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Conscia.ai Article

<hr /> Conscia, a Digital Experience Orchestration (<a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=dxo&amp;highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7114915254135885825">DXO</a>) platform, announced this week that it has achieved membership in the <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/new-mach-alliance-maturity-assessment-tool-helps-organizations-evaluate-their-mach-readiness">MACH Alliance</a> – a prestigious industry organization focused on open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems.As a certified MACH Alliance Startup ISV solution, Conscia.ai is now better positioned to help organizations fast-track the adoption of MACH and composable technologies into their existing DX stacks – thus accelerating digital transformation.According to a post on the company's LinkedIn, Conscia.ai is solving one of the most difficult problems brands face when going composable: the integration and orchestration of disparate backend data sources to create a unified digital experience. Claiming the role as the “brain” of the composable stack, Conscia offers a revolutionary approach that embraces both legacy and modern systems, acting as the bridge between any backend data source and any frontend framework. The solution simplifies both API and data orchestration within a DX stack and enables digital teams to deliver relevant, omnichannel experiences – regardless of where data and content reside.“We firmly believe in a future where enterprise technology stacks are inherently composable, a vision we share with the MACH Alliance,” said <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAG6YAwBwDftoOh04VOEFAOr0FHisqOq-34">Sana Remekie</a>, CEO and Co-Founder of Conscia.ai and a previous Ambassador of the MACH Alliance. "Our [MACH] Alliance membership allows us to champion the adoption of a composable, headless tech stack, amplifying our commitment to driving innovation and transformation in the industry.”<h3>Building a composable future with MACH architectures</h3>MACH – an acronym for Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless – is a set of leading design principles that are powering modern, composable enterprise technologies and strategies. MACH architectures support a “swappable” enterprise technology stack – one where every component is pluggable, scalable, replaceable, and can be continuously improved through agile development to meet evolving business requirements. Rather than facing the pain of replatforming, enterprises can continuously evolve their ecosystem piece by piece based on their goals.Built to integrate with greater ease, MACH solutions like Conscia.ai are helping companies break their monolithic dependencies and step away from their legacy tools. With modularity in mind, MACH Alliance-certified solutions give businesses the freedom to choose from modern, best-of-breed tools. They also provide a structure that makes it easier to add, replace, or remove technologies in the future.“We believe orchestration is essential to enabling the promises of MACH,” <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAhApeABdoatoXR1gchE81iiPURabk1MQ1s">Casper Aagaard Rasmussen</a>, President of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/machalliance/">MACH Alliance</a>. “Orchestrating an architecture simply preserves the flexibility and agility modern enterprise businesses need to compete and win. It is becoming apparent how technologies like <a target="_blank" href="http://conscia.ai/">Conscia.ai</a> help accelerate brands through their composable journey. We're excited to welcome <a target="_blank" href="http://conscia.ai/">Conscia.ai</a> into the MACH Alliance.”<h3>Meeting the highest standards for MACH membership </h3>MACH certification is a rigorous process. Technologies that apply for membership are audited around key criteria and must meet specific requirements around technology posture and business practices. At the <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/mach-two-conference-wrap-six-takeaways-from-the-composable-event-of-the-year">MACH Two Conference this past June</a>, MACH Alliance leadership stated that 53% of companies first applying for ISV or SI membership are rejected, making it an incredibly challenging threshold. Despite this statistic, many re-apply – and by leveraging the rejection feedback, are able to satisfy the criteria. The MACH Alliance advocates for future-proof enterprise technology that is composable, open, and best-of-breed. By maintaining those core principles and its rigid certification process, the organization acts as a gatekeeper. This ensures that the MACH category is well-established, safeguarded, and understood – and that companies selling MACH solutions and services adhere to those principles. It also provides enterprises with greater confidence in the technologies they purchase when building composable architectures. MACH Alliance members also help to support agile, nimble businesses that are on the composable journey, and are ready to take advantage of next-generation technologies and trends.  Consia.ai already partners with multiple MACH Alliance member companies, including <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/contentstack/">Contentstack</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/commercetools/">commercetools</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/contentful/">Contentful</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/cloudinary/">Cloudinary</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/storyblok/">Storyblok</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/agilitycms/">Agility</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/kontentai/">Kontent.ai</a> <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/valtech/">Valtech</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/applydigital/">Apply Digital</a>, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/oriuminc/">Orium</a>, and many more.

