Articles - Page 31

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

janus-boye

Well, 2021 is almost at an end. The holidays are upon us, and merrymaking is in full swing (at least as far as Omicron will let us swing). Before we wrap things up and officially start the festivities, there's one last piece of business to attend to...
NOMINATIONS!
That's right: it's time to kick off our annual CMS Critic Awards – and it all starts with our 2021 People's Choice Nominations! Starting today, you can submit your favorite platform in a variety of categories such as Best DXP, Best Headless CMS, and more. Based on your input, we choose the top three contenders in each category – and let you vote for the best of the best. 
The 2021 People's Choice Nominations will be open until January 15th, 2022. Once we've tallied your submissions, we'll open voting on the top three platforms in each category.
Here's some exciting news: this year, we've added Best Composable System and Best Headless Commerce Platform to the nomination list. We covered the rise of both categories throughout the year – now you can tell us which platforms are doing it best!
To learn more about the CMS Critic Awards, keep reading. Ready to submit your nominations? <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/2021-cms-critic-awards-nominations/">Click here!</a>
<h2>What are the CMS Critic Awards?</h2>
OK... so maybe our program is a little less visible than the Oscars, but it fills an important gap in our industry by celebrating the contributions of CMS, DXP, and the related ecosystem of vendors.
Since 2012, the CMS Critic Awards have been something of an institution. Not only do they give our panel of thought leaders an opportunity to "chime in" on the general direction of the industry, but they also give individuals a chance to vote for their favorite platform. It's a fun way to engage with our communities and create more visibility around the importance of this technology sector.
To provide a fair shot to all vendors, we offer two unique programs:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/12/criticschoice_logo-1024x173.jpg" alt="CMS Critic's Choice Awards Logo" />
Critic's Choice Awards
Hand-selected by our CMS Critic editorial staff, vendors receive the coveted Critic's Choice Award for each category based on our internal research and criteria.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/12/peoplechoice_logo-1024x173.jpg" alt="CMS People's Choice Awards Logo" />
People’s Choice Awards 
As previously mentioned, these community-based awards are designed to engage with readers through an open forum. The top three vendors with the most nominations will be featured on our website for voting, and the platform with the most votes in each category is declared the winner. The rules are simple, and focus on fairness and integrity: participants may nominate or vote only once, and companies that offer incentives of any kind will be disqualified.
<h2>2021 People's Choice categories for nominations</h2>
This year's categories include:
<ul>
<li>Best Enterprise CMS</li>
<li>Best DXP</li>
<li>Best Free CMS</li>
<li>Best Flat File CMS</li>
<li>Best Open Source CMS</li>
<li>Best ECM (Enterprise Content Management)</li>
<li>Best E-Commerce Solution</li>
<li>Best Headless CMS</li>
<li>Best Headless Commerce Platform</li>
<li>Best Website Builder</li>
<li>Best Static Site Generator</li>
<li>Best Composable System</li>
</ul>
Both the Critic's Choice and People's Choice Award results will be announced at the same time in mid to late February of 2022.
<h2>Submit your nominations!</h2>
Go on... tell us what platforms you love! Fill out the form below and submit your nominations. You can only vote once and a valid email address is required with each entry. Companies that offer incentives of any kind will be disqualified.
We can't wait to see your nominations. Cheers – and happy holidays!

Submit Your Nominations for the CMS Critic 2021 People's Choice Awards

cms-critic-staff

CMS Critic 2021 People's Choice Award logo

Talk about welcome news.
Earlier in December, <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/" target="_blank">Optimizely</a> – a leading digital experience platform (DXP) – announced a definitive agreement to purchase <a href="https://welcomesoftware.com/" target="_blank">Welcome</a>, a content marketing (CMP), marketing resource management (MRM), and digital asset management (DAM) platform.
Yes, that's a lot of three-lettered acronyms for one sentence...
While the DXP juggernaut is no stranger to acquisitions (they were, in fact, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/episerver-rebrands-as-optimizely-following-acquisition/">purchased by Episerver in 2020</a> but rebranded under the Optimizely name), this one provides a glimpse of the company's ambition to win the minds and hearts of internal marketers.
According to Welcome's press release, the combination will empower marketing teams at brands across the globe to drive real business value through better customer experiences.
“We believe a world-class customer experience starts with an outstanding marketer experience,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. “By combining Welcome’s campaign planning, content production, and asset management capabilities with Optimizely’s existing breadth of digital experience solutions, we empower marketers to rapidly launch campaigns and control the optimization of every digital touchpoint which results in growth for the business.”
As the deal is set to close before the New Year, it's clear that Optimizely is making a 2022 resolution to focus more on the discrete needs of marketers, who are chiefly responsible for driving customer experience. With the rise of digital tools and hybrid work environments, marketers are becoming the "engines" of business growth by shaping consumer engagement. At the same time, they are being forced to adapt and respond to a fluid digital landscape, where a fragmented stack is arresting their ability to deliver personalized, relevant content and experiences at scale.
Bottom line: Optimizely aims to improve the marketer experience by adding Welcome's CMP, MRM, and DAM capabilities to their expanding ecosystem.
<h2>Combining marketing, content management, digital commerce, and personalization</h2>
As a four-time <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210325005585/en/Welcome-a-NewsCred-Brand-Named-a-Leader-Now-4-Years-Running-in-the-2021-Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-for-Content-Marketing-Platforms" target="_blank">Leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant</a>, Welcome has carved a strong niche in the small but growing cadre of Content Marketing Platforms (CMP).
As Gartner noted in their most recent report, "Welcome’s vision as a marketing orchestration software, combining the capabilities of a CMP, MWM, DAM, offers promise." This positioning certainly made the platform a more attractive target for Optimizely.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/12/gartner_mq_cmp-971x1024.png" alt="Gartner Magic Quadrant, 2021 for CMP" />
By combining Welcome's capabilities with Optimizely's suite of content management and digital commerce solutions, marketers will now have enhanced tools for a wide range of applications – all in a unified platform. This includes the "Holy Grail" of experimentation, personalization, and recommendations that have often remained elusive for marketing professionals and teams.
Under the Optimizely banner, marketers will be able to leverage Welcome's features on an evolutionary scale, allowing them to accelerate the end-to-end marketing lifecycle from concept to execution. This will allow users and teams to plan, create, and collaborate on campaigns and publish across multiple channels to reach the right audiences. They will also have unprecedented control and transparency to manage content delivery without relying on the support of IT or development.
The combined set of capabilities should be a force multiplier for Optimizely, enabling marketers to grow revenue by scaling best-in-class data-driven tools such as A/B testing and content recommendations, augmented by Welcome's content marketing processes. Marketers will also be able to easily share results across their organization, providing greater insight into the impact of their marketing investment.
“We could not be more excited to be joining the Optimizely family,” said Shafqat Islam, CEO and co-founder of Welcome. “We’ve made it our mission to transform the way marketers work, by delivering a purpose-built solution to orchestrate all of marketing. Now, together with Optimizely, we believe we are unifying two category-leading solutions to see that mission through.”
<h2>A string of strategic acquisitions</h2>
As the DXP category becomes more crowded, enterprise vendors are clawing their way to the top of the mountain. In Gartner's <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3995917/magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms" target="_blank">2021 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a>, Optimizely found itself chasing the heels of both <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-upgrades-open-dxp-capabilities-to-expand-composable-enterprise-features/">Acquia</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/adobe-acquires-video-collaboration-platform-frame-io/">Adobe</a> in pursuit of the crown.
To enhance their DXP completeness of vision and gain competitive ground, all three platforms have been scooping up strategic technologies – including Optimizely's 2021 <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-acquires-customer-data-platform-zaius/">purchase of Zauis</a>, a leading customer data platform (CDP).
Adding this all-important data layer gave Optimizely a needed edge, but the purchase of Welcome is key. Not only does it signal a renewed focus on the role of the marketer, but it repositions the power of the platform on the marketer's experience. Providing an integrated, end-to-end lifecycle solution for managing content, assets, and resources – and amplifying it with the commerce and optimization features of a proven DXP – could be a real gamechanger for Optimizely. We'll be watching as the next steps unfold.
<h2>About Optimizely</h2>
Optimizely is a leading digital experience platform (DXP), equipping teams with the tools and insights they need to create and optimize in new and novel ways. Now, companies can operate with data-driven confidence to create hyper-personalized experiences. Building sophisticated solutions has never been simpler. Optimizely’s 900+ partners and 1100+ employees in offices around the globe are proud to help more than 9,000 brands, including Toyota, Santander, eBay, KLM and Mazda, enrich their customer lifetime value, increase revenue and grow their brands.
<h2>About Welcome</h2>
Welcome transforms how marketers run marketing. It is the leading marketing orchestration platform used by the world’s most successful brands to strategically align teams, take the friction out of execution, and demonstrate meaningful results. Only Welcome offers a platform purpose-built for the complexities of modern marketing that can scale to support the largest teams in the world. It is a new layer of the marketing technology stack where marketers can work better together, connect other martech tools, and measure performance. Welcome unleashes the potential of marketing.

