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Sanity says CMSes are broken. Is its 'Content Operating System' the next evolutionary step?

matt-garrepy

<hr /> When I spoke to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathias-biilmann-christensen-a5a3805/">Mathias Billman</a> recently, the word sanity popped up more than once during our conversation. It wasn’t an off-color reference to the chaos of our modern digital ecosystem, but the evocation of a content management tool that frequently rides alongside <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/netlify">Netlify</a> – a leading web development platform he co-founded. Of course, this is logical. <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sanity">Sanity</a> (I'm referring to the application) offers a number of integrations and connectors for Netlify. But more importantly, Billman is an angel investor in the platform, a clear indicator that he sees Sanity as a transformative resource for composable stacks – where its novel vision as a Content Operating System is proving its value.To its credit, Sanity has carved out a unique position for itself, focusing on content as structured data and cultivating a tacit developer-centricity. It has also earned its place as a trusted solution for big global players like Figma, Puma, AT&amp;T, and Burger King, further validating its impact as enterprises strive for faster, more composable ways to power their digital experiences at scale. The run-up has been solid for Sanity. In 2021, the company <a target="_blank" href="https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/24/sanity-raises-39m-for-its-use-anywhere-approach-to-content-repositories/">closed on a $39 million Series B</a> that heralded its vision for extensible content repositories (and also brought its total raise to nearly $52 million). A year later, they were forging strategic partnerships with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sanity.io/blog/shopify-invests-in-sanity-connecting-commerce-with-content">the likes of Shopify</a>, nurturing its value across commerce channels. Competition has certainly swelled over the last two years, but Sanity has remained steadfast around its central mission while evolving its messaging. As Sanity proclaims, content is the competitive differentiator for brands, and its <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sanity.io/">Sanity Content Operating System</a> is purpose-built to deliver on that proposition. The platform’s composition of composable APIs with a customizable workspace – along with its Content Lake storage and distribution – provides an elegant model that its peers don't offer (at least not in the same construct). Given the success of its longtail vision and the christening of its Content Operating System, the company is doubling down on the next phase of its evolution. Last week, Sanity announced that it has onboarded the complete team behind <a target="_blank" href="http://begin.com">Begin.com</a> – a company specializing in deploying full-stack web apps to <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/aws">AWS</a>. If you’re not familiar, Begin was also responsible for creating popular open source frameworks like Architect (<a target="_blank" href="https://github.com/architect">go check it out on Github</a>).Buying Begin’s mindshare is a strategic move, one that reinforces Sanity’s mission to better enable developers and digital leaders. It also deepens its goal of helping customers rethink how they use content and technology to drive growth, particularly at a time when tech budgets are being heavily scrutized around the value quotient. Begin’s CEO, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianleroux/">Brian Leroux</a>, seemed bullish about his company’s synthesis with Sanity, and noted in the company’s press release that he sees “a lot of untapped potential in how content can be used.”Sanity's Content Lake, introduced in 2018, disrupted the content management landscape by providing a central hub for integration across channels and platforms. This ignited some early gains for the platform’s offerings, particularly as composability shifted into high gear. Despite the realization of content automation for many of its customers, the full potential of automation has remained, as Leroux pointed out, relatively untapped. With the addition of Begin, Sanity hopes to accelerate its innovation and attain new levels of performance. The Begin team brings deep experience in developing powerful compute and automation capabilities – attributes that will be critical to reducing manual workloads and streamlining content processes. I had a chance to talk with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnushillestad">Magnus Hillestad</a>, co-founder and CEO of Sanity, about his plans for Begin. It's worth noting that Hillestad is an ex-finance and private equity guy turned tech start-up leader, thus bringing more of the traditional commercial optics to the founder's role. This is a distinct advantage for the company, one that undoubtedly contributed to its successful capital raising. Aside from the foundational benefits of force multiplying Sanity’s innovation resources, it’s clear that a central impact for customers is greater resiliency and agility in the face of widespread technological change."The Begin team joining us marks a transformative moment for Sanity and for what our customers can expect going forward," he said. “By combining their expertise in compute and modern app deployments with our vision for an automated, resilient content operating system, we're redefining what's possible in content management. This powerful synergy will unlock unprecedented levels of efficiency and innovation for our customers, propelling industries like e-commerce, media and technology into a new era of content operations.”<h3 id="where-to-begin?-with-an-automation-end-game">Where to Begin? With an automation end game</h3>Sanity has been challenging the status quo of content management since coming online in 2018. Sanity’s core philosophy – reflected in its Content Operating System platform – flips the standard CMS narrative by treating content as data, and by connecting and automating systems beyond its central hub. This shift in perception also allows teams to treat content as a more strategic asset for their business.From a developer perspective, the addition of Begin’s resources will provide a number of benefits. This includes the addition of powerful compute resources, giving users the ability to scale extensible content distribution systems with embedded automation.Begin’s heritage as an AWS development house was certainly a key part of the acquisition appeal. By absorbing a cohort of expertise with proven success deploying web apps to the world’s leading cloud, Sanity hoped to imbue its features with next-level scalability – all while mitigating the headaches associated with deploying apps on Sanity.  “The Begin Team's experience building within a 'cloud hyperscaler' environment provides substantial value to our customers through the development of powerful compute capabilities,” he said, “which simplifies the way they build complex content automations. The goal is to enable our customers to easily deploy content operations applications directly on the Sanity Content Operating System, abstracting away much of the complexity.” Hillestad went on to explain that many of Sanity’s customers are setting up content operations applications in their own cloud environments. Given this vector, he believes Sanity can provide a better developer experience by offering an abstracted compute layer, giving customers the option to leverage Sanity for their automation and content ops needs while still allowing direct cloud integrations where needed. “Ultimately, by leveraging the Begin team's capabilities, we aim to empower the same developers who have become superstars at building content workflows in Sanity Studio to also excel at deploying content operations and automation on our platform,” he said. Another stated focus for the Begin team will be the delivery of content infrastructure as code. This will manifest in more powerful tools that help users develop, deploy, and manage advanced content pipelines with greater ease and efficacy.  <h3 id="what-about-content-marketers?">What about content marketers?</h3>As previously noted, Sanity has carved out a reputation for being “developer-friendly.” That might translate to “requires code” for the gaggle of CMS users hungry for less cumbersome, more drag-and-drop-oriented solutions with composable propensities. Many of the now “legacy” headless CMS tools are endeavoring to differentiate their value through visual editing tools. Sanity is already addressing this side of content ops ledger with <a target="_blank" href="https://www.sanity.io/studio">Sanity Studio</a>, which enables a host of visual features like customizable components and block content editing, as well as collaboration and workspace capabilities. On the automation front, it even sports things like intelligent image cropping and scaling. <figure class="image image-style-align-center image_resized" style="width:72.78%"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2024/11/sanity-collaboration-screenshot.jpg" alt="" /></figure>A mockup of collaboration features in Sanity Studio At the same time, the company maintains a clear pipeline back to the developers with Sanity Studio, allowing users to connect a production-ready content backend to an application. Studio’s customization framework allows for the development of unique content forms, workflows, validation, workspaces, and more – all built using modern web dev patterns that make the journey easier and more efficient. <hr /><h4 style="text-align:center">"The real win is in enabling tighter collaboration between developers and the rest of the content organization to deliver better digital experiences.”</h4><hr /> I wanted to know how Sanity’s investment in Begin would translate into greater value for the broader content operations model – vis-à-vis the marketers and editors driving the content itself. The amplification of compute resources and cloud dimensions are more the domain of DevOps; aside from impacting speed and productivity for editors, what other gains might be on the horizon?As Hillestad pointed out, the acquisition of Begin will take Sanity’s developer offerings to the next level, but the organizational benefits will be very tangible for non-developers as well. “While it's true that Sanity has always put a strong emphasis on being developer-friendly, the benefits of this approach extend far beyond the developer experience,” Hillestad said. “We believe that the most advanced organizations empower their skilled engineers to enable efficient, scalable content operations that drive impactful storytelling.”How will they deliver on this? By enabling content operations within the same system, thus reducing context switching between tools. As Hillestad explained, content strategists and product managers will have an easier path to integrating all related content and data directly into their single source of truth – enabling that richer storytelling potential. “So while speed and productivity gains are certainly part of the equation, the real win is in enabling tighter collaboration between developers and the rest of the content organization to deliver better digital experiences.”<h3 id="what-about-ai?">What about AI?</h3>While the acquisition of Begin is a big deal for Sanity, there’s been significant AI investment from all corners of the CMS landscape. Given its ambitions to evolve the Content Operating System to new levels of performance, I asked Hillestad how is AI playing into his plans – and if Begin’s proximity to <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/aws">AWS</a> and its <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwvpy5BhDTARIsAHSilyn-dmseaMQpjDac_WRX0C1ov1es3fdfHFLRdjXEB0OHW_Z7dLGkATIaAjRmEALw_wcB&amp;trk=0eaabb80-ee46-4e73-94ae-368ffb759b62&amp;sc_channel=ps&amp;ef_id=Cj0KCQjwvpy5BhDTARIsAHSilyn-dmseaMQpjDac_WRX0C1ov1es3fdfHFLRdjXEB0OHW_Z7dLGkATIaAjRmEALw_wcB:G:s&amp;s_kwcid=AL!4422!3!692006004682!e!!g!!aws%20bedrock!21048268554!159639952735">Amazon Bedrock</a> or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.anthropic.com/">Anthropic</a> services might be an advantage.  “AI is indeed a significant part of our plans going forward, and the Begin team will play a key role in making AI capabilities more accessible to developers on our platform,” he said. “Sanity already offers several AI-powered tools for our users, leveraging services like <a target="_blank" href="https://openai.com/">OpenAI</a>, Anthropic, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.pinecone.io/">Pinecone</a>. With the addition of the Begin team, we will make it even easier for developers to build their own custom AI functions and workflows on top of our platform.” As Sanity further develops its AI offerings, Hillestad forecast that it plans to support a wide range of AI services and large language models to give its customers maximum flexibility. “The Begin team's expertise in building developer abstractions will be invaluable as we work to make these powerful AI capabilities more approachable and integrated into the Sanity ecosystem.”<h3 id="why-it-matters">Why it matters</h3>In a marketplace of increasingly commoditized headless offerings, Sanity continues to establish differentiated value with its niche position as a Content Operating System. As it onboards the experience and resources of Begin, it is further investing in a growth angle that will enhance automation, scalability, and performance – perhaps in profound ways. Still, Sanity’s greatest strength could be its main detractor. Developer reliance is part of the resistance for marketing organizations when adopting new tools, and decisions are being driven by composable technologies that now offer a complete range of features that enable editor independence. This is where a developer-centric perception can be a limiting factor. That said, Sanity is effectively bridging the gap. Sanity Studio is the best example of its unification potential, and already provides robust capabilities that stand apart from a UX perspective. While Begin’s cloud and compute resources will inject more integrative fabric into the platform, it would be smart to see equal attention paid to further enhancing the editor experience.Partnering with Netlify and other development platforms is also a key benefit in Sanity’s favor. By expanding its connector libraries and reducing the barriers to entry, it can accelerate content velocity for users and brands as part of a go-to composable stack. Relying on these channels will be key to enhancing visibility and preference. Of course, choice is the biggest challenge for every player on the CMS chessboard. But Sanity has managed to build a solid foundation of differentiation, one that could serve it well as it looks to grow. Adding these new resources is a great way to begin its next chapter.  <hr /> <img style="width:29.58%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2024/01/cms-kickoff-2025-logo.png" /><h4 id="cms-kickoff-2025"><a href=" https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff25">CMS Kickoff 2025</a></h4>January 14-15, 2025 – Tampa Bay Area, FloridaJoin us next January in the Tampa Bay area of Florida for the third annual CMS Kickoff – the industry's premier global event. Similar to a traditional kickoff, we reflect on recent trends and share stories from the frontlines. Additionally, we will delve into the current happenings and shed light on the future. Prepare for an unparalleled in-person CMS conference experience that will equip you to move things forward. This is an exclusive event – space is limited, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff25/tickets">so secure your tickets today.</a>