Conscia.ai Joins MACH Alliance as a Certified Member

cms-critic-staff

<hr /> <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/consciaai">Conscia.ai</a> continues to orchestrate its growth in Europe by hiring top talent in the sales department.According to a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7112396316755861504/">recent post</a>, the digital experience orchestration (DXO) platform has acquired the talents of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAADzNjEB4H18sFonShX1lqbOTGka-pRy6e4">Martin Sandvad</a>, appointing him as Sales Director for the Nordics region. Sandvad, a seasoned professional with a track record of success in the tech industry, brings extensive expertise to Conscia.ai as the company continues its expansion and innovation in the Digital Experience sector."We are thrilled to welcome Martin Sandvad to the Conscia.ai team," said <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/sana-remekie">Sana Remekie</a> CEO at Conscia.ai. "His impressive track record, industry expertise, and passion for driving innovation align perfectly with our company's mission to empower businesses with cutting-edge DXO solutions. We are confident that Martin will play a pivotal role in expanding our presence in the Nordics and delivering value to our customers."Sandvad's appointment comes at a time of significant growth for Conscia.ai as it continues to expand its portfolio of DXO products and services. According to the company, his leadership will be instrumental in driving Conscia.ai's mission to empower businesses with DXO solutions that enhance efficiency, productivity, and competitiveness in the composable software space.<h3>A proven track record in digital experience </h3>Sandvad is a well-known figure in the tech industry, having previously served as the CEO of <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/ucommerce">Ucommerce,</a> a prominent e-commerce platform, and CEO of <a target="_blank" href="https://ka-ching.dk/en/">Ka-ching</a>, a leading Omnichannel POS provider. He is also the owner of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/ssaas-it/">SSaaS.IT</a>, a Software Sales as a Service company. Sandvad has deep knowledge and experience in the Scandinavian and Nordic markets. In his new role, he will be responsible for leading <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/conscia/">Conscia.ai</a>'s sales and business development efforts across this market region, working closely with the company's leadership team to develop and execute strategies for growth, forge strategic partnerships, and ensure Conscia continues to deliver AI solutions that meet the unique needs of businesses in the region. "I am excited to join <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/conscia/">Conscia.ai</a> and be part of a team that is at the forefront of Digital Experience innovation," said Sandvad. "The potential for Composable orchestration to transform industries and drive value is enormous. I look forward to leveraging my experience and working with the talented <a target="_blank" href="http://conscia.ai/">Conscia.ai</a> team to help businesses in the Nordics harness the power of Digital Experience Orchestration.”<h3>Targeting growth with key leadership in sales</h3>Sandvad's news follows the <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/conscia-ai-appoints-bart-omlo-to-global-head-of-sales">hiring of Bart Omlo</a> as Head of Global Sales last May. Omlo brings nearly two decades of experience in enterprise content management to his leadership role at Conscia.ai. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Sales at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.kentico.com/">Kentico</a> and later as CEO at <a target="_blank" href="https://kontent.ai/">Kontent.ai</a> – where he was integral to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.cmscritic.com/kontent-ai-raises-40-million-to-bring-the-power-of-ai-to-content-management/">raising $40 million</a> in Series A funding for the startup.Omlo expressed his excitement about Sandvad's appointment, stating, “Martin's arrival at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/conscia/">Conscia.ai</a> signifies a significant milestone in our growth journey. His deep industry knowledge and leadership experience will further strengthen our commitment to providing <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/feed/hashtag/?keywords=dxo&amp;highlightedUpdateUrns=urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7112396316755861504">#DXO</a> solutions that drive real business impact for our clients.”

