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In its early days, the Cloud was focused on helping businesses scale their capacity and trade CapEx for OpEx. Now, it's helping organizations leverage advanced services like AI and machine learning that enhance optimization and personalization.
On that note: <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Optimizely</a>, a leading digital experience platform (DXP) provider, <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/company/press/optimizely-and-google-cloud-partner-to-drive-joint-innovation--next-gen-experimentation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Google, which includes moving its market-leading experimentation solutions to <a href="https://cloud.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Cloud</a>. The multi-year agreement indicates a commitment by the two companies to collaborate on innovative opportunities to develop advanced, digital-first marketing solutions.
Through the new partnership, customers will benefit from Optimizely's experimentation-driven digital experience capabilities combined with Google Cloud's secure infrastructure and its AI, ML, and analytics. This includes Optimizely's <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/products/intelligence/web-experimentation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Web Experimentation</a> and <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/products/intelligence/full-stack-experimentation/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Full Stack Experimentation</a> resources, which allow marketers to take the guesswork out of delivering personalized, meaningful engagements.
The alignment with Google will enable Optimizely to innovate and evolve its services with the power of the Cloud. According to the press release, Google and Optimizely will also coordinate a joint go-to-market and sales execution strategy to deliver seamless experimentation solutions to customers across the globe.
"Through this partnership, Google Cloud infrastructure will underpin Optimizely's fast-growing and widely-adopted customer experience platform," said Rob Eslin, President of Google Cloud. "It's critical that businesses deliver exceptional products and services to consumers, and this partnership will enhance their ability to do so, driven by the Optimizely platform, data and Google Cloud's capabilities in AI and ML."
<h2>Elevating "Optimization as a Service" with Google Cloud</h2>
As the name intuitively suggests, Optimizely focuses on optimization – specifically as it relates to content and digital experiences. This is a key reason why <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/episerver-rebrands-as-optimizely-following-acquisition/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Episerver rebranded under the Optimizely moniker</a> following its acquisition. 
While already a Leader on the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/key-takeaways-from-gartners-2021-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms/">Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a>, Episerver's acquisition of Optimizely launched a new direction for the company, elevating "Optimization as a Service" to the forefront of their product and service stack. The acquisition also gave Episerver an edge in the personalization category, allowing them to deliver on the promise of a truly complete digital experience platform for testing and optimization. 
As part of the multi-year agreement, Optimizely and Google Cloud will collaborate closely on co-innovation, developing new and expanded digital offerings that bring the best experience possible to new and existing customers. Joint Optimizely and Google Cloud customers will reap the robust benefits of the combined offering, including greater flexibility and control, unmatched security, and increased productivity and reliability. 
<h2>The critical role of experimentation in digital marketing</h2>
As marketing continues to evolve, successful programs will rely on data-driven decision-making and optimized customer experiences. Having the scalability of Google Cloud will enable Optimizely to support the growing demand for experimentation to provide more actionable insights – giving marketers greater confidence around the performance of their content and campaigns. 
In an industry plagued by rapid disruption and constant consolidation, this partnership will help ensure that Optimizely's innovative solutions are more accessible, scalable, and quickly achievable for marketers looking to gain an edge and deliver optimal digital experiences.
"I couldn't think of two tech companies that are more relevant for the data-driven growth marketer than Google Cloud and Optimizely," said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. "We share the same philosophy on leveraging data, AI, and experimentation to replace guesswork with certainty. By entering into this strategic partnership with Google Cloud, we're empowering marketers to unlock their digital potential, create exceptional customer experiences and deliver strong business outcomes all on a trusted, secure platform. It's a true win-win-win situation for Optimizely, Google Cloud, and the marketing industry overall."
<h2>MACH versus monoliths</h2>
Optimizely had quite an active year in 2021, acquiring both <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-acquires-customer-data-platform-zaius/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Zaius</a>, a Customer Data Platform (CDP), and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizelys-acquisition-of-welcome-signals-expanded-focus-on-marketers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Welcome</a>  – a content marketing (CMP), marketing resource management (MRM), and digital asset management (DAM) platform. 
While these strategic acquisitions demonstrate Optimizely's ambition to deliver a full stack of value to marketers, it further positions the digital experience platform as a more monolithic player in the landscape. This is in direct contrast to the more recent energy and growth in the MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-first SaaS, Headless) category, where <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/uniform-raises-28m-in-series-a-funding-round-for-composable-dxp/">composable DXPs like Uniform</a> are disrupting the market. The promise of more extensible solutions – and never having to replatform – is gaining traction with users and companies as they consider the future of their digital stacks. 
Still, leading platforms like Optimizely are responding to large-scale enterprise needs from customers who crave integrated data and solutions from a single platform. As pure-play members of the MACH Alliance continue to grow, they may face opportunities to expand value with more monolithic attributes. This is a key reason why <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/elastic-path-secures-60m-in-funding-for-composable-commerce-growth/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elastic Path</a> has chosen to forego membership in the MACH Alliance and pursue a more flexible ecosystem model to build a community of composable commerce solutions.
<h2>About Optimizely</h2>
Optimizely is on a mission to help people unlock their digital potential. With its leading digital experience platform (DXP), Optimizely equips 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. Learn more at <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">optimizely.com</a>. All third-party trademarks cited are the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference purposes. 
For more information on how Optimizely and Google Cloud will partner together, please visit: <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/google/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.optimizely.com/google</a>.