Optimizely's Acquisition of Welcome Signals Expanded Focus on Marketers

Strapi, an open source headless CMS, just the release of <a href="https://strapi.io/" target="_blank">Strapi v4</a>. The platform's latest version offers a reworked core, allowing users to expand Strapi with plugins and boost API performance with greater ease. It also sports a slick UI and a new design system that's worth diving into.
The latest version of Strapi follows several critical upgrades with key features. Last year, Strapi introduced a stable Strapi v3 with <a href="http://strapi.io/features/custom-roles-and-permissions" target="_blank">role-based access control</a>,<a href="https://strapi.io/blog/announcing-a-new-draft-and-publish-feature" target="_blank"> draft and publish features</a>, and <a href="https://strapi.io/blog/v3-5-sentry-plugin-sso-authentication" target="_blank">SSO authentication</a>. Shortly thereafter, the company launched its v3.6, which introduced free content <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/strapi-headless-cms-announces-v3-6-with-free-content-internationalization/" target="_blank">internationalization</a>. 
According to Strapi, its <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/" target="_blank">headless CMS</a> is designed to power experiences across websites, mobile applications, and IoT devices, and is an ideal fit for the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/" target="_blank">JAMstack</a> (JavaScript, API, and Markup). Strapi's headless posture also enables it to power front-end frameworks such as React, Gatsby, Vue.js, Next.js, and other static site generators. It also supports multiple databases as well as both REST and GraphQL APIs. 
With more than <a href="https://github.com/strapi/strapi/" target="_blank">40 000+</a> Github stars, 600 contributors, and 3.5 million+ downloads, Strapi is the fastest-growing <a href="https://nodejs.org/en/" target="_blank">Node.js</a> CMS. They held their first online global user conference, <a href="https://conf.strapi.io/" target="_blank">StrapiConf</a>, in April of 2021, with more than 2,500 live attendees. The company's <a href="https://strapi.io/blog/save-the-date-strapi-conf-2022" target="_blank">2022 conference</a> will be held March 16-17.
<h2>What’s new in Strapi 4?</h2>
New Design System 
Strapi got a complete makeover, primarily around its visual aesthetics and navigation. This includes a refreshed admin UI, which improves accessibility to the admin panel and makes the entire flow more efficient.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/12/strapi_v4_screenshot_5cb222faff-e1639090146670.png" alt="New Admin Panel" />
Along with the updated admin panel interface, Strapi released the first version of its new <a href="https://design-system.strapi.io/" target="_blank">Strapi Design System</a> with the goal of enabling everyone to extend and customize their Strapi applications with plugins. To ensure design consistency and provide the best experience to users, Strapi created a component library for plugin developers. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/12/components_a32c1d133a-e1639090227330.png" alt="New User Interface" />
In the new design, Strapi focused on making all the pieces of the interface consistent. They also increased the contrast ratio and created elements with adaptive sizes to render the UI more accessible. 
New API to create plugins without pain
Strapi aims to scale its ecosystem and let users choose among a wide variety of high-quality plugins. Conversely, the company also wants to give plugin creators a bigger stage to showcase their work. Overall, Strapi seems focused on giving users more control to customize and integrate with other tools.
Strapi's plugin capabilities have evolved from complex to simplified. For example, in Strapi v3, plugins were loaded based on a file structure, requiring users to configure multiple files. In v4, Strapi took a more programmatic approach, allowing plugins to have their own file structure. Instead of configuring multiple files, plugin developers only need to configure two files at the root of the package:
<pre>strapi-server.js for the Server.
strapi-admin.js for the Admin panel.</pre>
While v3 plugins won’t be compatible with v4 and will require migration, this is a big leap in overall functionality. 
More powerful REST and GraphQL API
Strapi added new features to its content API such as pagination, a better filtering format, and the ability to choose what relations to load. Structurally, the Content API and the Admin API are now split, providing greater control over each channel. Overall, Strapi seems more invested in enhancing the value of their REST and GraphQL APIs, both of which deliver on its promise as a headless CMS platform. 
<h2>Try Strapi 4 </h2>
There are a number of other noteworthy changes in Strapi v4. To see the complete list, head over to their v4 announcement page. 
Strapi says they will continue supporting v3 and fixing critical bugs for at least the next six months. However, they will stop delivering new features for v3, and they encourage users to upgrade to v4 for all new projects. 
One thing we'll say is that Strapi makes it very easy to get started on its platform. Once <a href="https://docs.strapi.io/developer-docs/latest/setup-deployment-guides/installation/cli.html#preparing-the-installation" target="_blank">Node.js and npm are properly installed</a> on your machine, simply copy and paste the following command line in your terminal to create your first Strapi v4 project:
<pre>npx create-strapi-app

my-project --quickstart</pre>
<h2>About Strapi</h2>
<a href="http://strapi.io" target="_blank">Strapi</a> is a leading open-source headless CMS, giving developers the freedom to use their favorite tools and frameworks while helping editors easily manage their content and distribute it to any device or channel. The remote-first company has offices in Paris and San Francisco, and is scaling its team globally. Strapi, Inc. is venture-backed by Index Ventures, Accel, and Stride VC, as well as notable angel investors and open-source experts.

Strapi Releases v4 of Headless CMS, Enhances Plugins and API Performance

paris-tuzun

Forks up! We've got one more slice of news as we leave November in the rearview.
Along with the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., it was a month full of "stuffing" at the CMS and DXP table. We shared the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/postman-releases-2021-state-of-the-api-report-shows-global-trend-towards-api-first-digital-era/" target="_blank">Postman "State of the API" report</a>, which further cemented the global trend towards an API-first digital era. We also covered <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kontent-by-kentico-aims-to-take-enterprise-headless-cms-to-a-new-level/" target="_blank">Kontent by Kentico's continued efforts to transform headless CMS</a> for the enterprise through committed innovation.
From a mergers and acquisitions perspective, November was a bit cooler than in previous months. But there was one piece of news to dish about: <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/commercetools-acquires-frontastic-adds-composable-frontend-capabilities-to-headless-commerce/" target="_blank">commercetools devoured Frontastic</a>, adding composable frontend capabilities to its headless commerce offering. We'll be following the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">headless commerce</a> sector throughout 2022 as we expect to see more consolidation, investment, and expansion – particularly as Omicron reinforces the focus on digital transformation.
Finally, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/solodev-cms-for-kubernetes-now-available-with-contract-pricing-in-aws-marketplace-for-containers-anywhere/" target="_blank">Solodev launched its CMS for Kubernetes with contract pricing</a> options in the AWS Marketplace. Announced at <a href="https://reinvent.awsevents.com/" target="_blank">AWS re:Invent</a>, this heralds a new era of container offerings, allowing users to deploy in-cloud or on-premises in almost any environment. Solodev was the only CMS in the mix to offer the new capability.
Enough on the leftovers. Here are a few more tidbits to chew on:
 
<h2>MACH Alliance announces eight newly certified companies as Global Membership nears 50</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/mach-alliance-new-members.jpeg" alt="MACH Alliance new members logos" />
The <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3366290-1&amp;h=2364601792&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.machalliance.org%2F&amp;a=MACH+Alliance" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a>, a group of independent tech companies dedicated to advocating for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems, announced that it has certified eight new members in its ecosystem: 
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.actindo.com/" target="_blank">Actindo AG</a>, a digital operations platform enabling efficient e-commerce</li>
<li><a href="https://www.appnovation.com/" target="_blank">Appnovation</a>, a global digital consultancy specializing in the design, development, and support of engaging experiences</li>
<li><a href="https://www.builder.io/" target="_blank">Builder.io</a>, a platform to visually create and optimize high-speed app and website experiences</li>
<li><a href="https://www.convictional.com/" target="_blank">Convictional</a>,  a supplier enablement platform for retailers and marketplaces</li>
<li><a href="https://www.fast.co/" target="_blank">Fast</a>, a one-click and headless checkout solution making it easier to buy and sell online.</li>
<li><a href="https://graphcms.com/" target="_blank">GraphCMS</a>, the GraphQL Content Federation System</li>
<li><a href="https://www.objectedge.com/" target="_blank">Object Edge</a>, a consultancy that builds digital experiences for enterprise B2B/B2C/D2C commerce and content</li>
<li><a href="https://www.storyblok.com/" target="_blank">Storyblok</a>, a fast-emerging headless content management system. You can check out <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/interview-headless-cms-storyblok-expands-partner-program-with-u-s-agency-campbell-ewald/" target="_blank">our interview with Barry D'Arcy</a>, VP of Partners at Storyblok.</li>
</ul>
The Alliance estimates that roughly 100,000 tech professionals around the globe are now involved with MACH. This is based on the headcounts of member companies and in-house tech teams of enterprises deploying MACH initiatives. 
The Alliance's growth comes as IT budgets are expected to rise faster in 2022 than they have in over a decade – and spending in support of flexible, composable business and IT initiatives will be prioritized as organizations struggle to be digitally agile and meet consumer demands.
"We've reached a moment of reckoning where digital leaders are realizing legacy technologies pose greater risk than reward, and the pandemic has made it more clear than ever that composable architecture is the way forward for the enterprise," said Sonja Keerl, MACH Alliance president. "Even big tech has started slowly moving in this direction, which is all the more reason why the Alliance upholds its high certification standards since MACH-washing has become increasingly common. The Alliance exists to help organizations weed through that noise and be their guide throughout their MACH journey."
MACH stands for Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. The move towards MACH has accelerated in the past few years, leading to the start of the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a> in 2020. Founded by commercetools, Contentstack, EPAM Systems, Valtech, and 15 members at launch, the MACH Alliance is a non-profit cooperation focused on introducing a new, open, and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystem. 
Maintaining Exclusive Certification Standards
The MACH Alliance maintains the <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3366290-1&amp;h=2299048448&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fmachalliance.org%2Finsights%2Fmach-certification-a-seal-of-confidence&amp;a=highest+standards" target="_blank">highest standards</a> in order for companies to become certified. The high bar provides enterprises with essentially an insurance policy that guarantees future-proof technology. Choosing a certified MACH vendor helps ensure the following:
<ul>
<li>Connectability: other applications connect easily through API</li>
<li>Scalability: cloud-native SaaS ensures seamless rolling upgrades that don't require human intervention</li>
<li>Swapability:  companies can easily add and replace software and make changes on the fly without disrupting front end UX/UI</li>
<li>Adaptability: the functionality of the software can be used with multiple front ends</li>
<li>Flexibility and Transparency: prevents vendor lock-in, allowing companies to stay in charge of their own technology and be able to respond to any situation</li>
</ul>
Gaining Investor Attention
MACH Alliance vendor members have accumulated more than $2.5 billion in funding, and the valuation of the category just by its vendors is estimated at over $20 billion.
The Alliance has played a key part in fueling this interest, with the group referred to by Forrester analyst Joe Cicman as being "...the bouncers controlling the velvet rope at the entrance of the Coolest Tech in Town Club." In his July write-up, "<a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3366290-1&amp;h=3090673364&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forrester.com%2Fblogs%2Fbuy-an-integrated-platform-not-a-box-of-rocks%2F&amp;a=Buy+An+Integrated+DXP+Platform%2C+Not+Just+A+Box+Of+Rocks" target="_blank">Buy An Integrated DXP Platform, Not Just A Box Of Rocks</a>," Cicman noted how the MACH Alliance enforces the definition of modern technology. He also reinforced the importance of composable set-ups, stating the only practical playbook today is one that is cloud-native.
Learn more at <a href="http://www.machalliance.org/" target="_blank">www.machalliance.org</a>.
<h2>GoDaddy data breach impacts over 1.2 million WordPress accounts</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/binary-g2d4825f8f_1280.jpg" alt="Hacker and binary numbers" />
Alas, there are WordPress woes in the land of GoDaddy...
In a statement released by <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1609711/000160971121000122/gddyblogpostnov222021.htm" target="_blank">the Securities and Exchange Commission</a>, GoDaddy's Chief Information Security Officer Demetrius Comes said they discovered unauthorized third-party access to their managed WordPress hosting environment.
<div>Comes also stated that upon identifying this incident, they immediately blocked the unauthorized third party from their system. They have determined that beginning on September 6, 2021, the culprit used the vulnerability to gain access to the following customer information:</div>
<ul>
<li>Up to 1.2 million active and inactive Managed WordPress email addresses and customer numbers: The exposure of email addresses presents a risk of increased phishing attacks.</li>
<li>The original WordPress Admin password set at the time of provisioning: If those credentials were still in use, GoDaddy reset those passwords.</li>
<li>sFTP and database usernames and passwords for active customers</li>
<li>SSL private key for a subset of active customers: GoDaddy is in the process of issuing and installing new certificates for those affected.</li>
</ul>
<div>The investigation is ongoing and GoDaddy is contacting all impacted customers directly with specific details. If you're concerned, contact GoDaddy via their <a href="https://www.godaddy.com/help">help center</a>.</div>
 
