Highlights

Sitecore Symposium 2024 was held at the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville from October 15th – 18th
The world-class event featured hundreds of sessions and use cases
Sitecore announced it had surpassed $500M in ARR, carried by strong demand for its XM Cloud
The company unveiled its new Sitecore Stream, an AI-powered service targeted at marketing teams
Sitecore announced that XM Cloud, Content Hub, CDP, and Personalize are now HIPAA-compliant
Customers and partners reflected positive feedback around Sitecore’s announcements and direction

On any given night, you can stand along the gilded stretch of Broadway in downtown Nashville and feel the vibration of greatness.

I’m not talking about the heavenly hum of honkytonk blasting from the bars of the Strip. I mean the echoes of this hallowed ground, the channeling of legends that forever haunt the silvery streets of Music City.

Tune in closely, and you might hear Chet Atkins's electric fingerwork, or spot Elvis swaggering across 17th Street after recording “Just Call Me Lonesome” at Studio B.

As a musician, I have a wanderlust for this place. For the boot-stompin’ and the finger pickin’. The hot chicken and the hot licks. But last week, I was in town for a different kind of tune: Nashville was host to the Sitecore Symposium 2024 Conference – an annual gathering of DX builders, marketing professionals, and business leaders from across its global community.

Symposium was held from October 15th through the 18th at the epic Gaylord Opryland, Nashville’s premier convention center and one of the largest hotels in North America. It’s also a destination for Christmas in October – the halls were already decked, making the conference just a bit more festive. Here's a quick snapshot, which includes some of the tinsel:

Each year, Symposium showcases the company’s latest innovations while featuring customer use cases from global brands. It’s also an opportunity to spotlight its partners and customers with brag-worthy accolades. In fact, this year included a first-ever “Red Jacket” Award, which was presented to Klaus Petersen – a 16-year veteran of the acclaimed Sitecore MVP program.

There are plenty of practical reasons to pick Nashville for an event of this caliber. But there’s something about this city – where a deep musical heritage incubates the next big thing (including Taylor Swift) – that seems perfectly aligned with Sitecore. It is, after all, a company that’s been spinning in the CMS jukebox for longer than most, evolving and even reinventing itself along the way.

And yet, it’s still true to its "core." The theme for this year’s event – Power to Build – crystallized the mission and doubled down on a promise to simplify its central value. With over 100 sessions and more than 40 customer stories revolving around the concept, Symposium catered to its broad mix of technical, marketing, and business attendees looking to build what’s next with AI and more.

I managed several of the main stage performances, during which the company’s senior leadership – including CEO Dave O’Flanagan and COO Eric Stine – presented a roadmap of possibilities with vigor. In true Nashville form, Stine tipped his hat to Dolly Parton while masterfully facilitating the main stage activities (he’s a Tony Award-winning Producer, so performance is in his repertoire).

Sitecore COO Eric Stine on the main stage at Symposium 2024

That’s all great. I’d expect nothing less from a world-class event that features a lively, eye-opening session with motivational speaker Erik Qualman (that was a fantastic talk, BTW). But like any concert or performance, the fans tell the real story – so I tuned my radio towards customers and partners, hoping to hear more of their reaction.

As you might anticipate, there was some static. A few laments and a bit of uncertainty. But overwhelmingly, what I heard and felt was optimism. And as we’re seeing with the recent build-up around Sitecore's ultra-modern XM Cloud SaaS platform, this new music is climbing the charts.

Now that Symposium has wrapped, I thought I would share the five big tracks at the top of my playlist. Consider this a “greatest hits” mix tape from an event that might represent a real turning point for the DXP – one where its community is really singing along.

Track #1: Feel the Heat of XM Cloud

It was impossible to ignore XM Cloud's red-hot roiling throughout the Symposium event. The product was omnipresent, from building next-gen frontends to using GenAI to ease content creation and even leveraging Github Codespaces to accelerate the composable transformation.

Sure, it’s the cloud, so there are modern, composable architectural benefits. But even from a practical editor’s perspective, I’ve seen how the content authoring experience has vastly improved as well. It’s an upgrade to what’s next.

The impact of XM Cloud has been scaling rapidly. As mentioned, O’Flanagan has been on a three-year journey to rewrite his company's music in the key of composable. While the analysts have been mixed on its positioning over the last two years, Sitecore continues to be a fixture on the MQ for DXPs. Next year's grid should be an interesting one given the shifts around composable that are happening across the board.

