clients looking to leverage customer insights and content across touchpoints.”
<h2>Acquia continues to lead in DXP</h2>
Last month, Acquia DXP was listed as a Leader in the <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/report/acquia-named-leader-2023-gartner-magic-quadranttm-dxp" target="_blank">Gartner Magic Quadrant</a> for Digital Experience Platforms for the fourth consecutive year. The report established the relative market position of Acquia and 13 other DXP vendors across B2B, B2C, B2E.
In a <a href="https://www.acquia.com/newsroom/press-releases/acquia-named-leader-2023-gartner-magic-quadrant-digital-experience" target="_blank">news release</a> announcing the ranking, Acquia provided areas of focus they considered instrumental in maintaining their Leader status, including:
<ul>
<li>the release of Acquia Code Studio to provide a complete DevOps environment for <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/what-do-industry-experts-expect-for-the-drupal-10-launch-heres-what-they-told-us/">Drupal</a></li>
<li>the launch of a new developer portal and Drupal starter kits to accelerate time-to-value</li>
<li>the introduction of speed and scalability enhancements to Acquia Cloud Platform, Acquia CDP, and other products</li>
<li>the creation of a unified data layer across Acquia CDP and the company's personalization solution, giving organizations the power to track unknown to known customers and enhancing first-party data strategies</li>
<li>the integration of Acquia DAM capabilities into Acquia DXP, making it simpler for customers to manage a boom in digital content</li>
</ul>
<h2>Alliance with KPMG provides the opportunity to expand to more enterprise businesses</h2>
With the new KPMG alliance, clients can expect tailored products from Acquia, including its open source content management system powered by Drupal, the Acquia Cloud, a customer data platform, personalization capabilities, and a digital asset management system (DAM). Through the Acquia DXP, these products can be used individually or together, helping customers design the exact customer experience that works for their organization and customers.
“KPMG’s focus on guiding marketing and IT teams to create solutions that meet their precise business needs makes them an ideal collaborator for Acquia,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-reny-0a2a0a163/" target="_blank">Steve Reny</a>, President and CEO of Acquia. “Acquia DXP’s openness enables organizations to not only better connect with customers, but to maximize the value of investments in other martech, e-commerce, and productivity tools. This alliance brings the power of data-driven customer insights and best-in-class digital experience creation and management to marketers.”
<h2>About KPMG LLP</h2>
KPMG LLP is the U.S. firm of the KPMG global organization of independent professional services firms providing audit, tax and advisory services. The KPMG global organization operates in 143 countries and territories and has more than 265,000 people working in member firms around the world. Each KPMG firm is a legally distinct and separate entity and describes itself as such. KPMG International Limited is a private English company limited by guarantee. KPMG International Limited and its related entities do not provide services to clients. Some or all of the services described herein may not be permissible for KPMG audit clients and their affiliates or related entities. KPMG is widely recognized for being a great place to work and build a career. Our people share a sense of purpose in the work we do, and a strong commitment to community service, inclusion and diversity and eradicating childhood illiteracy. Learn more at <a href="http://www.kpmg.com/us" target="_blank">www.kpmg.com/us</a>.
<h2>About Acquia</h2>
Acquia empowers the world’s most ambitious brands to create digital customer experiences that matter. With open source Drupal at its core, the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP) enables marketers, developers, and IT operations teams at thousands of global organizations to rapidly compose and deploy digital products and services that leverage their content and data assets to engage customers personally and at scale, enhance conversions, and help businesses stand out. Learn more at <a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">https://acquia.com</a>.

Acquia and KPMG Form Strategic Alliance to Scale Digital Experiences

“I get by with a little help from my friends...”
When The Beatles recorded this classic tune, they probably didn’t realize it would one day land on Rolling Stone’s list of <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rolling-stone-500-top-beatles-songs/" target="_blank">500 Greatest Songs of All Time</a>. Then again, maybe they did. They were, after all, The Beatles.
We all need a little help sometimes. Case in point: if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the specter of evaluating content management systems, your friends at <a href="https://uniform.dev/" target="_blank">Uniform</a> are providing a little help to get by.
That help comes at just the right time. With so many CMSes flooding the market – from monolithic to headless, open source to composable – finding the right solution can feel a little helter-skelter. Using Uniform's <a href="https://uniform.dev/resources/cms-comparison-guide" target="_blank">CMS Comparison Guide</a>, you can get a vendor-neutral breakdown of some leading CMSes and tips for picking the best tool for your job.
<h2>Navigating the noise with Uniform</h2>
Uniform is a new breed of digital experience composition platform (DXCP) that works with many of the world’s leading CMSes as part of a composable architecture. It gives developers and business teams the tools they need to do their best work and deliver faster than ever.
Uniform works as a value-add for many companies because its product can tap both emerging technologies and legacy systems through what they call an “experience layer.” For developers, this means greater flexibility and less time creating “glue code” between services. For marketing teams, this layer provides a consistent experience in accessing data from multiple sources or previewing content prior to publishing.
No stack would be complete without CMS. Because these platforms play a central role in content development and delivery, it makes sense that Uniform would have insight into the different types of CMSes available – and how to choose the right one for your goals. 
<h2>What’s in the CMS Comparison Guide?</h2>
The in-depth comparison guide catalogs the details of 15 leading CMS vendors, including three monoliths and 12 headless and composable CMSes. Along with side-by-side comparisons, the guide details the strengths and weaknesses of each vendor across features such as content modeling, integration, workflow, and more.
The real "meat" of the guide is the granular comparison table, which organizes the attributes for each system into a large grid. This allows you to scan every vendor's abilities – from delivery APIs to CDN capabilities – with relative ease. 
“The CMS field is getting increasingly crowded, making it difficult for brands across industries to identify a partner and know where to start,” 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. “Our guide helps you cut through the noise, as our team has decades of experience working with and for CMS providers. Our platform further assists companies by preventing them from getting locked into a single vendor, fueling more innovation, and eliminating content management pain points.”
Cutting through noise and eliminating pain points? Sounds like the kind of help we could all use from our friends.
If you're ready to avoid a hard day's night, <a href="https://uniform.dev/resources/cms-comparison-guide" target="_blank">download Uniform's CMS Comparison Guide</a>.
<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 systems and headless APIs in Uniform DXCP eliminates the need for complex custom integration code, which delivers no business value. 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.
Learn more at <a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Funiform.dev%2F&amp;esheet=53363599&amp;newsitemid=20230320005058&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=uniform.dev&amp;index=11&amp;md5=44f6949a6ad8549958a74a274dbc71fa" target="_blank">uniform.dev</a> and follow them on <a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fcompany%2Funiformdev%2F&amp;esheet=53363599&amp;newsitemid=20230320005058&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=LinkedIn&amp;index=12&amp;md5=c100ec7e79a11df76897aa4ce2fb0f43" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FUniformDev&amp;esheet=53363599&amp;newsitemid=20230320005058&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=Twitter&amp;index=13&amp;md5=02b5c59cd07ca0555ebf05eff75f2814" target="_blank">Twitter</a>.

Uniform Releases Comprehensive CMS Comparison Guide

Uniform logo against a blue background featuring logos of various CMS platforms

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