<h2>WordPress 5.9 Release Date Gets Delayed to January 25, 2022</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/wordpress-59.jpg" alt="WordPress 5.9" />
Keeping up with WordPress version releases is a bit like playing pool with a rope. While Gutenberg gets new enhancements almost every two weeks, bigger releases are much less reliable. 
Case in point: the latest version of WordPress – 5.9 Beta – <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/5-9/" target="_blank">was scheduled for release</a> on November 16th. Apparently, that news was a bit premature, and the organization <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/11/17/wordpress-5-9-beta-1-delayed/" target="_blank">shifted the release to January 25, 2022</a>, to accommodate 5.9's new features.
Perhaps this is understandable given that WordPress is the most widely used open-source CMS on the planet. Maintaining standards is key, and even the most minor changes can impact users. That said, WordPress has a documented philosophy around development: <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2010/04/20/deadlines-are-not-arbritrary-theyre-a/" target="_blank">deadlines are not arbitrary</a>. Schedules can shift if results demand it, but there's a clear focus on making commitments and sticking to timelines. 
Such is life. We hope to see 5.9 on January 25th.
What is included in WordPress 5.9?
According to WordPress, 5.9 is expected to be a ground-breaking release. It will introduce the next generation of themes with <a href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/06/introducing-twenty-twenty-two/" target="_blank">Twenty Twenty-Two</a> joining the party and over 30 theme blocks to build all parts of your site.
Here's a sneak peek video of 5.9:
<div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XvEG9XWD4JI" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>
 
<h2>commercetools Acquires Frontastic, adds composable frontend capabilities to headless commerce</h2>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/commercetools_frontastic_featured.jpg" alt="Composite image of the commercetools and frontastic logos on a blended background" />
commercetools, a leading headless e-Commerce platform, recently <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/commercetools-acquires-frontastic-adds-composable-frontend-capabilities-to-headless-commerce/" target="_blank">announced</a> the acquisition of Frontastic, a composable frontend platform.
The purchase comes just a few months after commercetools announced a $140 million <a href="https://commercetools.com/press-releases/commercetools-secures-140m-series-c-funding-round-to-accelerate-global-growth" target="_blank">Series C funding round</a>. The company hopes it will broaden the reach of its game-changing commerce technology for creating differentiated user experiences.
"We've been partnering with the Frontastic team since the very beginning and see a huge market opportunity for their Composable Frontend Platform around the world," said Dirk Hoerig, CEO and Co-Founder of commercetools. "With this powerful combination, we're bringing the MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, and Headless) movement to the mid-market as well as to digital business teams so that more companies can benefit from modern commerce experiences."
It's worth noting that commercetools was one of the earlier headless commerce platforms on the scene, helping to shape the modern standards for headless commerce. Their decoupled environment now enables a multitude of commerce capabilities across an ever-growing network of channels and endpoints. Like other platforms in the composable field, commercetools also embraces the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH principles</a> – providing a truly open, modular environment that enables businesses to embrace innovation and respond to change quickly.

CMS Monthly Recap: MACH Alliance Announces New Members, GoDaddy Data Breach, commercetools Acquires Frontastic, and More

Monthly Recap featured image with title text against a photo of a slice of pumpkin pie with whipped cream

It's clear that Lars Petersen likes acceleration.
That's apropos when it comes to delivering digital experiences, which his company <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3376641-1&amp;h=3792000851&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Funiform.dev%2F&amp;a=Uniform" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Uniform</a> is focused on doing.
Now, it seems his quest for speed has accelerated the track to funding as well.
In just 15 months, Uniform – a new breed of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headless</a> composable digital experience platform – announced that it has <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/uniform-raises-28m-in-series-a-funding-round-led-by-insight-partners-301435875.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raised a $28 million Series A investment</a> round led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm <a href="https://www.insightpartners.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Insight Partners</a>.
An impressive feat for a relatively nascent player in the DXP stack and a testament to the growing demand for <a href="https://craftersoftware.com/blog/2021/07/what-is-a-composable-dxp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">composable digital experience</a> solutions.
"Every organization needs compelling digital experiences," says Petersen, who serves as CEO at Uniform, and has a deep heritage in the CMS space from nearly a decade at <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/products/sitecore/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sitecore</a>. "Most enterprises invest in multiple headless technologies, and they struggle to free content and data from legacy content management and commerce systems."
According to Uniform, the company will use the investment to further accelerate the growth of its global team, deepen relationships with ecosystem technology vendors, expand support for digital agencies delivering DXP solutions, and increase capabilities of its core platform to continue optimizing digital experience production from ideation to end-user experience delivery.
<h2>Driving headless commerce with unprecedented speed</h2>
Since its launch, Uniform says it has built a new "backbone" for managing the production of digital experiences throughout the entire digital delivery lifecycle. The company's vendor-agnostic, composable DXP complements existing headless CMS and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headless commerce</a> technologies – adding orchestration, no-code tools, built-in personalization, and other features that allow marketers and merchandisers to build unique, omnichannel digital experiences that blend content from multiple legacy and headless sources.
"We are excited at the new wave of technologies that power multi-cloud infrastructures," says Petersen. "Uniform has unique expertise in digital experience and edge computing and provides a distinct advantage for companies to better manage apps, sites, omnichannel experiences and launch modern digital commerce in a fraction of the time it takes with a legacy solution."
And when it comes to speed, Uniform's high-performance edge-side personalization delivers the fastest possible experiences to visitors – with 50ms time to first byte for personalized content and green <a href="https://developers.google.com/web/tools/lighthouse" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Lighthouse</a> scores for search engine optimization. This has become a critical benchmark for websites and applications as users continue to demand faster load times.
"New technologies and devices are pushing the boundaries of the digital experience market, and Uniform is the first greenfield composable DXP that will combine the power of the technology to meet and exceed the very high customer expectations of digital experiences" said Teddie Wardi, Managing Director at Insight Partners. "Insight is thrilled to partner with Uniform and its impressive founding team as the company builds the first headless composable digital experience platform built without an anchor application." Teddie Wardi will join the Uniform board.
<h2>MACH principles usher in a new era of composable DXPs</h2>
According to Uniform, the company's platform is being used to power innovative digital experiences for global enterprises who are seeking faster time to market through composable, headless architectures.
At the same time, many brands and organizations are looking to retain their previous investments in legacy suites. This includes best-of-breed headless digital experience tools such as CMS, commerce, front-end, marketing cloud, and CDN. By unlocking the value in these investments, businesses can rapidly scale to meet growing demand – and avoid some of the toils of replatforming everything.
Guiding the shift to composable is the rise of the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">MACH principles</a>: platforms that embrace Microservices, APIs, Cloud-Native SaaS and Headless capabilities (the "MACH" acronym). With Uniform, organizations can optimize the entire digital delivery workflow, allowing architects to choose best-of-breed MACH tools to deliver the right value at the right time. Developers can also build frontends using their preferred libraries and frameworks, while marketers can regain control over creating, launching, and iterating digital experiences.
"Meeting the increased digital demand from our customers, we needed to build a modern, composable approach to B2C commerce that allows us to choose best-of-breed tools for each step of digital delivery," said Tomas Krag, Hilding Anders Global CTO. "Only Uniform provided the orchestration to turn a collection of headless technologies into a composable digital experience platform. With [Uniform], our developers can choose the right tools for the job, and marketing can now focus on delivering the best personalized digital experiences to delight our customers."
<h2>About Uniform</h2>
Uniform is the world's first composable DXP, built for today's performance and scalability demands. A frictionless, pre-integrated composable digital experience platform gives companies the choice to continuously adopt traditional and headless best-of-breed technologies without ever replatforming, allowing businesses to deliver omnichannel orchestration with built-in high-performance testing and personalization – regardless of how their tech stacks evolve over time. Several top brands use Uniform to power their digital experiences, including Cirque du Soleil, Life Extension, Sunweb and Trimble. Visit <a href="https://c212.net/c/link/?t=0&amp;l=en&amp;o=3376641-1&amp;h=192194015&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fc212.net%2Fc%2Flink%2F%3Ft%3D0%26l%3Den%26o%3D3344227-1%26h%3D2537620590%26u%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Funiform.dev%252F%26a%3Duniform.dev&amp;a=uniform.dev" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">uniform.dev</a> for more.

Uniform Raises $28M in Series A Funding Round for Composable DXP

Image of Uniform logo against a dark blue background with cube graphics.