Sanity Acquires Begin Team, Aims to Accelerate the Evolution of its Content Operating System 

<a href="https://vercel.com/" target="_blank">Vercel</a>, the cloud platform for frontend developers, has released a new tool called <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/workflow-collaboration/visual-editing" target="_blank">Visual Editing</a> – designed to help frontend developers and marketers create and edit content directly on the Vercel site. These changes can then be synchronized and sent back to a user’s headless CMS without ever opening it.
The feature is being launched with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sanity-raises-39-million-focuses-growth-on-content-as-data-for-transformative-digital-experiences/">Sanity</a>, and its current version is in a limited private beta for Sanity CMS enterprise users.
<h2>Experience live changes instantly</h2>
Unlike a monolithic digital experience platform where users typically make content changes in a one-size-fits-all WYSIWYG editor, tech stacks with a headless CMS may find it difficult to find and edit content from the decoupled architecture. This is especially true for content-heavy marketing teams without the technical expertise to rely on a headless system.
With Visual Editing, each team can visually see the content they’d like to edit in an easy-to-use and easy-to-connect editor – and watch live edits be imported into the headless CMS. Marketing teams will no longer have to rely on developers to make changes, freeing up resources for both teams.
Activating this new feature is meant to be seamless. From a <a href="https://vercel.com/blog/visual-editing" target="_blank">Vercel blog article</a> announcing the tool, implementing Visual Editing with Sanity's modern CMS does not require any changes to how a site is programmed. CMS providers can simply add an additional argument when calling a CMS API, and visual editing becomes available.
<h2>Focus on user experience</h2>
Vercel has made many strides to enhance the user experience, including <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/concepts/incremental-static-regeneration/overview" target="_blank">Incremental Static Regeneration</a>, which allows users to create or update content without redeploying a site. Another feature called <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/concepts/deployments/preview-deployments" target="_blank">Preview Deployments</a> allows users to preview changes in an app during live deployment without merging changes to a Git project’s production branch. A tool called <a href="https://vercel.com/docs/workflow-collaboration/comments">Comments</a> was added recently to allow teams and invited participants to leave direct feedback.
Each change marks a new level of sophistication in providing users the tools they need to edit content quickly and without the constant starting and stopping often documented by any large content team in charge of deploying multiple sites or massive quantities of content.
<h2>What’s next for Vercel?</h2>
With many recent changes dedicated to improving user experience and actively deployed features that cement that commitment, there appears to be a lot of interesting innovation on the horizon. The announcement of its latest product feature has already delighted customers, marketers, and developers alike, even while still in beta. 
It's worth noting that Vercel is an <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230404006070/en/Vercel-Expands-its-Cloud-Offering-to-AWS-Marketplace-and-Joins-AWS-ISV-Accelerate-Program" target="_blank">AWS partner</a> and a <a href="https://machalliance.org/newsroom/MACH-Alliance-Announces-New-Members-Capgemini-Sitoo-and-Vercel" target="_blank">member</a> of the MACH Alliance, a nonprofit organization committed to expanding MACH (microservices, API-first, cloud-native SaaS, and headless) architecture.
<h2>About Vercel</h2>
Vercel is the cloud platform for frontend developers, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration. By providing the toolkit frontend teams love, Vercel unlocks developer potential and enables you to go from idea to global application in seconds. Vercel enables customers like Under Armour, Nintendo, The Washington Post, and Zapier to build delightful user experiences on the Web.
<h2>About Sanity</h2>
Sanity is the platform for structured content that lets teams build exceptional digital experiences. By treating content as data, modern organizations use our APIs to build optimal editing workflows and share content between systems to increase digital velocity. Our mission is to be the most versatile system for creating and distributing digital content to any device, application or channel. Dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Oslo, Norway, Sanity is used by thousands of companies including Unilever, Puma, National Geographic, and Condé Nast. Learn more at <a href="https://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sanity.io%2F&amp;esheet=52763704&amp;newsitemid=20220628005411&amp;lan=en-US&amp;anchor=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sanity.io&amp;index=8&amp;md5=f5b2de497d993d89c1f5d03eadc1fb60" target="_blank">http://www.sanity.io</a>.