Optimizely Partners with Google Cloud to Take Experimentation to the Next Level

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Bloomreach, a leading Digital Experience Platform (DXP), and Exponea, the Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP), have <a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en/news/2020/bloomreach-and-exponea-announce-strategic-partnership.html">announced a strategic alliance</a> to offer more enhanced digital commerce experiences to the market. 
The partnership will provide their joint clients with a more personalized and sophisticated e-commerce solution, combining Bloomreach’s rich catalog of DXP capabilities with Exponea’s customer-centric approach to unifying data.
Partly driving the move is Amazon’s market dominance in the e-commerce and digital retail space. While brands struggle to compete around rapid distribution and free shipping – key attributes to <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amazon-has-the-right-businesses-to-weather-coronavirus-but-spending-could-grow-even-faster-2020-04-13">Amazon’s success during the COVID-19 pandemic</a> – they often miss the mark with customer experience. This is where Amazon excels, and where Bloomreach and Exponea plan to focus their offerings.
By combining their unique capabilities, the two companies plan to help brands and retailers create more relevant and personalized experiences based on data and insights. Their innovative catalog of capabilities will help customers to increase retention, drive repeat purchases, recommend relevant products, and increase customer satisfaction.
<h3 id="a-partnership-built-for-digital-commerce-experiences">A partnership built for digital commerce experiences</h3>
Both Bloomreach and Exponea have experienced significant growth as a result of the recent surge in digital commerce worldwide, <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/08/covid19-pandemic-social-shift-ecommerce-report/">accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic</a>. While both vendors maintain solid reputations in the market, this partnership represents an innovation “sweet spot,” leveraging their strengths to offer a more complete solution.
Bloomreach is on a mission to arm enterprises with a superior weapon in their battle against the Amazons of the e-commerce world. In 2018, they <a href="/bloomreach-launches-dxp-for-commerce-so-enterprises-can-beat-amazon/">launched</a> their DXP for Commerce to offer highly relevant and personalized digital experiences. Today, their Bloomreach Experience Platform (brX) drives over $200 billion in digital commerce experiences across many of the world’s largest online retailers, brands, distributors, and B2B manufacturers – representing 25% of retail e-commerce in the U.S. and U.K.
Exponea – <a href="https://go.exponea.com/exponea-named-cool-vendor">which was named a “Cool Vendor” in multichannel marketing in 2020 by Gartner</a> – collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints. They enrich customer data through AI, providing insights to deliver personalized campaigns to individual targets through preferred channels. Exponea processes more than 2 billion customer profile updates every day on behalf of leading retailers and brands, enabling marketers to leverage over 250 billion behavioral events in real-time to orchestrate powerful 1:1 marketing.
<blockquote>This partnership will amplify both Exponea and Bloomreach’s unique capabilities to drive consistent and laser-targeted customer experiences across marketing and commerce. Combining together Exponea’s customer-centric view with Bloomreach’s catalogue-centric view will enable our joint customers to have the most sophisticated e-commerce experience possible.
- Peter Irikovský, CEO of Exponea</blockquote>
The alliance comes at a time when leading vendors across the digital stack are making big moves to compete more effectively in a crowded, fragmented landscape. As more organizations pivot to online – specifically in the retail sector – demand for rapid, end-to-end solutions is increasing by the day. By aligning their capabilities, Bloomreach and Exponea can fast-track a more effective response to shifting market conditions and challenge the e-commerce space. 
"We've long been on a mission to power exceptional commerce experiences – from search to content, to leveraging our commerce-specific data and AI to drive personalization,” said Bloomreach CEO and co-founder Raj De Datta. “We chose to partner with Exponea for their impressive customer data analytics capabilities, omnichannel campaign execution, and their strong and trusted relationships with our joint customers. Having looked at this closely, we believe they are the clear global leader in driving high performing marketing and customer communications, and the synergies we can drive across our platforms are very meaningful for our customers.” 
“Bloomreach is best-in-class when it comes to the search and commerce experience,” added Peter Irikovsky, CEO of Exponea. “We’ve been impressed by their robust platform and the company’s sophisticated B2B and B2C customer base for quite some time. The combination of our strengths will enhance the personalized customer experience for our joint clients with the most innovative, fast, and impactful solutions in the market.”
<h3 id="about-bloomreach">About Bloomreach</h3>
<a href="https://www.bloomreach.com/en">Bloomreach</a> is digital experience enhancement platform that enables highly personalized digital experiences for retailers, banks, distributors, manufacturers, public service agencies and other enterprises. Its flagship product, brX, is a digital experience platform built specifically for brands, retailers, and B2B companies who want to grow their revenue online while delivering each of their customers a premium, personalized commerce experience. brX combines content management capabilities with market-leading commerce-specific, AI-driven search, merchandising, and personalization in one flexible, API-first next-generation platform. Bloomreach serves over 500 global brands including Albertsons, Staples, Bosch, Puma, FC Bayern München, and Marks &amp; Spencer.
<h3 id="about-exponea">About Exponea</h3>
<a href="https://exponea.com/">Exponea</a> is a Customer Data and Experience Platform (CDXP) that collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints into a unified Single Customer View and utilizes this data to help e-commerce businesses to convert and retain customers by acting on customer signals with the right message at the perfect time through the preferred channel. Built from the ground up (i.e. no acquisitions) for retail and e-commerce, Exponea collects and unifies data from all customer touchpoints to give businesses the insights and action opportunities they need to execute campaigns that deliver real results.