Just as we're recovering from a Thanksgiving turkey coma, the cloud is served with all the trimmings at the annual <a href="https://reinvent.awsevents.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AWS re:Invent</a> conference in Las Vegas.
If you haven't attended their annual "winter wonderland" of new services, it's an early Christmas delivery of new technologies from the reigning cloud leader. This includes everything from new AI and IoT services to satellite "<a href="https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ground station-as-a-service</a>" capabilities (which can presumably track Santa as he traverses the globe).
While much of the fare at re:Invent is the domain of developers and DevOps professionals, the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AWS Marketplace</a> has grown to include a much deeper bench of digital experience players – specifically in their new <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/campaigns/dcx/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">DCX (digital customer experience) category</a>. This collection of marketing and advertising technologies includes a stack of content, ad tech, CRM, customer 360, and other platform providers that fill a business app void that AWS has struggled to fill. Now, it seems that lump of coal is producing a few diamonds.
At re:Invent, content management and digital experience platforms aren't typically the focus of attention. But the first day featured an innovative new offering with just a handful of launch partners – and among them was <a href="https://www.solodev.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solodev</a>, an enterprise CMS and cloud app platform built for AWS. The company announced that customers can now procure <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-s7tpcn3m7fuf6?ref_=srh_res_product_title" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solodev CMS for Kubernetes</a> – its popular enterprise content management system – in the AWS Marketplace as part of Amazon's new "Containers Anywhere" program. 
According to Solodev, the new contract pricing provides customers with greater choice over their infrastructure options, allowing them to quickly and easily subscribe to Solodev’s CMS software and deploy in their own AWS account or in a pre-existing on-premises Kubernetes cluster. This helps reduce the cost and friction associated with purchasing a cloud-first enterprise content management system regardless of the infrastructure – whether it’s a Kubernetes cluster on AWS or a pre-existing infrastructure such as HP or VMware. 
By providing a more seamless buying experience in AWS Marketplace, Solodev now offers an easier way to add their CMS almost anywhere – giving marketing teams rich tools for building websites, apps, and API-driven solutions for running omnichannel content operations at enterprise scale.
<h2>Containers continue to drive digital transformation</h2>
As both commercial and public sector organizations invest in digital transformation, the cloud represents a significant opportunity for enhancing security, scalability, and redundancy while modernizing legacy systems. However, due to regulatory governance and other persistent requirements, some software must remain on-premises to meet compliance.
Containers have presented a new channel for making software more transportable to different environments, starting with local and moving to production in clusters. But developers and organizations need more – and with cloud providers like AWS, this has been a challenge with on-prem customers who want the ease of purchasing software in the AWS Marketplace while spinning up container images wherever they want.
Now, administrators can procure Solodev CMS for Kubernetes – a fully-containerized solution that customers can deploy to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Amazon EKS Anywhere, or any Kubernetes cluster – and manage their subscription through AWS Marketplace in the environment of their choice.
For a CMS player, Solodev has been pioneering a lot of innovation in both containers and serverless. Recently, the company <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/solodev-selected-as-cloud-consulting-partner-of-the-2022-special-olympics-usa-games/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced the deployment of a completely serverless infrastructure</a> built on AWS for the 2022 Special Olympics USA Games, which will power a fan engagement app that serves thousands of concurrent users next June. Solodev's container solution leverages <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/fargate/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Amazon Fargate</a> and other services to enable a stateless app to run on multiple containers without virtual instances – reducing the overall costs while enabling unprecedented scalability.
<h2>Managing software licenses in the cloud at scale</h2>
According to Solodev, the new contract pricing in the AWS Marketplace is facilitated by its Solodev License Manager for AWS. This is a new product that's powered by the <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/license-manager/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AWS License Manager</a> and helps customers gain control over their cloud app license management – which helps reduce costs and provide governance over usage.  
Solodev CMS for Kubernetes will also deliver more predictable monthly pricing. Users can procure either cloud or on-premises options per node, with contract pricing in four tiers: monthly, annual, 24-month, or 36-month terms. This marks a significant shift in AWS utilization pricing for container products, which have only been available in hourly or annual options. The new pricing model gives administrators greater visibility around their budgeting and planning, aligning with more traditional models for procuring enterprise software.
“The new contract pricing in AWS Marketplace makes self-service enterprise CMS a reality,” said Shawn Moore, Chief Technology Officer at Solodev. “Offering Solodev CMS in-cloud or on-prem puts the power back in the hands of our customers, giving them a CMS that works anywhere and is built on container technology that’s designed to scale. We’re excited to add this incredible service to our AWS Marketplace listings, where enterprise and public sector organizations can procure everything on their own terms and build amazing websites, applications, and digital experiences.”
<h2>From content to crypto</h2>
Solodev’s new product joins a host of options available in the AWS Marketplace, including their <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/seller-profile?id=8e11c912-6253-41b8-b065-bf32bd27911b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solodev CMS Lite, Professional, and Enterprise Editions</a>. All three are available with free trials and can be spun up in an AWS account in minutes via AWS Cloudformation. 
The evolution of Solodev as a pure CMS platform to a "cloud app ecosystem" has been more pronounced as of late. The company still appearsto be focused on supporting its core content management system and enabling users to build digital experiences with a <a href="https://www.magnolia-cms.com/blog/what-is-a-headless-cms.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">headless hybrid</a> set of features. However, the evolution continues with the launch of its new <a href="https://www.solodev.com/marketplace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Solodev Marketplace</a> in 2021 – an e-Commerce-like shopping experience that features a deep bench of cloud and digital marketing services that can be procured and connected in one place.
The new Solodev Marketplace also features <a href="https://www.solodev.com/news/solodev-now-offers-managed-blockchain-for-cardano-and-ethereum-for-building-high-utility-blockchain-and-crypto-apps-in-the-cloud.stml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">blockchain and crypto services for Cardano and Ethereum</a>, two new additions that appear to signal their push into utility-based apps for smart contracts and custom cryptocurrencies. 
Solodev's launch in the AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere was announced at AWS re:Invent, and represents the company’s continued innovation in both product development and cloud infrastructure. As an AWS Advanced Technology Partner, Solodev has previously announced launch partnerships at re:Invent for the AWS Marketplace for Containers, as well as the <a href="https://www.solodev.com/news/solodev-achieves-aws-public-safety-disaster-response-competency-status.stml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AWS Public Safety and Disaster Response Competency</a>.
For more details, <a href="mailto:matt@solodev.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">contact Solodev today</a>.  
<h2>About Solodev</h2>
Solodev is an enterprise CMS and digital ecosystem for building custom cloud apps, from content to crypto. With Solodev, developers and organizations can launch amazing customer experiences, power omnichannel strategies, build and deploy blockchain apps, and collaborate on digital transformation. Solodev also provides DevOps, training, managed services, and 24/7 human support to help users succeed on their cloud journey. Solodev products – including CMS, Kubernetes, and Personalize – can be purchased on-demand in AWS Marketplace, through State and Federal contract vehicles, or online at <a href="http://www.solodev.com">www.solodev.com</a>

Solodev CMS for Kubernetes Now Available with Contract Pricing in AWS Marketplace for Containers Anywhere

Image of AWS reinvent logo and Solodev logo against a black background

commercetools, a leading headless e-Commerce platform, recently announced the acquisition of Frontastic, a composable frontend platform. 
The purchase comes just a few months after commercetools announced a $140 million <a href="https://commercetools.com/press-releases/commercetools-secures-140m-series-c-funding-round-to-accelerate-global-growth" target="_blank">Series C funding round</a> – a plump investment, to be sure, and one that the company hopes will broaden the reach of its game-changing commerce technology for creating differentiated user experiences.
It's worth noting that commercetools was one of the earlier headless commerce platforms on the scene, helping to shape the modern standards for headless commerce. Their decoupled environment now enables a multitude of commerce capabilities across an ever-growing network of channels and endpoints. Like other platforms in the composable field, commercetools also embraces the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH principles</a> – providing a truly open, modular environment that enables businesses to quickly embrace innovation and respond to change.  
"We've been partnering with the Frontastic team since the very beginning and see a huge market opportunity for their Composable Frontend Platform around the world," said Dirk Hoerig, CEO, and Co-Founder of commercetools. "With this powerful combination, we're bringing the MACH (Microservices, API, Cloud, and Headless) movement to the mid-market as well as to digital business teams so that more companies can benefit from modern commerce experiences."
commercetools has enjoyed a strong presence in Europe and North America, but their global aspirations are clear. Their expansion will undoubtedly be bolstered by their "Leader" position on <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/4005295/magic-quadrant-for-digital-commerce" target="_blank">Gartner's 2021 Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce</a> – making this their second consecutive year in this coveted segment. 
<img style="max-width:487px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-commerce-2021-quadrant-graphic.png" alt="Gartner Magic Quadrant for digital commerce 2021 Quadrant" />
In a previous article, we featured commercetools as one of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">our Top Headless Commerce Platforms</a>, so be sure to check that out.
<h3>What is Frontastic?</h3>
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/frontastic-header.png" alt="frontastic workflow" />
Based in Germany, Frontastic is a composable frontend platform for API-First e-Commerce and headless CMSes. It enables brands to build websites quickly and easily with headless capabilities by removing the complexity for developers – and giving business teams autonomy and flexibility. 
Frontastic combines four tools:
<ol>
<li>An API hub that includes standard integrations for commerce, content, search, and connectivity to any API.</li>
<li>Developer tooling that includes a CLI to manage components with a built-in workflow to go from development to testing to production.</li>
<li>Frontastic Studio, an easy-to-use interface that enables teams to manage pages, components, navigation, and layouts.</li>
<li>Frontend delivery via a Progressive Web App (PWA) – which provides great performance and an app-like user experience – and server-side rendering that ensures fast delivery and SEO-friendly pages.</li>
</ol>
While their combined capabilities have yet to be fully explored, the existing partnership between commercetools and Frontastic will likely enable a more efficient time to integration.
"We're excited to become part of the impressive commercetools growth story," said Thomas Gottheil, CEO, and Co-Founder at Frontastic. "We created Frontastic to help enterprises build the best shopping experiences – regardless of which commerce platform they use. By joining forces with commercetools, we can support even more brands on a global scale."
<h2>The impact of headless commerce and MACH architecture</h2>
As companies accelerated their digital transformation strategies throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the retail industry – hit hard by the shutdown of brick-and-mortar storefronts – drove the leap to digital commerce. To be sure, many organizations already had an integrated strategy for selling in both physical and online stores. However, in the throes of the pandemic, those online stores became their only channel, and they invested heavily in e-Commerce solutions that could amplify their capabilities and be quickly deployed.
You've probably heard the buzz around MACH and the evolution of composable architectures. If not, let's start with the basics: MACH is an acronym for Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. While the MACH architecture is a relatively new concept, it's quickly gaining popularity due to its modular nature – allowing businesses to compose the best tools to meet their exact business requirements and scale their experiences rapidly. 
The <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">headless</a> approach has moved from niche to normal. While the "<a href="https://www.akana.com/blog/composable-architecture" target="_blank">composable architecture</a>" concept is much newer, it's also becoming more popular as digital transformation enters its next wave. And it makes sense: leading up to Covid, digital stacks were already becoming decoupled and less monolithic, all driven by the rise of the <a href="https://www.openapis.org/" target="_blank">open API</a>. Much of this investment in a composable enterprise is driven by the rise in composable commerce and its impact on the application landscape. 
Gartner predicts that by 2023, organizations that embrace composability will <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3986490/composable-commerce-must-be-adopted-for-the-future-of-ap" target="_blank">outpace the competition by 80%</a> in implementing new product features.
commercetools, which made the exclusive 2021 list of privately held "unicorn companies" worth over $1 billion, has experienced accelerated growth over the past year, with recent customer wins that include Alcon, Debenhams, Direct Wines, Express, LEGO, L.L. Bean, Screwfix, Volkswagen, and Zenni Optical. With the addition of the Frontastic composable frontend technology to the company's product portfolio, commercetools is building a broader set of commerce technology services to support global enterprises – and ultimately reinvent e-Commerce.
<h2>About Frontastic</h2>
Founded in 2017, Frontastic is a composable frontend platform that unites business and development teams to build amazing commerce sites on headless – fast. It connects to any API to unify tech landscapes and provides the necessary tools so commerce teams can focus on innovating new features. Within a short time, the company has successfully established itself as the new standard for commerce frontends, with its customers seeing up to 50% higher conversion rates and up to 50% faster time to market.
Find out more about Frontastic on <a href="http://www.frontastic.cloud/" target="_blank">www.frontastic.cloud</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/frontasticGmbH" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/company/frontastic-gmbh/" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.

commercetools Acquires Frontastic, Adds Composable Frontend Capabilities to Headless Commerce

Composite image of the commercetools and frontastic logos on a blended background

Power your CMS on AWS

Manage your websites & apps in the most trusted cloud.