Earlier this week, we covered Sitecore’s big announcement that it had surpassed $500 million in ARR. Some of this can be attributed to the success of its XM Cloud strategy, which has become the fastest-selling product in the company’s history.

I caught a focused session on the XM Cloud roadmap and where it goes from here, and it’s compelling. More extensible features are on the way, including a new page UI, a marketer’s dashboard, and additional deployment features. The emphasis on well-documented APIs is key, and Sitecore’s product team is tuned into user demand for components, both on the design and development sides.

In my conversation with O’Flanagan, I asked him about the success of XM Cloud. Clearly, having a more composable posture is helping it compete more effectively both upstream and downstream, stoking reaction from its rivals. Last week, Contentstack launched a “Retire the Legacy” campaign that’s laser-targeted at Sitecore, while Optimizely bought out billboards and geofenced the Symposium property with digital ads.

"We’re very passionate about the fact that we have the unique ability to offer our customers choice."

Setting the competitive feather-ruffling aside, I was chiefly interested in how Sitecore would address its existing XP footprint. Many organizations are still running on it, and there are compelling reasons for them to stay put (think regulatory, for example). Despite the enthusiasm for a cloud-native SaaS future, what about these customers?

“We’re very passionate about the fact that we have the unique ability to offer our customers choice,” he said. “They want easier-to-implement solutions that don’t require upgrades. So, with the investment we’ve made to futureproof Sitecore, many of our customers are ready to go there. However, we have thousands of customers that have implemented our XP platform on-premises or in a private cloud, or managed cloud environment, and it has a huge amount of value to them. They trust that technology to deliver on the promise for their customers.”

As O’Flanagan pointed out, hundreds of marketing professionals are using XP with deep customizations and well-defined internal policies. Deciding to move to a next-gen platform is a significant investment, no matter how you slice it.

“It’s very important for us that we’re clear with our customers that we’re going to continue to innovate [on Sitecore XP] and deliver a lot of value. As you heard today, we’re delivering [Sitecore] Stream for XP. That’s a clear statement of intent that we have their backs.”

While customers are getting a ton of value from XM Cloud itself, O’Flanagan alluded to a cohort who are realizing significant value from a hybrid approach, leveraging both their legacy XP and XM Cloud capabilities. This adds further credibility to the company’s approach to progressively guiding customers through choice.

I thought this was a critical point of differentiated value, and an area where Sitecore customers have felt heightened anxiety. Having a top-down commitment from the CEO was a positive way to reinvigorate trust. That’s feeling the heat in a good way.

Track #2: Stream On, Stream On…

AI is no longer a dream for CMS and DXP platforms, but an essential part of the stack – and Sitecore’s continued emphasis on artificial intelligence (they’ve been investing in AI/ML well before ChatGPT was a thing) was clear throughout the event.

There were some practical primers utilizing Gen AI with XM Cloud, and I caught up with Vercel’s CTO, Malte Ubl, to dig a little deeper into how Sitecore is building with its AI SDK and where its v0 generative UI is making a splash.

But of course, the biggest announcement on Wednesday was Sitecore Stream, which was pitched as the fulfillment of the company’s vision for an “Intelligent DXP” – an AI-powered experience that directly answers the pain points faced by enterprise marketing teams.

I had a chance to demo Stream with Gavin Little, Sitecore’s Global Senior Director of Presales, in the event’s main partner pavilion. We’ll do a deeper dive in future articles, but what really stood out for me was the reinforcement of what a next-wave content marketing platform looks like. It endeavors to simplify the complexity marketers face when creating campaigns, delivering personalization, and launching experiences quickly across multiple digital channels.

Sitecore Stream demo at the Sitecore Partner Pavilion

From the AI standpoint, the whole thing is built on Microsoft Azure’s OpenAI Service. It orchestrates a seamless marketer experience across Sitecore solutions, including XM Cloud, Content Hub, and, as mentioned, XP. As Gavin explained, Stream effectively sits on top of Sitecore, filtering down into these different service areas.

The UI is very intuitive, simplifying marketing workflows and supercharging productivity through orchestration, content intelligence, and automated assistance. With brand-aware AI, you get full interoperability across a brand’s existing martech stack, with built-in guardrails to help preserve brand compliance and data privacy by not using your content to train the underlying AI models.