Bloomreach and Exponea Announce Strategic Partnership to Energize Digital Commerce Experiences

New partnerships continue to emerge across the digital stack, and CMS platforms are reaping the benefits. Recently, SEMrush, a leading search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing platform <a href="https://www.semrush.com/news/semrush-and-yoast-announce-integration-partnership/">announced a strategic partnership with Yoast</a> – the most popular and widely-used SEO plugin for WordPress.
The partnership kicks off with an updated release of Yoast’s SEO plugin for WordPress, the leading open source content management system (CMS). Yoast SEO will now feature a tight integration with SEMrush’s extensive keyword database and SEO services, giving Yoast users access to smarter, SEO-focused keyword suggestions and data within the CMS post editor – and enhancing search engine indexability to drive qualified traffic.
For the <a href="/gutenberg-2-years-later-is-wordpress-better-off/">WordPress</a> community, Yoast is practically a household name. For years, this handy plugin has enabled users to control a multitude of attributes across websites, including meta descriptions, keywords, titles, and more. Yoast has proven to be a go-to solution for driving traffic from major search engines like Google and Bing to leading social media channels like Facebook.
SEMrush has long been regarded as a trusted brainstorming tool for keyword strategy. With standout features such as link building and site auditing, SEMrush provides users with a go-to checklist of features and capabilities for improving technical and on-page SEO.
“At a time when all businesses are becoming even more reliant on their digital strategy to thrive and survive, it is hard to overstate the significance of this partnership between SEMrush and Yoast, two highly regarded names in SEO,” said Eugene Levin, SEMrush’s Chief Strategy Officer. “We are thrilled to announce the seamless integration of one of the largest keyword databases on the market with Yoast’s unrivaled reach into WordPress-powered sites. As many of SEMrush clients run websites with WordPress, this partnership is an important one for our customers. We look forward to cooperating further with Yoast to help as many people as possible become the best digital marketers they can be.”
Yoast founder and Chief Product Officer Joost de Valk added, “As more and more people get online, we see that these people need help with keyword research. Previously we could not give our customers information regarding how people search, specifically which related searches there are for important search terms. Our integration with SEMrush not only makes this possible, it shows it right when and where you need it. I look forward to building out this feature to help people write better content, faster.”
In order to benefit from the new features in the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, users will need to have either a free or premium SEMrush account. The full set of SEMrush features available in Yoast SEO will help customers access related keywords that are similar to a user’s query, gather useful metrics for every keyword, and uncover new keyword ideas for their content.
You can download the Yoast SEO plugin <a href="https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/">here</a>.
Sign up for a free or premium SEMrush account <a href="https://www.semrush.com/signup/">here</a>.