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Kentico has been helping to shape the CMS landscape for almost two decades. A timeline on their website suggests that the company was born prior to 2004, out of the senior thesis of Petr Palas – Kentico's founder and CEO. It even spins lore about this hallowed thesis living on a floppy disc somewhere, presumably in an underground vault, where it acts as the company's "lucky charm."
A lot has happened in CMS since Kentico became a market-leading solution, but they've always managed to forge their own path through innovation. Most recently, a big part of that innovation has been focused on their <a href="https://kontent.ai/" target="_blank">Kontent by Kentico</a> enterprise headless solution. 
To that end, the company has just unveiled some new and notable functionality in the Kontent platform, including advanced asset management, central oversight of users, and other updates that significantly improve the way content operations are managed and governed. Kentico shared these new features – as well as a number of industry insights and best practices for content professionals – at <a href="https://horizons.kontent.ai/?utm_source=pr&amp;utm_medium=link&amp;utm_campaign=pr-november-2021&amp;_ampl=9f080f5c-6c7f-4ee7-8f19-93b7f5b84159R&amp;_ga=1547659104.1636408894" target="_blank">Kontent Horizons</a>, a free virtual event that took place last week.
This past September, Kontent also became the first and only certified enterprise <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/" target="_blank">headless CMS</a> available for purchase through Microsoft Azure Marketplace and AppSource for customers with the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC). 
With these investments in the growth of their Kontent platform, it's clear that Kentico has doubled down on providing large-scale headless content operations for enterprises. 
<h2>Focusing on headless at the enterprise level</h2>
Content is at the core of every digital experience, and the headless model is enabling an omnichannel approach to scaling content to almost any endpoint. That said, when large volumes of content are being delivered through many channels, managing that content can quickly become a nightmare. This is especially true at the enterprise level.
Supporting large-scale content operations continues to be a key focus for the Kontent team. With the recent news about their Microsoft Azure affiliation, Kentico is enabling customers to make use of the Azure Marketplace for easy and secure discovery, implementation, and management of Kontent as an integral solution in their enterprise-grade microservices architecture. 
“We’re delighted to work with Microsoft as the only headless CMS on Azure Marketplace," said Martin Michalik, VP of Product at Kontent by Kentico. "It’s great that we can provide customers a way to get the most business value out of their consumption commitments.”
<h2>Enhancing scalability</h2>
As more businesses look to transform their content delivery through the headless model, Kontent by Kentico is experiencing exponential growth. In 2021 alone, global giants like Algolia, Wolf Oil Corporation, and Zurich Insurance joined Kontent’s enterprise customer base. 
“As our customers continue to evolve their digital strategy, how to scale up efficiently is still a top-of-mind concern," said Monica Raszyk, Director of Product Marketing at Kontent by Kentico. "More users, assets, and content can certainly be seen as an opportunity – if managed well. That’s why these past few months, we worked closely with our customer base to specifically address their complexities of scale. With the recent platform updates, content teams can now more easily organize and manage assets using taxonomies, keep workspaces secure with complete oversight of users, or quickly review complex content items. 
To further support their content community and make the world of headless content management more accessible, Kentico hosted their second annual <a href="https://horizons.kontent.ai/?utm_source=pr&amp;utm_medium=link&amp;utm_campaign=pr-november-2021&amp;_ampl=9f080f5c-6c7f-4ee7-8f19-93b7f5b84159R&amp;_ga=1547659104.1636408894" target="_blank">Kontent Horizons</a> event earlier this month. This year’s free virtual conference was designed for a growing global audience of content professionals and web development experts – and featured a wide range of topics, including omnichannel content, user experience, website architecture, and more. 
With over 1,000 attendees, the three-day event was focused on helping teams strategize around the challenges of 2022, with insightful sessions led by industry experts such as Colleen Jones, President at Content Science, Jason Lengstorf, VP Developer Experience at Netlify, and Nick Barber, Senior Analyst at Forrester. 
<h2>New Kontent features</h2>
As mentioned, Kentico unveiled a number of new features in Kontent, including a <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kentico-kontents-new-user-interface-streamlines-enterprise-content-operations/" target="_blank">new user interface</a> to help enterprise teams execute their content operations faster. 
One of the other noteworthy upgrades is the <a href="https://kontent.ai/specials/collections?menu=true" target="_blank">Collections</a> feature, which lets enterprises manage all their content in a single repository. This allows the content to be shared across teams and channels without losing any control. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/04/kentico-new-ui.png" alt="Kentico Kontent's new user interface" />
<h2>What's next for Kontent</h2>
Some of the biggest challenges that enterprises face are the sheer scale of content and the number of users spread across an organization. Headless has helped to expand the omnichannel capabilities, but there are still significant headwinds, particularly around previewing content destined for different endpoints. 
Continuing to invest their focus on enterprise content management, the Kentico Kontent team aims to deliver even more improvements in the areas of content operations, advanced asset management, and custom multiple workflows. It's clear that they have a strong commitment to innovation, and we can expect more on the horizon when it comes to enhancing the headless experience. 
“Using the Kontent platform, companies around the world can unlock the full potential of their content and not only meet but exceed their customers’ expectations, which gives them a competitive edge in today’s digital world,” said Bart Omlo, Kontent’s Managing Director.
We'll be watching as they continue to evolve their own "Kontent operations."
<div>
<h2>About Kontent by Kentico</h2>
</div>
<div>Kontent by Kentico is the world’s leading cloud-based headless CMS platform. Robust APIs, webhooks, and flexible content models give developers full control over the structure of their content and how it’s delivered to their websites and applications. The APIs deliver clean, structured content that can be pulled into any experience and technology stack. On top of this headless foundation, Kontent includes an intuitive authoring experience that lets marketers focus on content creation, allowing developers to focus on building engaging online experiences that look great in every channel. Kontent’s customers include AC Milan, Oxford University, Konica Minolta, REWE Group, and Vogue. </div>