Vercel Launches New Visual Editing Feature with Sanity CMS

mk-patterson

As fireworks pocked the night skies across the U.S. this past weekend (a celebratory signal that summer has arrived), we had a chance to reflect on a busy June. Needless to say, it was a scorcher – especially in the CMS and DXP sector. Once again, we saw platform vendors holding major events around the globe, with several piling up on one another. 
One standout we covered at the very end of May was <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/reflections-from-sanitys-structured-content-2022-conference/">Sanity's Structured Content 2022 Conference</a>, which offered some unique perspectives on the position of content as data. The substance was unique, relatable, and truly applicable to attendees – with some terrific keynotes from the likes of Dirk Voetberg from Spotify, Kusum Kanwar from Shopify, and Carrie Hane from Sanity. We took a snapshot of the event's sessions, which were held live in San Francisco and virtually in Oslo and London. Definitely worth checking out. 
While economic uncertainty continued to obscure the horizon for enterprise software vendors, companies like Strapi bucked the trend by <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/strapi-secures-31-million-in-series-b-funding-plans-to-enhance-open-source-headless-cms-and-deliver-cloud-platform/">securing $31 million in Series B funding</a> to enhance its headless CMS. We also tracked <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/visual-content-management-platform-boom-acquires-visual-production-company-lemonone/">acquisition news from BOOM</a>, a visual content management platform, as it announced the purchase of LemonOne – a visual production vendor. Along with updates from <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/craftercms-releases-version-4-0-adds-api-powered-git-capabilities-and-composable-features/">CrafterCMS</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/proventus-as-announces-release-of-relatude-cms-and-e-commerce-version-6/">Relatude CMS</a>, it was a busy 30 days.
As always, there were a few more stories sizzling on the backburner – right next to your hot dogs and burgers. So grab an ice-cold lemonade, light up a sparkler, and keep reading...
<h2>Shopify invests in Sanity, connecting commerce with content</h2>
We've already mentioned Sanity's fantastic Structured Content 2022 event, but the news doesn't end there. In June, the content platform <a href="https://www.sanity.io/blog/shopify-invests-in-sanity-connecting-commerce-with-content" target="_blank">announced</a> a partnership with <a href="https://shopify.com" target="_blank">Shopify</a> that includes a strategic investment from the e-commerce juggernaut. Sanity is the first CMS partner to launch an app for Shopify’s headless commerce framework, <a href="https://hydrogen.shopify.dev/" target="_blank">Hydrogen</a>, and is Shopify’s only public investment in a content platform company to date. The combo will offer Shopify’s millions of merchants new capabilities to improve shopping experiences by significantly "inspiring" product and brand content. 
As noted previously, Sanity approaches content from a unique angle by treating content as data. At the same time, storytelling lies at the heart of Sanity's vision – something that permeated the themes of its Structured Content 2022 event. One of the conference keynotes featured Kusum Kanwar, Senior Product Lead at Shopify, who talked about how content makes commerce "human." Both companies share a common focus on this expanded value of content – and now, by joining forces, Shopify and Sanity aim to bring commerce and content together so merchants can tell their stories, inspire audiences, and flexibly adapt product information, brand assets, and other content faster than ever. 
Shopify’s investment codifies Sanity’s potential as a complementary resource for sellers. The <a href="https://www.sanity.io/shopify" target="_blank">Sanity Connect </a>for Shopify app was purpose-built to operate with Shopify’s headless commerce stack, which features both Hydrogen and Oxygen. Armed with these capabilities, merchants building custom storefronts on Shopify can also deploy immersive product content with rich media, embed product content on external channels, enable one-click ordering anywhere on a website, orchestrate promotions to email and social media, and much more.
 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/07/dotcms-image.jpg" alt="Image of dotCMS logo over a screen shot of the CMS user interface" />
<h2>dotCMS unveils major updates to its content authoring experience</h2>