There’s also the presence of generative AI co-pilots that make the whole process feel like a marketing department’s workflow. This helps marketers stay on track with their brand and align with the contents of a “brief” (old-school advertising lingo) as they complete their work.

It’s early days, but this dynamic, high-utility – maybe even dream-worthy – AI offering promises a clear productivity booster. Sitecore has piloted it with Nestlé in a public use case, where the solution is helping to streamline and facilitate the company’s global brand and category knowledge. You can check out more here.

Track #3: Learning to Fly with Composable

One of the best attributes of composability is its support of multichannel and omnichannel applications. As a CMS practitioner who goes way back, I’ve toiled through the transformation of SOAP to REST and struggled to connect modules and entities to a myriad of endpoints through the evolving fabric of APIs. Thankfully, that’s gotten a little easier within modern composable stacks, which are architecturally tooled for these ecosystems.

As headless CMSes exploded in popularity, we also saw the opportunity to connect backends to a frontier of devices like wearable tech and the IoT. With the exception of digital commerce, much of this landscape still remains untapped. Most organizations want to be “futureproofed” for other channels, but right now, they typically don’t need it. As Deane Barker of Valtech once observed in a podcast, most brands only rely on their web channel – and having a really solid web API is more than enough.

But then you see what United Airlines is doing, and it blows your mind.

A Fortune 100 company with over 103,000 employees worldwide, United was featured as a premier customer use case. The presentation zeroed in on the digital signage in airports that help deliver United’s “future traveler” experience. The session also reached beyond signage, detailing how Sitecore’s solutions are powering United’s global portals, websites, and even the company’s intranet.

Working closely with Americaneagle.com – a leading partner in the Sitecore ecosystem – United laid out a progressive journey to composable over a two-year period, with XM Cloud as the cornerstone. Charlie Hong, United’s digital signage product owner, discussed the many challenges and opportunities along the composable path while digging into value of Personalize and CDP for powering experiences.

United Airlines and Americaneagle.com people talking on stage at Sitecore Symposium

Charlie Hong and LaRiss Connett Moore of United Airlines with Jon Price of Americaneagle.com

There was a more intimate follow-up session, during which Hong was joined by LaRissa Connett Moore, United’s customer strategy and innovation manager. I happened to grab lunch with Moore prior to the panel, and she talked about the flexibility required to meet changing conditions and how travelers rely on these kiosks and signs for vital updates.

“When skies are blue, and everything is on time, it’s easy,” she remarked. “But when cancellations and delays happen, it’s critical for customers to understand what’s happening and what the solution is.”

Delivering personalized information through this specific channel isn’t novel. But doing it at such a massive scale – with 5,000 displays and a handful of dedicated employees – is nothing short of impressive. According to Hong and Moore, Sitecore has enabled their team to “fail fast” and partner on innovation, all while being supported by the right feedback loop for iterating.

Features like personalized wayfinding and translated content have also made the self-service signage more productive for United and its remote agents, who struggle to meet customer needs on the ground (we all know there’s usually one person manning the desk at the gate).

I love a successful channel application that goes beyond the web. It’s inspiring and really opens up the possibilities. Based on United’s use case, I learned that one company is now considering digital signage to share on-site compliance and safety information with employees across different geographies.

Content management is more than just websites. United is demonstrating how Sitecore is enabling a composable pathway with loads of futureproofed value. That said, the success lies in the details – and learning to the fly with the right partners is what keeps you from free fallin.’

Track #4: It’s Hip to be HIPAA Compliant

“It’s a big f’ing deal.”

That’s what Rick Heron, Chief Experience Officer at Western Health Advantage, said on stage during Sitecore’s HIPAA compliance announcement.

The reaction is spot on. As COO Eric Stine explained during the morning session (to much fanfare), Sitecore’s gamut of DXP component products – XM Cloud, Content Hub, CDP, and Personalize – have all been independently audited to achieve HIPAA status.

This is a strategic milestone for Sitecore. The company can now deliver a next-gen DXP to regulated industries – allowing healthcare organizations to overcome any previous obstacles to adopting Sitecore and choosing powerful, flexible, best-of-breed solutions to create engaging, personalized, and secure digital experiences.

Why is this big news? Because HIPAA – the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act – has become an essential benchmark for software technologies serving the highly regulated healthcare space. While many platforms have been successful in satisfying certain baseline dimensions (keeping data encrypted at rest and in motion, for example), few technology vendors have offered HIPAA-ready solutions or an end-to-end compliant DXP like Sitecore now does.

