Sitecore's Accelerate and XM Cloud Plus Promise Brands a Faster Path to Cloud Transformation

Sitecore, a global leader in end-to-end digital experience software, recently unveiled some new offerings as part of its robust, cloud-based digital experience platform. 

The new solutions, XM Cloud Plus and Sitecore Accelerate, are designed to help brands speed up and simplify their move to the cloud by making it easier than ever before to embark on the journey to SaaS and leverage solutions with robust enterprise capabilities.

According to the company's press release, cloud-based solutions deliver faster integrations, regular technology updates with little downtime, and more engaging customer experiences. Yet, there remains a perception that switching is both complex and challenging. 

XM Cloud Plus and Sitecore Accelerate are specifically designed to help remove these obstacles by providing the knowledge, tools, and support needed to make it easier to migrate to Sitecore’s leading cloud-based composable offerings.

Both solutions were announced at the company's Sitecore DX 2023 conference in Minneapolis. 

XM Cloud Plus builds on SaaS success

In 2022, Sitecore launched its XM Cloud, the industry’s first fully-native cloud CMS solution – and it quickly became the company’s fastest-selling SaaS product with over 100 major brand adoptions. 

Today, Sitecore is expanding the capabilities of XM Cloud with the launch of XM Cloud Plus: an extended digital-experience solution that brings together content management, AI-powered search, personalization, customer data management, and analytics.

XM Cloud Plus is designed to answer the needs of Sitecore XP customers who have enjoyed a powerful solution in a single product and are ready to make their transition to the cloud, and for brands that want to leverage a composable technology stack but use a proven product combination to simplify deployment and accelerate time to value.

“XM Cloud marked a significant moment in Sitecore’s journey when we launched it a year ago," said Steve Tzikakis, CEO of Sitecore. "Our first-to-market experience offering a cloud-based composable solution resulted in rapid adoption and was the culmination of three years of development with extensive customer input. Today, we expand the XM Cloud offering with XM Cloud Plus, bringing together a proven set of products that gives brands broader capabilities to offer an unrivaled customer experience, while simplifying and accelerating their move to the cloud, and delivering a powerful solution for the thousands of Sitecore XP customers that want additional enterprise capabilities.”

Key features of XM Cloud Plus include:

• Content Creation and Management: User-friendly tools allow teams to efficiently produce, optimize, and deliver captivating content to the right audience at the right time.
• AI-Powered Search and Content Recommendations: Includes dynamic personalization and targeting strategies, offering omnichannel personalization, intelligent search recommendations, and access to an extensive array of personalization development tools.
• Omnichannel Content Center: Teams can now efficiently manage all digital customer touchpoints from a single, unified content repository that ensures brand consistency and streamlined workflows.
• Seamless Integrations and Connectivity: XM Cloud Plus can be easily implemented within an existing tech stack to create connected, immersive customer experiences across all channels.
• Intuitive Form Builder: Our drag-and-drop form builder for XM Cloud and XM Cloud Plus, provides customers with an easy way to add data capture forms to their pages and components.

Speeding brands to the cloud with Sitecore Accelerate

Companies often retain on-premises solutions due to the perceived difficulty of moving to the cloud. To address this, Sitecore has launched Sitecore Accelerate, a dedicated program to guide Sitecore XM and Sitecore XP customers to either XM Cloud or XM Cloud Plus and XC customers to OrderCloud. Sitecore Accelerate gives teams the knowledge, resources, tools, and human support needed to unlock the full potential of a SaaS-based future.

“We are at an inflection point where mature cloud technology is combining with AI computing to empower brands like never before,” added Tzikakis. “To leverage this opportunity, brands need guidance, reassurance and actual step-by-step, proven assistance from knowledgeable peers and partners to make their DXP stack operate to full capacity and capability.” By giving brands the support they need with Sitecore Accelerate, they can tap into the full power of Sitecore’s solutions simply and easily. It is such a critical moment for online experiences, and we want to be the partner brands turn to when they want to build a better proposition.”

Generative AI comes to Sitecore's composable DXP

At DX Minneapolis 2023, new Generative AI features were announced that enhance content creation, management, and delivery of digital experiences. 

“Sitecore introduced native machine learning features across our platform and composable DXP in 2019," said Dave O’Flanagan, Chief Product Officer, Sitecore. "With our ongoing focus on R&D, we are excited to bring the next level of AI to our customers. These additions accelerate the speed at which brands build content and experiences with Sitecore solutions, open new ways to empower marketing, and heighten the level of insight brands get from their data."

With Accelerate, brand marketers can:

• Generate text and images in Content Hub One that are consistently on-brand to achieve a new level of hyper-personalization for customer-facing content
• Author and edit brand content in Content Hub DAM (Digital Asset Management) to ensure it aligns with content models and brand consistency
• Deploy advanced Search that understands user intent to answer queries faster
• Leverage Visual Search from Content Hub to easily discover content and incorporate images into brand assets via similar image suggestions

“This is only the first step to embed AI deep into our SaaS DXP so our customers can continue to build better experiences for their customers," O'Flanagan added. "We are actively working on new ways to improve marketer workflows through automatic improvements, and further down the line, AI will be able to optimize the digital experience with limited manual oversight.”

Sitecore will begin rolling out its new AI capabilities in the coming weeks.