<a href="https://www.dotcms.com/" target="_blank">dotCMS</a>, a leading hybrid-headless content management system, has <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/company/news/dotcms-unveils-major-updates-to-the-content-authoring-experience" target="_blank">announced</a> the latest edition of its platform. The new update includes a drag-and-drop content palette and story-like block editor, along with other enhancements to the overall content authoring experience. These product enhancements come on the heels of what dotCMS calls its "best year yet" in 2021, with that momentum driving a positive outlook for 2022.
In an effort to remain nimble around digital transformation, enterprise organizations are embracing <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-releases-study-on-adoption-of-mach-technologies-by-tech-leaders-qa-with-sonja-keerl/" target="_blank">MACH architecture and composability</a>. While microservices-based headless architecture brings many benefits and allows developers a great deal of freedom, brands cannot ignore the needs of their content authors – who are often forgotten in the shift to headless. 
The new dotCMS drag-and-drop content palette makes page building easier and improves the flow of content editing. In addition, the <a href="https://www.dotcms.com/docs/latest/changelogs" target="_blank">latest LTS version of dotCMS (22.03)</a> features a JSON-Based Content Store and improved content search results. 
<h2>Acquia Partners with Workato to power enterprise connectivity to Acquia CDP</h2>
<a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">Acquia</a>, a leading digital experience platform, announced a partnership with integration and workflow automation platform <a href="https://www.workato.com/" target="_blank">Workato</a> to power enterprise connectivity to the <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud/customer-data-platform" target="_blank">Acquia Customer Data Platform (CDP)</a>. Organizations can integrate Acquia CDP with hundreds of external cloud services via secure, enterprise-grade APIs through out-of-the-box connectors.
With Workato-powered integrations like this (and others), marketers can achieve a faster path to connectivity with the services they already use. As a part of the <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud" target="_blank">Acquia Marketing Cloud</a> platform, Acquia CDP enables marketers to aggregate and activate data from technologies of their choice into a unified, 360-degree customer profile. From there, marketers can use Acquia CDP to orchestrate personalized, AI-powered campaigns across the entire omnichannel customer journey.
 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/07/wpe-img-chianti-1024x512-v01.png" alt="Image of WP Engine plugins from Delicious Brains" />
<h2>WP Engine acquires popular Delicious Brains WordPress plugins, including developer favorite Advanced Custom Fields</h2>
<a href="https://wpengine.com/" target="_blank">WP Engine</a>, a leading <a href="https://wordpress.org/" target="_blank">WordPress</a> digital experience platform for websites and apps, <a href="https://wpengine.com/blog/wp-engine-acquires-delicious-brains-plugins-including-advanced-custom-fields/" target="_blank">announced</a> it will acquire five of the most popular developer-centric tools for WordPress from <a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/" target="_blank">Delicious Brains</a> – strengthening the company’s offerings for both traditional and headless managed WordPress. 
The plugins have a total installed base of approximately 4 million users and are widely adopted by WP Engine’s customers. The acquired software includes <a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/" target="_blank">WP Migrate</a>, <a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-offload-media/" target="_blank">WP Offload Media</a>, <a href="https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-offload-ses/" target="_blank">WP Offload SES</a>, <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-search-replace/" target="_blank">Better Search Replace</a>, and a preferred developer go-to called <a href="https://www.advancedcustomfields.com/" target="_blank">Advanced Custom Fields</a> (ACF).
The acquisition of these widely-used WordPress plugins will expand WP Engine’s portfolio of market-leading developer tools, including WP Engine’s <a href="https://localwp.com/" target="_blank">Local</a>, the #1 Local WordPress development tool; <a href="https://wpengine.com/genesis/" target="_blank">Genesis</a>, the #1 WordPress theme framework; and <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/atlas-content-modeler/" target="_blank">Atlas Content Modeler</a>, which simplifies the development process of creating content models for headless WordPress sites.