Rick Heron and Eric Stine during the main stage announcement of Sitecore's HIPAA compliance news

Heron was slightly more reserved in the official press release, where he was quoted about the impact of the news. “Sitecore's focus on supporting stringent regulatory standards reinforces the trust we have in their platform as we continue to innovate and deliver digital experiences for our patients."

Sitecore should see numerous addressable opportunities with this achievement, which must have required a significant investment of resources. It’s also another differentiated value that gives it an edge against competitors that aren’t positioned to meet this level of compliance.

Knowing the potential, Sitecore provided additional sessions at Symposium on HIPAA-centric topics, including best practices when creating personalized digital patient experiences and key factors healthcare marketers should consider when modernizing their martech solutions.

No one wants to wrestle with compliance. It’s a drag. But HIPAA exists to protect patient data and reinforce trust – and with Sitecore’s achievement, partners and customer can reduce the surface area for security problems. And that’s always hip.

Track #5: Fans sing the Sitecorian Rhapsody

It’s a fact that Freddy Mercury was a vocal virtuoso. But when all the members of Queen got behind the mics, they made serious magic with their harmonies.

For the partners and customers I spoke to at Symposium this week, there was a similar level of positive harmonizing. It’s a big reason why Sitecore is rockin’ – and might be on a roll.

Of course, there were grievances to air. From what I heard, much of the negativity was tied up around a lack of clarity and transparency. A couple of people even traced their angst back to the Boxever acquisition, a sort of tipping point that upset their previous CDP strategy. And yes, as I’ve heard across the industry, Sitecore has certainly shed customers as composable competitors have upped their game and disrupted old licensing paradigms.

Probably the biggest single issue that surfaced was around XM Cloud and the fate of XP. A few people voiced concerns about the composable emphasis and being left behind. But some of that was quelled by Sitecore’s visibility this week – which multiple attendees pointed out as evidence of the company’s renewed direction.

Ultimately, the thing I heard most from customers and partners was clear: Sitecore is showing up.

How, exactly? For starters, I had several folks tell me their Sitecore reps have been proactively reaching out in a big way. Partners told me how O’Flanagan was dialed in during Symposium, assuring the community that Sitecore’s commitment to XP was paramount and they would continue to innovate (case in point, the new Stream service has been made available for XP).

Sharing success stories is probably the best way to model the direction, and Sitecore had fantastic brands on hand to help illustrate its customer-centricity. Along with United Airlines, we were treated to dozens of customer use cases from across industries, hearing directly from stakeholders about the transformative impact of Sitecore’s products and solutions. This included Northrup Grumman, Johnson Controls, Cracker Barrel, Pet Supplies Plus, and others.

On the agency side, it was equally positive. I had a chance to chat with Jon Price, VP of the Sitecore practice at Americaneagle.com and a six-time Sitecore MVP. Price did a fantastic job facilitating the United Airlines main stage and focused sessions. In our discussion, he reinforced how Sitecore is moving along the right vector – not just from a tech perspective, but around its guidance for customers and the composable future.

“Sitecore Stream, the new AI assistant that Sitecore has announced, is super exciting,” he said. “Also, [I’m] just excited about Sitecore’s general direction and talk track, on how they’re going to service existing customers to help them grow and do composable progressively.”

What I love about an expansive yet intimate community like this is the penchant for running into CMS leaders that are leveraging Sitecore as a key part of their agency practice or tech strategy. I spent time with fellow practitioner Matthew McQueeny of Konabos, a Sitecore MVP, as well as Rob Yelle of ai12z. Nabil Orfali of Kajoo – winner of the CMS Idol contest at our Boye & Company CMS Connect conference this summer – was also presenting his platform’s innovative features at Symposium.

While the event felt objectively diverse, having a clear commitment to DEIB is becoming more of an imperative. I was happy to see the launch of the event’s first “Women in Digital” breakfast session on Thursday morning, which was sponsored by Sitecore and Perficient (a digital consulting partner). It was an opportunity to celebrate the voices of women within the Sitecore community while championing their impact.

Finally, I think Sitecore’s Experience Awards are always a testament to the enthusiasm of customers and partners – and a tip of the hat to the possibilities. This year, hundreds of submissions were whittled down to 50 finalists and 19 winners (check them out here). I’ll give a nod to the “Ultimate Experience” trifecta, which showcased amazing project collaborations between Bayer and TCS (Tata), Foodstuffs New Zealand and AKQA, and Pet Supplies Plus and Horizontal Digital.