Kontent by Kentico Aims to Take Enterprise Headless CMS to a New Level

Kontent by Kentico featured image of schema, a workflow diagram with small icons

Ah, the API. It's not just another fancy TLA (three-lettered acronym) reserved for "MarTalk."
In fact, it's fair to say that the API – <a href="https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/api/what-is-an-api#:~:text=API%20is%20the%20acronym%20for,you're%20using%20an%20API." target="_blank">Application Programming Interface</a> for the unindoctrinated – is responsible for transforming the CMS and DXP industries. Without APIs, the integrations and connections that live at the heart of modern systems wouldn't exist.
Where would brands like AWS, Stripe, Twilio, and other market-leading technology platforms be without their mountains of <a href="https://nordicapis.com/crud-vs-rest-whats-the-difference/" target="_blank">APIs calling CRUD or REST</a> functions to trigger events?
The importance of APIs cannot be overstated, nor their profound effect on businesses and organizations. Case in point: the world's biggest SaaS (Software as a Service) companies have all become "<a href="https://swagger.io/resources/articles/adopting-an-api-first-approach/#:~:text=An%20API%2Dfirst%20approach%20means,be%20consumed%20by%20client%20applications." target="_blank">API-first</a>" in their architectural practices – where APIs are treated as "first-class citizens" and central their future growth and scalability.
It's worth noting that when we say API, we're referring to web APIs, which are designed to facilitate communication between computers that are connected by the internet. But the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API" target="_blank">acronym itself has much deeper roots</a>: the concept originated in the 1940s, but the terminology caught on in the 1960s and 70s as diverse software systems began to emerge and APIs were purpose-built for specific integrations. This included programming languages, software libraries, operating systems, and even hardware.
Fast forward a few decades, and APIs were suddenly everywhere. So abundant, it seemed, that the mantle of the "<a href="https://www.akana.com/blog/api-economy" target="_blank">The API Economy</a>" became a popular meme.
Around 2014, <a href="https://www.mulesoft.com/webinars/api/welcome-api-economy" target="_blank">Gartner predicted</a> that 75% of Fortune 500 enterprises would open an API, ushering in a sort of Golden Age of this newly-minted API Economy. Add a pandemic in 2020 – and a hyper-accelerated rush to digital transformation – and it's rare to find any large organization that isn't leveraging a multitude of APIs.
And why not? There are so many advantages to using APIs. Once again, according to <a href="http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/welcome-to-the-api-economy/" target="_blank">Gartner</a>, APIs make it easier to integrate and connect people, places, systems, data, and algorithms – as well as create new user experiences, share data and information, authenticate people and things, enable transactions and algorithms, leverage third-party algorithms, and build new products, services and business models. 
For these reasons (and there are plenty more), <a href="https://www.postman.com/" target="_blank">Postman</a> – a leading application platform for API testing – embarked on a quest several years ago to gauge the sentiment of API users and builders. Their annual "State of API" report has become a defacto standard for observing and documenting the behavioral changes in this dynamic sector, and we've broken down some of the key findings in their 2021 edition.
<h2>The pandemic's impact and the reliance on APIs to respond with digital transformation</h2>
For this year's report, Postman surveyed more than 28,000 developers and API professionals who shared their thoughts on various topics, including their organizations' development priorities, how they get their work done, and where they see the industry going. They combined this data with data observed on their Postman API Platform to build a robust picture of the current state – and future – of APIs.
Right off the bat, this year's report focuses on the persistent impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the research, almost two-thirds of respondents stated that the pandemic somewhat or significantly affected their work – and almost half of those noted their organization's changes were supported by APIs. Many respondents said they had to quickly modernize their digital experiences and business systems to serve their customers, while others said they had to pivot their business entirely. 
Common areas of investment included e-commerce, customer support via chat and text, and contactless digital systems – all of which relied heavily on APIs. Thanks to the flexibility of many API solutions, organizations were able to successfully implement changes in weeks or months that would have otherwise taken years.
Here are some of the other key findings in the report: 
<ul>
<li>The API ecosystem is growing: The reliance on APIs to support business and product shifts during the pandemic was reflected through the Postman API Platform, with some significant gains across their key performance metrics. </li>
<li>Developers are spending more time with APIs: 49% of respondents said that more than half of their organizations' development effort is spent on APIs (compared to just over 40% last year), showing the prevalence of APIs in digital organizations' technology stacks.</li>
<li>API investments remain strong and steady as more companies embrace the API-first philosophy: An overwhelming 94% of respondents stated the investment of time and resources into APIs would increase or stay the same for the next 12 months.</li>
<li>The investments in an API-first philosophy are paying off: "API-first leaders" (i.e., respondents who rank themselves a 9 or 10 for embracing an API-first philosophy) produce APIs more quickly, deploy more frequently, have fewer failures, and recover more swiftly when failures occur. For example, 46% of API-first leaders indicated they could recover from API failure in less than an hour, compared to 34% of all respondents.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Tracking the global growth of APIs</h2>
Since the 2020 "State of the API" report was released, the Postman API Platform saw significant upsurges that indicate trends across the API ecosystem. Over the past 12 months, Postman users made 855 million API requests (up 56% from the prior year), created 30 million collections (up 39%), and signed in from 234 different countries and geographies—including Antarctica.
<img style="max-width:792px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/yea-over-year-requests-created.jpg" alt="year over year requests created" />
The global growth of APIs is driving an ever-evolving <a href="https://www.postman.com/state-of-api/tooling-for-apis-and-development/#tooling-for-apis-and-development" target="_blank">landscape of tooling for APIs and development</a> in the API Platforms category. Postman observed that many vendors in this market serve a broad range of needs across the API lifecycle, from design to testing to security. 
Additionally, they see vendors offering repositories for source code, API gateways, application performance monitoring, and CI/CD – all of which should integrate with API platforms to achieve optimal results from API initiatives within an organization.
Here is their view of the landscape today:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/postman-api-platform-landscape-e1636134691803.png" alt="postman api platform landscape" />
<h2>Which industries are using APIs the most?</h2>
It's no surprise that the tech sector is leading the way in API adoption and usage. But business, banking/finance, insurance, and healthcare sectors are following closely.
Further, API adoption is on the rise in nearly every industry. On the business side, there's been a growing trend in e-commerce businesses going headless, separating the frontend "head" from the backend "body." Tapping the omnichannel is at the core of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">headless commerce</a>, and content in a headless platform is delivered through APIs – allowing it to be displayed across different devices and endpoints. 
The banking/finance sector can be one of the slowest industries to adopt new technologies (core banking systems are notorious for outliving their sunset dates), but APIs have been shifting the topology, making it less cumbersome to embrace change. With more than <a href="https://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/online-mobile-banking/" target="_blank">62% of Americans</a> using digital services over physical bank branches, APIs are making it easier for financial systems to securely meet the needs of consumers while optimizing and streamlining internal processes.
Traditional banks are also <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/amiyatoshpurnanandam/2021/07/21/will-banks-survive-fintechs-challenge/?sh=35ac9e4a3165" target="_blank">facing fierce competition from fintech</a>. While traditional banks offer many services, smaller financial technologies tend to specialize in specific services, disrupting the monolithic banking industry. Investment trends favor small fintech startups working on more accessible, customer-centric processes that are much less expensive than traditional banks – and are built on APIs. 
The emergence of blockchain and cryptocurrencies are also challenging the status quo. Both traditional and fintech companies should continue to embrace APIs as a bridge for connecting these emerging technology areas. 
<img style="max-width:840x" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/who-works-with-apis.jpg" alt="industries that work with APIs the most chart" />
<h2>What it means to be API-first in a new digital era</h2>
What's abundantly clear from Postman's research is that many teams and organizations are fully embracing the "API-first" philosophy. 
In fact, on a scale of 1 to 10 for embracing an API-first strategy, 66% of this year's respondents ranked themselves as a "5 or higher." This is up from 62% in 2020. 
On that same scale, 8% of respondents ranked themselves as a "9 or 10." Postman refers to these respondents as the market's "API-first leaders." 
Understanding the philosophy of being API-first requires some deeper insight into user behaviors. According to <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/insights/the-future-of-digital-experience-platforms-na">research conducted by Forrester Wave</a>, mobile will still be the key orchestrator for a user's journey – and one that's non-linear. 
To help us understand the user journey with greater intimacy, Forrester created a diagram for the 3D-connected consumer that features devices, platforms, and channels:
<img style="max-width:830px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/3d-connected-consumer.png" alt="The 3D connected consumer" />
Here's where the API-first approach comes into play – where brands can be channel-agnostic as consumers use a combination of devices, platforms, and channels. 
Development Priorities
Postman asked respondents to identify the top priorities for their development teams and organizations, and there was a clear winner: quality, coming in at 80%. 
Agility, reliability, security, and development speed were also important to more than half of the respondents. "API-first leaders" were even more likely to cite quality, reliability, agility, and security as priorities.
<img style="max-width:753px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/development-priorities.jpg" alt="development priorities chart" />
<h2>API technologies</h2>
As far as architectural styles for APIs are concerned, a sweeping majority of respondents (94%) use REST; of those, nearly half said that that they not only use REST, but that they "use it and love it." 
The majority of participants are conscious of webhooks, WebSockets, GraphQL, and SOAP, but none of these have seen the same level of adoption as REST among the participants.
<img style="max-width:717px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/architectural-style.jpg" alt="architectural style" />
Specifications
Postman also asked professionals which API specifications they know, use, and prefer – and JSON Schema was by far the top specification in use cited by three-quarters of respondents. Swagger 2.0 (54%) and OpenAPI 3.0 (40%) were the next most popular specifications.
Future Technologies
Postman asked the question, "What technologies are you most excited about using over the next year?" Microservices (58%) and Kubernetes (50%) led the answers, just as they did in 2020. 
Rounding out the top five are containers (46%), serverless architecture (44%), and GraphQL (35%).
<img style="max-width:756px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/future-technologies.jpg" alt="future API technologies chart" />
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
There's a lot to unpack in Postman's 2021 "State of the API" report, and it's worth your time to dive in head-first. Kudos to their content team for making the research easy to digest and incredibly applicable and relevant. 
The big takeaway is astoundingly clear: the pandemic continues to change everything, and the world is responding with APIs. To reiterate, two-thirds of respondents stated that the pandemic somewhat or significantly affected their work – and for many organizations, they played a key role in keeping the businesses operating. 
As a recap, here are a few highlights from the report where APIs were the undisputed "heroes" of the digital stack:
<ul>
<li>Organizations adopted new channels or enhanced existing channels to reach and serve customers in a pandemic world, leveraging APIs to make it all happen.</li>
<li>Respondents told Postman that common areas of investment included e-commerce, customer support via chat and text, and contactless digital systems – all of which relied on APIs.</li>
<li>Many respondents had to adjust to major shifts in market demand, with some businesses completely pivoting their product offerings. For many, product rollouts relied on APIs, and organizations achieved what would typically take years in a matter of weeks or months. Some businesses were even born in the pandemic to meet new needs.</li>
<li>Working from home presented new challenges for many organizations. APIs and integrations with internal systems helped solve these challenges by automating or enabling tasks that used to happen in person – such as communication, attendance, reporting, and project management.</li>
<li>Some of the most frequently cited innovations came from healthcare, with many organizations needing to digitize and automate workflows and run telemedicine strategies. In both cases, APIs were essential to powering these solutions. </li>
</ul>
No one has a crystal ball, but Postman's data and insights around APIs are proving incredibly useful when it comes to forecasting the future. Based on what we've seen in 2021, it's safe to say that APIs continue to deliver – come rain, or sleet, or snow... or pandemics. 
If you'd like to read Postman's full report, you can <a href="https://www.postman.com/state-of-api/" target="_blank">download it here</a>.

Postman Releases 2021 "State of the API" Report, Shows Global Trend Towards API-First Digital Era

Postman featured image of an illustration of space astronauts measuring website API performance on top of a graph.