CMS Monthly Recap: Shopify Invests in Sanity, dotCMS Updates Content Authoring Experience, WP Engine Acquires Plugins, and More

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Monthly Recap with fireworks in background

Reflections from Sanity's Structured Content 2022 Conference

paris-tuzun

Image of Structured Content logo against yellow background

Summer is (almost) here in the Northern Hemisphere, and headless is heating up. 
Right on the heels of Netlify's <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-to-host-headless-commerce-summit-for-talks-on-building-world-class-e-commerce-experiences/" target="_blank">Headless Commerce Summit</a>, Sanity – a unified content platform for powering digital experiences – is hosting a unique conference that's focused on structured content. It should come as no surprise that the company's inaugural shindig has been aptly named "Structured Content," and will offer a global experience to content professionals at multiple levels across the industry. 
The event will provide live access at three locations in the U.S. and Europe: San Francisco from May 24 - 25,  and London and Oslo from May 25 - 26. If a live event isn't in the cards, you can also <a href="https://hopin.com/events/structured-content-2022" target="_blank">watch the conference online for free</a> during the San Francisco sessions. 
While this might be Sanity's first foray with a conference of this kind, the company managed to attract some heavy hitters to sponsor its dance card, including <a href="https://www.netlify.com/" target="_blank">Netlify</a>, <a href="https://vercel.com/" target="_blank">Vercel</a>, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/" target="_blank">Shopify</a>, and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/gatsby-unveils-v3-0-cloud-hosting-and-more-at-gatsbyconf-2021/">Gatsby</a>. According to <a href="https://www.sanity.io/" target="_blank">Sanity</a>, the three-day conference is expected to have more than 2,000 content strategists, engineers, marketers, and designers in attendance. Not too shabby for a first outing – and a testament to the platform's growing presence in the content space. 
To be clear, Structured Content is not a Sanity-focused event. This distinction is summed up quite elegantly by <a href="https://structuredcontent.live/speakers/carrie-hane" target="_blank">Carrie Hane</a>, Sanity's Head of Content Strategy Relations: "Structured Content 2022 is not a Sanity user conference. It’s not about our product. This is what we hope is the beginning of a movement. We created this event to educate and inspire the entire cross-disciplinary community of people who work on digital experiences."
<div>
<h2>What to expect at Structured Content 2022</h2>
</div>
According to the event's website, the program schedule includes a variety of workshops about structured content design, presentations about the future of digital experience, workshops on how organizations can harness structured content, and so much more. Some of the most noteworthy include: 
<ul>
<li>“The Future of Digital Experience Will Be Powered by Structured Content”</li>
<li>“Bridging Disciplines with Structured Content”</li>
<li>“How Publishing Organizations Harness Structured Content to Power Editorial Experiences”</li>
<li>“Design and Structured Content: Where We Are, Where We Could Go”</li>
<li>“Reflections on the Future of the Web”</li>
<li>“Content Makes Commerce Human”</li>
</ul>
"We’ve put together <a href="https://structuredcontent.live/program" target="_self">14 wide-ranging sessions</a> about the benefits of structured content, fresh approaches to solving problems, and thoughts on what the future holds for us as both consumers and creators of digital experiences.," said Hane. "You’ll discover new ways of thinking about the potential of content and what it can accomplish."
And that's just scratching the surface. Check out the whole program at<a href="https://structuredcontent.live/program" target="_blank"> https://structuredcontent.live/program</a>. 
<h2>So what exactly is "structured content," anyway?</h2>
While we have you here, let's get this whole "structured content" thing straight.  
One of the best analogies we've seen for explaining structured content is Legos. Just like the toy that everyone loves to tinker with, structured content is broken down into independent, reusable components, accessed from a single source of truth – and planned in a technologically-agnostic way. Structured content can be used across channels and delivered through APIs, and it's easier to prototype and iterate with – making development faster and easier.
As a platform, Sanity is uniquely designed for structured content. In addition to being open-source, API-based, and headless, the company has pioneered an entirely new approach to building websites with structured content as the mechanism for building pages. 
Sanity positions itself as a "fast-growing alternative to the traditional CMS." What makes Sanity different is that it treats content as data. By storing resources in its <a href="https://www.sanity.io/docs/datastore" target="_blank">Sanity Content Lake</a>, organizations can effectively "de-silo" their content – making it available for both collaboration and global distribution. By leveraging APIs, users can manage their text, images, and other media in a unified platform and build engaging digital experiences in real-time.
At CMS Critic, we talk about <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/headless/">headless</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/">headless CMSes</a> quite a bit. What's interesting about Sanity is that it combines the power of a headless CMS with structured content, so its offerings go beyond the typical headless CMS. In fact, the company wrote a <a href="https://www.sanity.io/blog/web-developers-headless-cms-structured-content" target="_blank">spicy post</a> about the need to focus on structured content more the headless CMS itself, much to the chagrin of its industry peers. 
<img style="max-width:1000px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/05/traditional-headless-structured-content.webp" alt="Traidional CMS vs Headless CMS vs Structured Content Platform" />
<div> </div>
<div>Structured Content 2022 is next week, and looks to be a solid event. We'll do some follow-up on the other side. In the meantime, <a href="https://structuredcontent.live/" target="_blank">register to attend live or online. </a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>You should also check out<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sanity-raises-39-million-focuses-growth-on-content-as-data-for-transformative-digital-experiences/" target="_blank"> our interview with the Sanity founder and CEO, Magnus Hillstead</a>, where he shared some of his views on the CMS market and the value of being headless.</div>
<div> </div>
<h2>About Sanity</h2>
<a href="https://www.sanity.io/" target="_blank">Sanity</a> is the platform for structured content that en0ables teams to build exceptional digital experiences. By treating content as data, modern organizations use Sanity’s APIs to build optimal editing workflows and share content between systems to increase digital velocity.
Sanity’s unique model for orchestrating content is used by more than 100,000 developers at major brands like Conde Nast, Nike, Unilever, and Cloudflare. They use Sanity to shape and mold content to build multimedia-rich experiences both for their public-facing brand and the way customers experience their products and services firsthand. Our mission is to be the most versatile system for creating and distributing digital content to any device, application, or channel.