Conscia.ai Appoints Martin Sandvad as Sales Director for Nordics Region, Charts New Growth

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

Wrestling with Category Confusion in the DXC "Slackdown"

matt-garrepy

Are you looking to modernize your tech stack but feel hamstrung by your legacy systems? If so, you're not alone. Many organizations are in the same boat—stuck with old, outdated systems that are holding them back from taking advantage of newer, more innovative technologies.
<a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/you-ll-be-breaking-up-with-bad-customers-and-9-other-predictions-for-2022-and-beyond" target="_blank">According to Gartner</a>, by 2024, 80% of CIOs surveyed will list modular business redesign, through composability, as a top five reason for accelerated business performance.   

So, what exactly is the problem with legacy architectures:
<ul>
<li>They are not composable; they don't have APIs to interact with other platforms</li>
<li>They are not scalable or stable and often have performance issues</li>
<li>They are difficult to maintain or update, increasing IT costs in both time and resources</li>
<li>Extensively customized and third-party elements of the application may no longer be supported</li>
<li>The system is no longer agile to emerging customer needs</li>
</ul>
Organizations are sitting on age-old infrastructure and applications, built over many years to meet the needs of their business. For that reason, these applications are not easy to replace. So, what options do organizations have to modernize?
<h2>Migration</h2>
Even though on the surface this sounds like the ideal solution, practically speaking, it's often very disruptive. The primary reason for this is the reliance on these applications and mission-critical workflows tied to them. They're powering many external or internal touchpoints and experiences, and you can’t afford to destabilize the backend these touchpoints so heavily rely upon.  
Integrations with various upstream and downstream systems and customizations have been made to the core capabilities of these systems to meet evolving business needs over the years. This means it’s not easy to find one system that can do everything that your legacy system does, even though it’s been put together with glue and duct tape.  
Finally, no one wants to spend the time and money needed for a migration project. Most organizations only invest in projects that will bring them immediate ROI. Complete system overhauls just don't fit into this model of business thinking because they take too long-term of an investment without any tangible benefits at first glance (and many end up costing more).
<h2>Re-Architect / Re-Build</h2>
This involves rewriting the legacy application from scratch. Similar to the migration option, this is also highly disruptive, time-consuming, and costly. If you do decide to go forward with a rebuild, you'll want to employ a composable strategy. However, chances are you will have a hard time justifying this approach to your steering committee.
<h2>Retain / Encapsulate</h2>
What if you could encapsulate your existing legacy system with a modernization layer? The idea here is to create a modern facade on top of your legacy systems to interface with modern applications while replacing pieces of the legacy system one small step at a time.
The “Strangler Pattern” is a technique for slowly replacing legacy systems with new ones. As the name suggests, the idea is to "strangle" the old system by gradually adding new features and functionalities on top until the legacy system is eventually replaced. This approach has several advantages, including that it doesn't require a complete rip-and-replace of the old system.
<h2>How the “Strangler Pattern” Works</h2>
There are two main ways to implement the <a href="https://www.techtarget.com/searchapparchitecture/tip/A-detailed-intro-to-the-strangler-pattern" target="_blank">Strangler Pattern</a>: top-down and bottom-up. 
With top-down strangulation, you start by creating a new system that mimics the functionality of the old one. Once this new system is up and running, you slowly start routing traffic away from the old system and towards the new one. Eventually, all traffic will be directed to the new system, at which point you can decommission the old one altogether. 
Bottom-up strangulation takes a different approach. Instead of starting with a brand-new system, you begin by identifying pieces of functionality that can be migrated from the legacy system to a new one without disrupting business operations. These migrated pieces are then wrapped in an API that exposes them to other parts of the system. This process is repeated until all functionality has been relocated to the new system and the legacy system can be decommissioned. 
This is the most practical approach organizations can employ to charge ahead toward digital transformation while maintaining stable operations. For instance, if you have a homegrown CMS, you create an API layer that encapsulates the legacy system and exposes only the content and functions that are required by the new customer experiences that you'd like to launch.
<h2>Legacy Systems Need More Than APIs </h2>
Okay, so you’ve added APIs to your legacy applications, so we should be good to go, right?  