SEMrush and Yoast Partner to Enhance WordPress SEO and Digital Marketing

Contentstack, a headless Content Experience Platform (CXP), has <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/partnership-with-gatsby-to-build-fast-enterprise-mach-enabled-websites">announced</a> a strategic partnership with Gatsby – a modern React-based, open source framework for creating high-performance websites and applications. The partnership will enable customers to leverage the combined power of both platforms to build high performance, blazing-fast websites to deliver personalized, omnichannel experiences at scale.
The partnership between Gatsby and Contentstack is the latest in a year of significant moves across the CMS landscape, including the <a href="/episerver-to-acquire-optimizely-the-worlds-leading-experience-optimization-platform/">recent purchase of Optimizely by Episerver</a>. As competition continues to increase, platforms are seeking more strategic avenues – including partnerships – to position their offerings.
For Contentstack, Gatsby represents a powerful channel of opportunity for accelerating website performance with a headless CMS that is purpose-built for omnichannel experiences. The partnership offers an enterprise-class, cloud-native solution to provide the best possible speed, security and flexibility for creating digital experiences.
<h3 id="going-headless">Going Headless</h3>
Over the last few years, headless CMS platforms have become far more prevalent, evolving from template-based platforms to API-driven and decoupled systems. Unlike traditional content management systems where the content is tied to the frontend, headless CMS platforms separate the content from the presentation – allowing creators to pull, store, and display their content any way they want, using the frameworks or programming languages they prefer.
As an API-first headless SaaS platform, <a href="/contentstack-introducing-headless-cms/">Contentstack</a> is at the intersection of content management and digital experiences, enabling business and IT to “remove the silos” and more easily collaborate. Their microservices architecture provides an extensible framework for scaling across endpoints, from websites to devices to frontend apps, giving content creators more control over an expanding world of channels and services.
Gatsby also takes a headless approach to content, leveraging modern web technologies such as React, GraphQL, and Javascript to provide a faster frontend experience powered by a headless CMS. The result is a dynamic, lightweight website that improves the user experience without compromising control from the CMS layer.  
"In today's digital world, speed matters – losing customers to a slow, low-performing website is not acceptable," said Peter Fogelsanger, Global Head of Partnerships at Contentstack. "Ensuring that the storytelling from the content creators is delivered to customers quickly and seamlessly is critical to every company's success. This partnership with Gatsby makes it possible. Businesses can bring together their marketing and development teams to deliver blazing fast websites and applications with the best, most up-to-date digital content for their customers."
Together, Contentstack and Gatsby are providing a complete solution for improving website performance and unifying both marketing and development teams. By adopting the MACH (Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless) approach delivered by both platforms, businesses can now create faster, more scalable websites that enhance the customer experience.
"Working with Contentstack allows marketing and content to harmonize with the development team," said Linda Watkins, Vice President of Partnerships at Gatsby. "When both business and technical teams are enabled by a microservices-based architecture, the agility in adapting and improving customer experiences is a game changer. Gatsby Cloud enables businesses to integrate seamlessly with Contentstack's API to manage content and control publishing. Our joint customers can more easily deliver the best digital experiences and truly stand out from their competition."
As part of the partnership offering, joint customers will have access to an API-connector between the Contentstack and Gatsby technology platforms. Contentstack <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/docs/developers/sample-apps/build-a-sample-website-using-gatsby-and-contentstack/">offers</a> a tutorial, providing step-by-step instructions on how to create a website using Gatsby and Contentstack. Gatsby also has an exclusive <a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.com/guides/contentstack/">guide</a> for integrating Gatsby with Contentstack.
<h3 id="about-gatsby">About Gatsby</h3>
<a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.org/">Gatsby</a> is a web development framework that brings together all the best, modern ways to build on the web. Specifically designed to help frontend engineers leverage the advantages of cloud native architecture, Gatsby provides the most collaborative, secure, and performant way to build websites with access to a broad ecosystem of tools and enhancements via easy to setup integrations. Used by Fortune 500 companies including ButcherBox, Capital One, DraftKings, IBM, and Impossible Foods, the company is backed by Index Ventures, CRV, Trinity Ventures, Dig Ventures, Mango Capital, Fathom Capital, and prominent angel investors.
<h3 id="about-contentstack">About Contentstack</h3>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/">Contentstack</a> is a headless SaaS Content Experience Platform (DXP) that enables enterprises to manage content across all digital channels. The preferred API-first CMS for SAP customers, Contentstack was designed from the ground up for large-scale, complex, and mission-critical deployments. Contentstack is a founding member of the MACH Alliance, an industry organization that advocates for an open and best-of-breed enterprise technology ecosystem that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native and Headless.

Contentstack and Gatsby Announce Partnership to Power Ultra-Fast Websites with Headless CMS

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Optimizely Partners with Google Cloud to Take Experimentation to the Next Level

Bloomreach and Exponea Announce Strategic Partnership to Energize Digital Commerce Experiences

SEMrush and Yoast Partner to Enhance WordPress SEO and Digital Marketing

Contentstack and Gatsby Announce Partnership to Power Ultra-Fast Websites with Headless CMS

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