Sanity to Host Structured Content 2022 Conference in U.S., Europe, and Online

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<h4>In our exclusive Q&amp;A with Sanity founder and CEO Magnus Hillstead, we discuss the current state of the CMS market, the advantages of headless, and what's ahead for the structured content platform. </h4>
<hr />
After a year of hyper-accelerated digital transformation, the content world might feel a little, well… unruly.
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, companies feverishly raced to adapt in a contactless, eCommerce-driven economy, experiencing a decade of acceleration in a matter of months – an effect <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/five-fifty-the-quickening">McKinsey</a> christened as "The Quickening."
At the same time, the reliance on content has exploded. Now, with billions of websites and apps floating in the ether, the task of managing dynamic content and digital experiences across a growing multitude of screens and endpoints has become nearly insurmountable.
But the aptly-named <a href="https://www.sanity.io/">Sanity</a> – a San Francisco/Oslo-based SaaS startup – is betting that their innovative platform for structured content will help bring calm to the chaos.
Today, the company announced that it has raised $39 million in Series B funding, becoming the latest venture in the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/tag/headless-cms/">headless CMS</a> and DXP ecosystem to acquire significant investment in recent months. In fact, they just completed their Series A in October of 2020 <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/14/sanity-a-platform-to-build-and-manage-content-flows-on-sites-raises-9-3m-from-ev-williams-threshold-and-more/">for $9.3 million</a>, codifying the confidence around their growth potential.
Over the past year, Sanity has tripled its customer base and doubled its revenues while broadening a portfolio of notable brands, including Unilever, National Geographic, Figma, and others. The company has also doubled the size of its team in the same timeframe.
<h2>A compelling stable of investors</h2>
Founded in 2018, Sanity has experienced a meteoric rise with some impressive investment. This latest round, led by <a href="https://iconiqgrowth.com/">ICONIQ Growth</a> – with additional venture capital from <a href="https://leadedge.com/">Lead Edge Capital</a>, <a href="https://threshold.vc/">Threshold Ventures</a>, <a href="https://www.heavybit.com/">Heavybit</a>, and <a href="https://allianceventure.com/">Alliance Venture</a> – brings Sanity’s total funding to a tidy $51.8 million.
It’s worth noting that ICONIQ Growth General Partner <a href="http://www.pepperspectives.com/p/about-doug-pepper.html">Doug Pepper</a> has joined the board, codifying the overall confidence in their growth potential. Pepper was the first investor in <a href="https://business.adobe.com/products/marketo/adobe-marketo.html">Marketo</a> before its acquisition by <a href="https://www.adobe.com/">Adobe</a> for $4.75 billion in 2018 and has a track record of early bets on strong B2B software players like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/canva-button-gives-cms-users-integrated-graphic-design-tools-for-visual-content/">Canva</a>, <a href="https://www.braze.com/">Braze</a>, <a href="https://www.datadoghq.com/">Datadog</a> and <a href="https://airtable.com/">Airtable</a>.
“Sanity has created the hero product for building innovative product experiences, with an impressive developer-oriented approach to content delivery and a personalized product experience that breaks down silos for content creators, marketing, and developer teams," said Pepper. "We're excited to support the Sanity team as they enter this next phase of growth.”
<h2>Rethinking CMS in a world of siloed data</h2>
One of the biggest challenges facing brands in the digital age is the gap between customer expectations and reality. According to <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/si/en/pages/strategy-operations/articles/changing-consumer-digital-marketing-impact-Covid-19.html">Deloitte</a>, brands face a challenging disconnect as users access multiple touchpoints throughout the purchase experience. While 75% of customers expect consistent experiences, 58% feel like they’re communicating with a number of different divisions – and not one company.
This lack of cohesion is forcing brands to rethink the role of CMS and embrace a new philosophy around content as data. Sanity’s vision to provide structured content comes as businesses look to redefine their digital customer interactions and break the silos that exist across channels.
Sanity positions itself as a “fast-growing alternative to the traditional CMS,” uniquely treating content as data. By storing resources in their <a href="https://www.sanity.io/docs/datastore">Sanity Content Lake</a>, organizations can effectively de-silo their content – making it available for both collaboration and global distribution. By leveraging APIs, users can manage their text, images, and other media in a unified platform and build engaging digital experiences in real-time.
Sanity also enables teams to collaborate on content, design, and code in parallel, allowing them to achieve velocity and ship better products faster. Editors are also able to work more efficiently in customized editing environments built on Sanity’s open source <a href="https://www.sanity.io/docs/sanity-studio">Content Studio</a>, which developers can customize and extend with their own React components.
<h2>Q&amp;A with Magnus Hillstead</h2>
CMS Critic had an opportunity to connect with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/magnushillestad/">Magnus Hillstead</a>, the founder and CEO of Sanity. He shares some of his views on the CMS market, the value of being headless, and what his company is excited about.
<hr />
CMS Critic (CC): How would you describe the overall CMS market in 2021? Where are the gaps from your perspective, and how does Sanity address them?
Magnus Hillstead (MH): In 2021, content is moving beyond websites and mobile applications. Content is reshaping into a web of information that is structured, contextual, and reusable. The CMS industry comes from a web perspective and has partly broadened out to support mobile applications. The rise of JavaScript and new web frameworks has driven a trend of improved customer experience for both marketing and eCommerce. However, as customers are increasingly getting their product experience from digital content, the requirements and opportunities for making amazing customer experiences are growing.
This creates a shift in how organizations work with content. As digital channels become integrated parts of the product experience, the CMS needs to transform to be a part of the product stack and support organizations in extending their product experiences.
We believe that the market has just seen the first increments of a much larger motion. Having content available on an API is table stakes in 2021. Mature digital organizations should require more from their content solutions. Content should no longer be stuck in HTML silos at the edge of organizations, but rather structured, shared and reused across the organization. Organizations should be able to integrate product, customer, and transaction data together with content in order to create better product experiences.