Well, not quite. Legacy systems were never built to support today's traffic loads from modern touchpoints, and their infrastructure is weak—they can't keep up with the demand of your modern apps or websites. This means if you want these old apps running smoothly on an <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/">API-driven</a> front end, they need something more: a fast-performing data layer that indexes what would have been stored locally in legacy applications.
What if you have multiple legacy systems that hold onto related data and you need these relationships to be exposed for the front-end experience? An example of this in an e-commerce domain would be a grocery brand with a product catalog, ingredients, and recipes that may all be stored in separate homegrown, proprietary, or legacy applications. This content from multiple systems may need to be connected before exposing it to an experience such as a product details page on an e-commerce website. 
Now, you can argue that we should be able to modernize each individual system with an API and then simply call the APIs from the front end and connect the data on the client side. This is theoretically possible, but it’s not sustainable. 
If you want to build multiple front-end applications relying on the same underlying data and business logic, especially if the frontends are built on several different frameworks, you have to repeat the same work every time, creating redundancies and inconsistent experiences. To make matters worse, what if the data in each of these legacy systems have gaps, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies? 
Adding APIs on top of bad data and content doesn’t solve this problem. After all, garbage-in means garbage-out.  
<h2>So, What’s the Best Way Forward?</h2>
I hope it is evident that a rip-and-replace or full rebuild are not practical solutions for legacy modernization. Piecemeal, step-by-step, replacement of functional components using the Strangler Pattern is definitely a more viable option. However, when you implement this pattern, you have to be aware that the system performance, scalability, and data unification are real concerns that must be addressed. 
What you need is a way to create a scalable, persistent, and API-enabled data layer that syncs with your legacy backends and is able to unify, normalize, and optimize the data before it is consumed by the front end. This data layer should be able to model the complexity of your data sources without shoehorning you into a pre-built schema of any sort. This not only removes the need to perform gymnastics on the front end, but it also ensures a separation of concerns in your experience stack.
At Conscia.ai, we provide an elegant solution to this problem with the DX Graph – and I invite you to learn more about our innovation at <a href="https://conscia.ai/" target="_blank">www.conscia.ai</a>.
<h2>About Conscia.ai</h2>
<a href="https://conscia.ai/" target="_blank">Conscia.ai</a> is an Experience Orchestration Platform that empowers digital teams to create personalized, omnichannel experiences in a composable tech stack. Conscia.ai offers two standalone products, the DX Graph and the DX Engine.
<h2>About the DX Graph™</h2>
One of the biggest roadblocks in the journey toward composability is legacy systems and data silos. If your data is trapped in one or more data sources that are not accessible via APIs, the DX Graph allows you to create an API-first modernization layer on top of your existing systems of record. Secondly, the DX Graph allows your digital teams to sync with these systems of record to create a 360 view of all your siloed content and data, where you can relate, search, enrich and distribute your data to downstream applications and touchpoints.
<h2>About the DX Engine™</h2>
With the shift towards headless and composable architectures, marketers have lost the ability to intuitively manage experiences; the control over who sees what content when, and where now falls squarely into the hands of the developer. The DX Engine puts marketers back in control to activate personalized and intelligent experiences on all channels from a centralized, intuitive interface. The DX Engine connects to all of the backend content and data sources (including the DX Graph) through real-time APIs and abstracts out the complexity of these integrations for business and marketing teams. 
<a href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff23/program" target="_blank"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/12/cms-kickoff-2023-banner-1024x151.jpg" alt="CMS Kickoff 2023 banner" /></a>
<h2>Join Sana at CMS Kickoff 2023</h2>
January 17-18 in St. Petersburg, FL
Don't miss the only conference tailored for everyone working with content management systems, from beginners to experts! Featuring two packed days with a carefully curated mixture of talks, workshops, activities, world-class facilitators, thought provokers, speakers, and session leads – including Sana Remekie's presentation, "The Journey from Monolith to Composable."
Register today at the <a href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff23/program" target="_blank">CMS Kickoff 2023 website</a>.

From Legacy to Composable: What’s The Best Way Forward?

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Composite image of Sana Remekie in front of arrow leading from "legacy" to "composable" with the Conscia.ai logo in the bottom right corner.

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

Conscia.ai Appoints Bart Omlo to Global Head of Sales

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

CMS Summit 26

Find out at CMS Connect 26, August 4-5 in Montreal, Canada

What's ahead for CMS in the agentic era?

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