It's hard to believe that October has already come and gone.Maybe we can blame Halloween and the ensuing candy coma, but last month seemed surprisingly quiet in the CMS and DXP news cycle.But that's not entirely true: rather than tracking big mergers or major releases, we were served a number of small yet significant improvements from various vendors – more like those mini-sized candy bars that still get the job done.For the record, we're big fans of Almond Joy.The e-commerce sector drove most of the trends in an otherwise not-so-spooky month, with several companies releasing more integrations designed to make online selling easier and more accessible. We're also seeing headless commerce take center stage as more brands look to grow their online sales in an omnichannel world, and it's growing in popularity every day. If you're evaluating solutions, be sure to check out our recent article on the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/">top headless commerce platforms.</a>If you're ready to close out October's tricks and treats, keep reading.<h2>Postman's 2021 "State of API" report shows the world is moving towards an API-first digital era</h2><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/postman-report.jpg" alt="Postman chart image" />Forget Halloween. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.postman.com/">Postman</a>, a leading platform for building and using APIs, delivered an early Christmas gift with this year's free "State of the API" report. This baby is chock full of data and statistics about API trends across industries and has become a primer for understanding how API-first strategies are transforming everything. For the report, Postman surveyed more than 28,000 developers and API professionals who shared their thoughts on a range of topics, including their organizations' development priorities, how they get their work done, and where they see the industry going. Postman's authors combined these insights with data observed on the Postman API Platform to build a more complete picture of the current state – and the future direction – of APIs.Here are some of the key findings from the report:<ul><li>The pandemic changed the world, and the world responded with APIs: Just a short of two-thirds of respondents stated that the pandemic somewhat or significantly affected their work.</li><li>The API ecosystem is global and growing: Over the past 12 months, Postman users signed in from an impressive 234 different countries and geographies while making 855 million API requests (up 56% from the prior year).</li><li>Developers are spending more time with APIs: Exactly how much time is spent working with APIs? 49% of respondents said that more than half of the organization's development effort is spent on APIs – compared to just over 40% last year.</li><li>More companies are embracing the API-first philosophy: This year, 67% of survey respondents ranked themselves as a five or higher in terms of embracing an API-first philosophy, while only 62% ranked themselves in this way in 2020.</li></ul>Want more? Of course, you do! Let your own API consume the free 57-page report here.<h2>Mailchimp and Shopify launch direct integration</h2> <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/mailchimp-shopify-e1635869888639.jpg" alt="MailChimp and Shopify logos" />Monkey see, monkey shop? Yup. And it's now easier than ever. Mailchimp, a leading email and marketing automation platform, <a target="_blank" href="https://mailchimp.com/mailchimp-and-shopify-launch-direct-integration/">announced</a> that they've partnered with Shopify – a leader in e-commerce – to deliver a new integration that's available today. New and existing users of both platforms will be able to connect their Mailchimp account to their Shopify storefront through <a target="_blank" href="https://mailchimp.com/integrations/shopify/">direct integration</a>, eliminating the need for third-party tools and manual data transfers.By connecting Mailchimp and Shopify, merchants will be able to combine the power of purchase data with marketing data and use those insights to help drive conversions, increase revenue, and reach more customers at the right point in their buying journey. The new integration also makes it possible for small business customers to connect with their audiences. This integration is of critical importance right now as retailers gear up for the 2021 holiday season. According to U.S. News &amp; World Report, this year's online holiday spending is <a target="_blank" href="https://www.usnews.com/news/economy/articles/2021-10-20/adobe-forecasts-record-online-holiday-spending-season-as-supply-chain-issues-persist#:~:text=Global%20online%20spending%20is%20likewise,new%20milestone%20in%20e%2Dcommerce.">predicted to increase by 11%</a>. By connecting MailChimp and Shopify, brands and retailers can accelerate their marketing and e-commerce capabilities and capitalize on more online transactions than ever before. "Last year, Mailchimp customers generated 36 percent more orders from Thanksgiving to Giving Tuesday than they did in 2019, showing just how important having an online presence for commerce and retail businesses really is," said Joni Deus, VP of App Marketplace at Mailchimp. "We're thrilled to have partnered with Shopify again ahead of our customers' busiest season to make it easier for merchants to reach their customers, sell more stuff, and be successful.""As our merchants prepare for the holiday season and continue to adjust to the new realities of commerce, we're excited to welcome Mailchimp to the Shopify Partner Ecosystem," said Fatima Yusuf, Director of Commercial, App Ecosystem, Shopify. "The combined power of Mailchimp's suite of marketing tools and Shopify's robust commerce infrastructure will level the playing field and unlock even more opportunity for independent businesses to grow and succeed into the future."<h2>Adobe adds Workfront integrations to creative and marketing apps</h2> <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/adobe-workfront-featured-image.jpeg" />Talk about "working it out."Adobe has finally announced some new capabilities in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.workfront.com/integrations/adobe/experience-manager">Adobe Workfront</a>, targeting one of the most challenging aspects of delivering personalized content at both speed and scale: dynamic collaboration, communication, and workflows within creative teams and between creative and marketing teams.Of course, this has been a long-anticipated evolution. Last year, the creative experience powerhouse <a target="_blank" href="https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2020/Adobe-to-Acquire-Workfront/default.aspx">acquired Workfront</a> – a leading work management platform for marketers – for $1.50 billion. The goal was to integrate Workfront's capabilities into Adobe's Experience Cloud and allow customers to manage complex marketing workflows. Finally, that integration has begun to bear fruit. The new capabilities in Workfront integrate seamlessly with Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Experience Manager, and Adobe XD. As an example, the Photoshop plugin gives users the ability to work together through an embedded Workfront update screen. Creators can see tasks and issues and post and view comments related to their projects. They can also log time, export assets, and seamlessly collaborate on digital proofing, reviews, and approvals — all without ever leaving <a target="_blank" href="https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html">Photoshop</a>. The integration with Adobe Experience Manager provides integrated approvals and content delivery for enterprises. You can sync metadata between projects and final assets – and keep the work flowing with advanced enterprise workflows, including auto-publishing of assets. This integration is currently available for enterprise customers.There's also an update to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.adobe.com/products/xd.html">Adobe XD</a> plugin, empowering designers to work with internal/external stakeholders, log time, and view details on all projects, tasks, issues, and documents. They have full access to all Workfront folders and documents, can upload work, send shared links for review, attach proof workflows to assets and maintain version control. This plugin is available now on both the Adobe Marketplace and Creative Cloud Desktop.Adobe also announced additional capabilities to enhance experience delivery to B2B brands and make accessing Workfront features easier for all Adobe customers. This includes the Adobe Marketo Engage Connector for scaling customer engagement and supporting global efforts with a small team – and the Adobe Identity Service for authentication and validation of the end-users, including federation and Single-Sign-On (SSO)."The ability to align complex workflows, processes and the foundational work — especially those handoffs between marketing strategy and content development — is critical in enabling teams to get personalized content to customers faster, with greater impact, and aligned to company strategy," said Liz Miller, Vice President, and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. "Adobe Workfront brings order to the nimble, bidirectional madness of marketing work, serving as the 'effectiveness engine' for the modern marketing machine so critical to moving digital business forward."<h2>BigCommerce launches Ads and Listings on Google, giving merchants a one-stop-shop to list and sync products for free</h2> <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/11/bigcommerce-google-ads-e1635877084866.png" />Love it or list it... on Google. There's no question that Google is drifting deeper into the e-commerce ecosystem, providing a direct path "from search to sell" for a wide range of services. A lot of this has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the consumer shift to online purchases and deliveries. In fact, if you've searched for, say, a new pizza place near you, Google is serving up more than options – it's allowing you to view a menu and place an order without ever leaving Google.Sure, this presents some competitive challenges to e-commerce platform providers, but Google is a ways off from consuming all storefronts. In the meantime, they present a dynamic channel for sellers and retailers to reach audiences at the point of search.To that end, BigCommerce, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/">popular cloud e-commerce platform</a> for fast-growing and established brands, just announced the launch of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/dm/google-native/?utm_source=Press%20Release&amp;utm_medium=Landing%20Page&amp;utm_id=Google%20Ads%20Listings">Ads and Listings on Google</a> – a new native app that enables small to medium-sized BigCommerce merchants in the U.S. to connect their store to the Google Merchant Center and add products for free. Merchants can also take advantage of Google Ads campaigns to reach more customers and uncover performance insights and trends, ensuring a consistent brand experience.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/dm/google-native/?utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_source=partner_google&amp;utm_campaign=keyword_launch_post">With this new integration</a>, BigCommerce merchants of all sizes will be able to easily list their products for free on Google, create ad campaigns, and review performance metrics directly in their BigCommerce store. This also means BigCommerce merchants can now integrate with Google's shopping features across Search, Shopping, Image Search, and YouTube."Ads and Listings on Google is a logical next step for our omnichannel merchants to reach further and attract new customers who rely on Google's powerful shopping capabilities to drive traffic and growth," said Sharon Gee, Vice President and General Manager of Omnichannel at BigCommerce. "As more retailers enter the e-commerce landscape, the more crowded it will be for them to reach the right shoppers across the channels they're searching in. Ads and Listings on Google give merchants a true advantage to get discovered without ever having to leave their BigCommerce store."Merchants can directly access the Ads and Listings on the Google app via the BigCommerce Channel Manager, creating a one-stop-shop experience to upload products, produce paid ad campaigns, and generate reports to track and monitor shopper activities. Key benefits include:<ul><li>Manage product catalogs from a single location: Merchants can upload product listings, create paid campaigns and track and analyze performance all from within their BigCommerce store. Any changes will automatically sync to Google, ensuring a consistent brand experience across all Google channels.</li><li>Reach new audiences and drive traffic: Merchants can connect with the right shoppers at the right moment when they're searching for products across Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and the web to extend customer reach further.</li><li>Gain more insight: In Google's Merchant Center, merchants can measure the impact of every sale and show products to the most valuable customers to better maximize marketing efforts.</li></ul>The Ads and Listings on the Google app are now available to all small to mid-sized BigCommerce merchants and currently support USD currency with international currencies soon to follow. Learn more about the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/dm/google-native/?utm_source=Press%20Release&amp;utm_medium=Landing%20Page&amp;utm_id=Google%20Ads%20Listings">Ads and Listings on the Google app here</a>.

CMS Monthly Recap: Mailchimp and Shopify Launch Direct Integration, BigCommerce Launches Ads and Listings on Google, and More

Featured image of CMS Critic Monthly Recap logo with background of Halloween decorations and jack-o-lantern