This is the gap Sanity closes. By treating content as data, we fully decouple it from design considerations. Content can be used as a single source of truth for driving product and marketing operations. Rich data models allow faithful integrations of content systems and other data sources, allowing the enrichment and decoration of the content for better customer experiences.
This is what Sanity is all about – high-fidelity data models, real-time event-driven system synchronization, and custom user interfaces for optimal content operations for modern content teams.
<hr />
CC: You mention that Sanity is an alternative to CMS. As an API-driven ecosystem, how would you say Sanity differs from headless CMS platforms?
MH: Sanity treats content as data. Content is structured and programmatically approachable for both reading and writing through real-time APIs. This enables content to be seamlessly interoperated with other sources of truth and used to better express content in context for the various applications and situations organizations communicate to their customers.
Our user interface is open source and meant to be customized and extended by the end-users. Developers can thus create the optimal content model and user interface that the organization needs, fast and with great tools for further development and iteration as their business needs develop.
In a decoupled world, all systems need to be headless, i.e. separate the presentation layer from the content platform. But being headless is not enough. Most headless CMSes are semi-monoliths with code extensions that still treat content as a situation-specific asset, integrating content and design. But they fail to treat content as data and provide a platform that centers around structured content and enables organizations to leverage a programmatic approach to content.
Sanity, therefore, stretches far beyond web content management. We provide a platform for structured content, that enables organizations to treat content as a single source of truth in any application, device, or channel.
By properly separating content from design, you avoid the typical CMS migration every time you want to iterate on your digital surface. Our content platform is meant to be iterated on as your content workflows and digital applications change, without having to rework or migrate the content itself.
<hr />
CC: Would you say Sanity is focused more on the developer as opposed to ContentOps roles, such as marketing?
MH: No, not at all. In fact, Sanity enables developers to create a content platform that bends around the organization, instead of a CMS that the organization has to bend around. This provides much better tools for working with content for the various content creators and organizers.
At Sanity, we believe in finding the general high-level description of what content management systems need to do in organizations. We then carefully express this as high-level APIs that developers can use to build optimal collaborative editing experiences.
Our solution has state-of-the-art multiplayer collaboration, social presence, and per-field rollback where you can see that someone on your team mistakenly changed the hotspot of an image last Wednesday and amend it. All made to enable content creators to collaborate seamlessly as they iterate on content and presentations.
<hr />
CC: As a content platform, how does personalization play into your strategy?
MH: Many of our customers use Sanity to personalize content for their various audiences, and most of the others have plans to do so in the near future.
The rich data models offered by the Sanity Content Lake let content strategists add personalization at exactly the level it is needed. Variants are expressed where you need them, from a single field, to sets of fields to entire documents. As such: personalization is just a special case of content variants like localization or A/B testing.
When it comes to delivering personalization to web users we see a variety of solutions that integrate well with Sanity, from Uniform to Optimizely. Sanity delivers the content and the metadata and seamlessly integrates with such solutions.
<hr />
CC: How are you leveraging AI and automation across your horizon? For example, your asset pipeline and editorial workflows appear to provide some dynamic features. Is AI playing a role here (or elsewhere)?
MH: Sanity is an ideal use case enabled by various forms of AI. As all data is structured and programmatically available, Sanity can handle content and contextual metadata that is key for enabling machine learning.
We do not develop machine learning models for our users out-of-the-box. There is a range of third-party solutions that our users can integrate into their Sanity platform and enable machine learning algorithms on text and images stored in Sanity.
We think that we are only seeing the start of these kinds of solutions and that our key value proposition is to seamlessly integrate with your solution of choice, creating a state-of-the-art platform that enables the best AI for your content.
<hr />
CC: Any innovation on the horizon that you can hint at? What are you most excited about?
MH: We’re excited about a lot of things. We’re excited about how our customers are picking up the idea of content as data and using it to break out of the CMS mode, remove internal silos, and create wider, more holistic digital experiences for their customers. They’re extending their products with digital experiences that drive customer adoption and engagement.
We believe that the world will significantly change its view on what content is and how it should be used in the organization going forward. Content should increasingly be served from a single source of truth and reused across the organization.
We also believe that the future content platform not only powers classic digital presentation layers like web and mobile, but that we will see an increasing use of our content platform as a backend to any application that needs a dynamic, versatile and scalable solution instead of having to build their own in-house.
<h2>About Sanity</h2>
Sanity treats content as data so teams can create transformative digital experiences. Developers use Sanity’s APIs to build optimal editing workflows and share content between systems to increase digital velocity. Our mission is to be the platform for all content - a single place to interconnect, store, author, collaborate, and distribute. Dual-headquartered in San Francisco and Oslo, Norway, Sanity is used by thousands of companies including Unilever, Puma, National Geographic, and Condé Nast. Sanity is backed by ICONIQ Growth, Threshold Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, Heavybit, Alliance Venture, Monochrome Capital, and prominent angel investors like Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams, Netlify co-founder Matthias Biilmann, ex-CEO of Heroku Adam Gross and Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch. Learn more at <a href="http://www.sanity.io">www.sanity.io</a>.

Sanity Raises $39 Million, Focuses Growth on Content as Data for Transformative Digital Experiences

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