Progress Launches Sitefinity DX 14.0, Enhances Digital Experience Delivery with Global Scale

Progress is making progress.

And that says a lot given their long history in the business applications marketplace. Founded in 1981, it’s fair to say that the software vendor has “seen it all” and helped shape the current BA landscape. But such longevity can result in a paleolithic perception, especially when technology "years" are measured in days.

But that hasn't been the case for Progress. More recently, the company has focused on deepening its innovation across an expanding digital experience portfolio – starting with its acquisition of Telerik’s Sitefinity CMS in 2014.

With the accelerated pace of digital transformation felt throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Progress has experienced steady growth, even crushing analyst expectations for Q3 2021. This comes on the heels of another key acquisition of Kemp, a leader in the burgeoning Application Experience (AX) space, for a tidy sum of $258 million in cash.

Progress, yes. But not just for the sake of progress. There’s a plan in play, and there’s nothing “old guard” about this market leader’s vision for the future.

A shifting digital experience platform (DXP) marketplace

While Progress evolves their broader BA stack, Sitefinity continues to be a bellweather brand in the CMS and DXP storm of fragmentation and consolidation. This has been a critical advantage given the seismic shifts rippling across the DXP market.

As people and businesses move to more digital-first and contactless solutions (again, a by-product of Covid-19), having a solid digital strategy is essential. The demand for partners with proven experience and digital maturity has helped accelerate the pivot by streamlining technology adoption, reducing operational complexities, and eliminating many IT and compliance challenges.

This has been true for the entire DXP sector, which has experienced unprecedented growth.

But it’s not all rosy: Progress’ recent research shows that 35% of organizations haven’t implemented a DXP solution because the products on the market are too complex, expensive, and monolithic – resulting in underutilized features that add to a bloated pricetag.

What to expect from Sitefinity DX 14.0

With the release of Sitefinity DX 14.0, the company is injecting greater agility, flexibility, and extensibility into their digital experience platform (DXP) – providing a host of new capabilities for low-code integration, chat-driven engagement, and enhanced headless content delivery.

“As the core of a composable DXP, Sitefinity DX 14.0 puts pieces of the puzzle in place, giving organizations a powerful solution – without being overly complex or costly – for creating digital experiences that drive businesses forward,” said John Ainsworth, SVP, Core Products, Progress. “Organizations can be confident that through integrated content and commerce, combined with advanced marketing insights and headless experience delivery, they can create omnichannel experiences that deliver the right content, at the right time, on the right channel. This is no longer a choice, but a must for those who want to stay competitive.”

Along with the aforementioned enhancements, Sitefinity DX 14.0 will enable integrated, tailored experiences delivered and managed at scale. In that sense, organizations can fashion their own unique DXP solution by choosing which functionalities meet their unique business goals and challenges – and empower them to create composable digital experiences.

Sitefinity DX 14.0 features

With the new release, users will be able to:

• Execute strategic, data-driven marketing: Create and execute marketing campaigns that are informed by interaction history via comprehensive touchpoint attribution modeling to drive more conversions and increased ROI.
• Capitalize every channel in less time with multichannel experience management: Engage visitors across every stage of the funnel and customer lifecycle. With the hybrid content management capabilities of Sitefinity DX, comprising its headless content-as-a-service API framework, marketers can seamlessly execute a consistent and personalized experience across audiences’ key touchpoints. Additionally, organizations can drive visitors to positive outcomes by incorporating Progress’ powerful AI-driven chatbot platform, NativeChat®, into their Sitefinity experiences.
• Boost efficiency through simplified system integration with low-code tools: Automate marketing operations and reduce implementation efforts through expanded connectivity between the systems necessary to deliver a well-orchestrated omnichannel experience. Leverage simplified workflows, service hooks, and low-code integration with components of existing tech stacks.
• Scale global content and campaign delivery: Deliver content quickly and efficiently across channels with enhanced content synchronization capabilities. Improve content governance for multisite experiences across several business departments, units, locations, and brands with comprehensive multisite user group management.
• Ensure delivery of a smooth page experience: Ensure an engaging and pleasant visitor experience and optimize SEO rankings, user engagement, and conversion. Marketers can get dedicated, out-of-the-box support for the newest Google Page Experience requirements.

Forging a leadership role in the DXP space

The last two years have seen a constant battle for enterprise dominance in the digital experience platform space. While both Gartner and Forrester have incrementally shifted the players on the board, few disruptors have made the treacherous climb to compete with the likes Adobe, Acquia, Optimizely, and Sitecore.

Still, there’s lots of room for growth in the DX market. According to Statista, global spending on digital transformation is projected to reach $1.78 trillion next year – and between 2020 and 2023, that number balloons to almost $7 trillion.

Those figures are driving more opportunities for platforms to “progress,” and that certainly seems to be the case with Progress as they launch a broader vision of completeness around their DXP offering. This began with CMS many moons ago and has hence evolved into a confluence of marketing and optimization capabilities.

Sitefinity has managed to adapt and thrive throughout the course of these changes and seems poised to continue its growth. While it hasn’t shed its mantle of being a core CMS, the DXP moniker – and its now composable nature – should provide greater control to users and businesses as they tackle the unrelenting needs of digital transformation.

"Content management was the underlying piece of any DX platform until organizations realized that it alone wasn't enough,” said Paul Nashawaty, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "The increasing need for flexibility and integration with other systems led to the emergence of the composable DX platform. What makes this technology powerful is the flexibility it provides – organizations can integrate only the components and systems they need and customize them as consumer behavior and market trends change."

In the past year, Sitefinity DX has earned multiple recognitions and reviews. Most recently, it was named a “Leader” in G2’s Spring 2021 Grid® Report for Digital Experience Platforms. The recognition was based on a variety of factors, including features and functionality, market presence, and customer satisfaction. Sitefinity DX was also named a “Major Contender” in Everest Group’s Digital Experience Platform (DXP) PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2021.

You can check out Sitefinity DX 14.0 at https://www.progress.com/sitefinity-cms.

About Progress

Progress (NASDAQ: PRGS) provides the leading products to develop, deploy and manage high-impact business applications. Our comprehensive product stack is designed to make technology teams more productive, and we have a deep commitment to the developer community, both open source and commercial alike. With Progress, organizations can accelerate the creation and delivery of strategic business applications, automate the process by which apps are configured, deployed and scaled, and make critical data and content more accessible and secure – leading to competitive differentiation and business success. Over 1,700 independent software vendors, 100,000+ enterprise customers, and a three-million-strong developer community rely on Progress to power their applications.