"Composable" is becoming the operative word across the DXP marketplace. And rightly so: a composable platform has huge benefits, enabling users to build dynamic web and app experiences more efficiently by reusing content and other components that can be personalized at scale. 
Composable systems also allow for more iterative testing across multiple variants, enabling marketers to optimize performance and gather critical insights faster than ever. We've seen a number of platforms embrace this "composable revolution" over the last few years, and it seems to be paying off. 
Now, Acquia – a leading DXP – on Gartner's Magic quadrant – has announced major updates to its <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/digital-experience-platform" target="_blank">Acquia Open Digital Experience Platform</a> (DXP) that aim to accelerate the development and optimization of composable digital experiences. According to the company, these innovative new features will weave together the workflows of once-siloed digital marketing and development teams in a single platform, making composable strategies more extensible. 
<h2>Expanding the composable value with Acquia Open DXP</h2>
The Acquia Open DXP is an umbrella brand that comprises both the <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud" target="_blank">Acquia Marketing Cloud</a> and <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/drupal-cloud" target="_blank">Acquia Drupal Cloud,</a> integrating their combined capabilities – including AgilOne, Mautic, and Cohesion – with its existing core. 
This pairing was designed to bring marketers and developers together in a comprehensive, easy-to-use platform powered by machine learning features in both Drupal Cloud and Marketing Cloud – making it faster and easier to launch new websites, applications, and marketing campaigns with modular components.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/acquia-dxp.png" alt="Acquia Drupal and Marketing Cloud Diagram" />
Acquia started making its move to composable enterprise back in July by <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-introduces-composable-enterprise-features-in-latest-version-of-dxp/" target="_blank">introducing composable features</a> in its last version of its DXP.
"The movement toward the composable enterprise is growing as organizations look to gain agility with plug-and-play services, and velocity with simpler application development and delivery," said Dries Buytaert, creator of Drupal and co-founder and CTO of Acquia. "Executing on this strategy requires a new technical architecture and way for teams to work. Acquia is connecting and automating organizational workflows, spanning content and data, to speed development of digital experiences at scale." 
<h2>What is a composable enterprise?</h2>
The concept of a "<a href="https://www.akana.com/blog/composable-architecture" target="_blank">composable enterprise</a>" is becoming more popular as digital transformation enters its next wave. And it makes sense: leading up to Covid, digital stacks were already becoming decoupled and less monolithic, all driven by the rise of the <a href="https://www.openapis.org/" target="_blank">open API</a>. Much of this investment in a composable enterprise is driven by the rise in composable commerce and its impact on the application landscape. 
Gartner defines a composable enterprise as:
An organization that delivers business outcomes and adapts to the pace of business change. It does this through the assembly and combination of packaged business capabilities (PBCs). PBCs are application building blocks that have been purchased or developed.
Gartner also predicts that by 2023, organizations that embrace composability will <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3986490/composable-commerce-must-be-adopted-for-the-future-of-ap" target="_blank">outpace the competition by 80%</a> in implementing new product features. This underscores the rapid adoption we're seeing across the market for more composable architectures and frameworks – something the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a> has been focusing on from an industry perspective. MACH is an acronym for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless, which crystallizes the core tenants of the modern composable enterprise. 
<h2>What else is new in the Aquia DXP Cloud?</h2>
<h4>Drupal Cloud upgrades accelerate digital experience development </h4>
Updates to the Drupal Cloud developer experience streamline and connect workflows to empower fusion teams with no-code/low-code solutions that span DevOps, WebOps, ContentOps, and ExperienceOps. All new products and features are available on <a href="https://www.acquia.com/blog/introducing-acquia-cloud-next-kubernetes-native-drupal-hosting-platform" target="_blank">Acquia Cloud Next</a>, the newest version of Acquia's cloud platform. Key innovations include:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/drupal-cloud/code-studio" target="_blank">Acquia Code Studio</a>: A new, 100% cloud-based development environment that integrates with GitLab and Acquia Cloud IDE. Developers can now log into Acquia Cloud Platform, spin up an IDE and then click to connect to GitLab (the platform of choice for application development) using frameworks such as <a href="https://reactjs.org/" target="_blank">React</a>, <a href="https://angularjs.org/" target="_blank">Angular</a>, or <a href="https://vuejs.org/" target="_blank">Vue</a>. With Acquia Code Studio, developers have all the tools they need to plan, build, review, test, and deploy any Drupal application—all from a familiar GitLab environment.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://docs.acquia.com/customer-data-platform/actions/" target="_blank">Acquia Cloud Actions</a>: A new, collaborative release management system that automates the process of deploying and managing code to the Acquia Cloud environment. Once development teams write code, Acquia Cloud Actions manages the build, test, and deploy phases to get code into production. By eliminating manual processes, Acquia Cloud Actions fuels faster digital innovation at scale.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.acquia.com/why-acquia/acquia-digital-commerce" target="_blank">Acquia Digital Commerce Integrations</a>: Powered by the no-code Acquia Site Studio, pre-built integration components make it easy for anyone to assemble digital commerce experiences leveraging Acquia's DAM and PIM. Support for <a href="https://graphql.org/" target="_blank">GraphQL</a> and Node.js allows developers to easily extend and enhance Acquia's pre-built integrations with any MACH-compliant commerce vendor and cut the time required to deliver experiences to as little as 90 days.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Marketing Cloud enhancements increase efficiencies and insights across hybrid teams </h4>
Acquia is announcing key innovations to its Acquia Marketing Cloud, including several features focused on composable machine learning, analytics, privacy, and multi-tenant distributed marketing to empower teams across CampaignOps and MLOps. 
<a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud/customer-data-platform" target="_blank">Acquia Customer Data Platform</a> (CDP) now has several new capabilities that drive citizen data science and analytical insights across the organization. Building on Acquia CDP's world-class data modeling and analytics platform, Acquia now provides more intelligence, ROI insights, and ML-driven efficiencies across more teams and in more ways than any other customer data platform on the market. New features in this release include:
<ul>
<li>Multi-touch attribution: As the first attribution solution built on top of a CDP, this new capability allows marketers to visualize campaign performance through a range of attribution windows and timeframes to understand the true ROI of marketing investments.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>ML Studio: A first-of-its-kind, low-code/no-code machine learning workbench that enables data scientists to build custom ML models on top of unified data, all within Acquia CDP.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>ML Launchpad: As part of Acquia CDP analytics, Launchpad surfaces ML-driven insights into a visual and highly intuitive dashboard for non-technical marketers, so they can see at-a-glance key insights such as audience propensities, recommended actions to take, and more. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Privacy Management: This new tool supports compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and more by allowing faster data erasure.</li>
</ul>
Acquia is also introducing new capabilities in Acquia Campaign Studio and Acquia Personalization, including: 
<ul>
<li>Multi-Tenant distributed marketing automation: This first-of-its-kind capability enables brands using Campaign Studio to scale centralized campaigns across multiple brands, geographies, and teams while adhering to compliance and governance requirements. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Visual email and landing page builder: An extension of WYSIWYG capabilities in <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud/campaign-studio" target="_blank">Acquia Campaign Studio</a>, this drag-and-drop interface makes it easier than ever to build emails and landing pages for campaigns.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Enhanced A/B testing: Acquia Personalization now has more powerful A/B testing capabilities, including automated self-optimization, which auto-promotes winning variants without requiring any time or effort from marketing teams – and increased website conversion and revenue. </li>
</ul>
<h2>Growing validation with analysts</h2>
Acquia has been named a Leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) for two consecutive years. Additionally, International Data Corporation (IDC) has recognized the usability, extensibility, and enterprise-grade capabilities of the Acquia platform and recently named Acquia a Leader in the inaugural <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/report/idc-marketscape-content-management-systems" target="_blank">IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Content Management Systems for Persuasive Digital Experiences 2021 Vendor Assessment</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 engage customers, enhance conversions and help businesses stand out. Learn more at <a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">https://www.acquia.com</a>.

Acquia Upgrades Open DXP Capabilities to Expand Composable Enterprise Features

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Top Headless Commerce Platforms

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Rarely does a week go by without a noteworthy update from WordPress, the heavyweight champion of CMS platforms.Much of the recent focus has been on enhancing the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">Gutenberg</a> framework and providing users of the open source platform – which powers roughly 64 million websites – with a stable and rewarding experience. Gutenberg, known in some circles as the “WordPress block editor,” was introduced in WordPress 5.0 in late 2018. It was the platform's answer to the next wave of low-code site builders like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/wix-announces-wixstores-wixjet/">Wix</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/squarespace-a-diy-website-builder-1/">Sqaurespace</a>, as well as WordPress community apps like <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/elementor-hits-3-million-sites/">Elementor</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.elegantthemes.com/gallery/divi/">Divi</a>.While Gutenberg struggled to find terra firma in its early days (everyone hates change), it found more adoption as developers tapped its ability to create custom blocks and minimize shortcodes.In the latest update, WordPress Gutenberg 11.7, users will see some really nice enhancements and, as usual, a collective of bug fixes. Global styles and full site editing have been improved, the navigation editor experience has been made more intuitive, and you now have more control to adjust the spacing between columns.<h2>A more intuitive and lighter navigation experience</h2>The navigation block underwent a series of changes intended to provide a more intuitive navigation management experience. <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/design.png" alt="plus icon to add link" />Now, you can add links simply by <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34899">clicking on the “+” icon</a> without an additional block selection step. Additionally, you can use a <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35196">slash inserter</a> to add a link. This is all part of the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/34041">lighter navigation block experience</a> efforts.Navigation links can <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34978">now be transformed</a> into other block types such as site logo, home link, or social icons. <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/navigation-links.png" alt="navigation links" />The navigation link now <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35324">supports custom font size and line height</a>. Link labels, such as “previous post,” may now be a <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34952">part of the link to the post itself</a>. Mobile menus also <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35077">reflect the justification settings</a> of the desktop menus. <h2>Global styles and full site editing</h2>Global styles extend the capabilities of full site editing by bringing a higher level of customization to Gutenberg and WordPress. Together, these features enable users to have improved control over layouts and aesthetics beyond the context of single pages and posts. Global Styles also provide consistency across a website without having to edit individual blocks or pages.The site editor experience gets a full "spit and polish" in this new release. For example, the template editor now features a <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34732">convenient back button</a> to ease returning to the site editor. <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/back-button-e1634763932360.png" alt="back button" />Switching between editing different template parts was made more accessible by listing the available areas in the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35202">template details</a>.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/template-switching.png" alt="template switching" />The site editor was also equipped with <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35241">padding settings for specific template parts</a>. Color palette settings are also available in a <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35109">separate panel in the global styles sidebar</a>. Another cool feature: duotone support was extended to the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35344">site logo block</a> for rendering logo elements in a duochromatic fashion.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/global-styles.png" alt="color palettes" /><h2>Columns block support for tweaking the gaps and margins</h2>Personally, we think this is the most exciting feature that Gutenberg 11.7 brings. The columns block now <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/34630">allows you to adjust the space between the columns</a> and the margins surrounding the block. Combined with <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35241">customizable template part padding</a>, it is the most flexible layout-building experience Gutenberg has ever had. <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/column-spacing.gif" alt="column spacing" /><h2>Other notable highlights</h2>11.7 adds the <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35083">ability to create pages</a> directly from the link popup. Up to this point, it was only possible via the Navigation block – but now this feature is exposed on every link.The popup also <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/35143">underwent subtle visual adjustments</a>. In addition, <a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/35060">empty links can no longer be added</a>, making adding one by mistake even harder. <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/10/empty-link.png" alt="empty link checker" />You can see the complete list of new Gutenberg 11.7 features and bug fixes <a target="_blank" href="https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/10/14/whats-new-in-gutenberg-11-7-october-13th/">here</a>.

WordPress Gutenberg 11.7 Enhances Site Editing, Navigation Blocks, Column Spacing and More

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