Kathie Johnson and Eric Stine presenting the Sitecore Experience Awards on the main stage at Symposium

If recent history is any indicator, Sitecore needs to supercharge this groundswell of positive momentum. The channel is clearly a critical part of its growth strategy, and healing any rifts with its customers and partners is essential – especially as competitors launch attractive offers to move to modern composable solutions. But its community is one of its strongest assets, and if it can continue to harmonize with its users and deliver for customers, it could take this rhapsody to the top of the charts.

Partying thoughts

Purely for research purposes, I attended the Horizontal Digital shindig on Wednesday night, held at the infamous Friends in Low Places venue on Broadway. The agency partner went over the top, booking some incredible entertainment – which showcased rising country Josh Ross. You can’t get more Nashville than that.

While the music and Southern-inspired accouterments were fantastic, what really made this an unforgettable party was the people. It’s easy to see the interconnected relationships that span years – even decades. It’s part of the Sitecore community magic, and why people keep coming back to this event year after year.

Sitecore certainly made some big announcements this week, and its partners and customers seem excited about the prospects. On the AI side, it's hard to predict how Sitecore Stream will unfold, but as adoption scales, we should have an even clearer picture of its impact on enterprise marketing teams.

I agree that the compliance news is a big deal. Platforms that want to compete for regulated business will need to achieve these benchmarks, but Sitecore is bringing a comprehensive solution across its DXP, which will provide a stronger play in the way of net new and account-based growth opportunities.

The XM Cloud effect can’t be understated, and from a roadmap perspective, it’s clear that Sitecore is putting a great deal of energy into its future. O’Flanagan reinforced this.

“I believe, over time, that most – if not all – of this industry will move to Cloud,” he said. “it’s a matter of when and not if.”

He went on to explain how just five years ago, customers might have felt that on-prem was required for certain regulatory requirements or industries. But this concern is declining, and with Sitecore’s HIPAA announcement – coupled with its dynamic XM Cloud offering and extensible AI – Sitecore is fully positioned to make some beautiful music.

Symposium has certainly established itself as a world-class event, but this year elevated the energy level, due in no small part to strong leadership. Even with the headwinds of a U.S. presidential election and economic uncertainty, Sitecore seems well-positioned to keep rockin.' And as long as they keep playing for the fans, the hits can keep rollin.'

We’ll have some additional coverage coming, including an exclusive interview with Dave O’Flanagan. Stay tuned.

Bonus Track: Goin' to Opryland

Paul Simon went to Graceland. Sitecore ended up at Opryland. As venues go, this place is on the opposite end of the Bonaroo spectrum. There's no roughin' it here. The entire hotel is opulent and breathtakingly over the top.

If you've hung on this far, I thought I'd share a few tidbits about this iconic landmark. According to the American Institute of Steel Construction, the original Opryland Hotel first opened in 1977, and has undergone three major expansions to achieve its current arcology. The most recent addition, known as “Delta,” consists of a gigantic, 179,000-square-foot steel-framed glass roof with a four-and-a-half-acre garden and river area.

It’s filled with restaurants, exhibit halls, retail shops – even a water park and a nightclub. There's a boat tour, by God… a boat tour! And with 2,888 rooms, it can be harrowing to navigate from one place to another, so the hotel provides a wayfinding app to guide guests everywhere. I'm glad I had it.

Without question, this hotel is a monolith – a big one. The newest parts have been painstakingly grafted to the original, attempting to merge the styles and create a seamless experience. At the same time, the various sections of the hotel have been compartmentalized, retaining their own identities and features.

At this point, the analogy should be obvious. Like the very hotel where it held its event, Sitecore is a big system with a lot of foundational structures. Over the years, it has expanded, sometimes “bolting on” new acquisitions. But as it embraces a more composable direction – a three-year transformation that O’Flanagan mentioned in our interview – it’s creating greater choice and efficiency for users.

Composable isn’t necessarily about destroying the monolith. It’s about making its advantages more compelling while reimaging and evolving the components. Like Opryland, legacy and modern can find a way to harmonize and deliver for customers.

Maybe we should rename “customer support” to “room service.”

Looking for guidance on Sitecore? Talk to us.

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