The Future of Sitecore: The Composable DXP is Here

Sitecore's Composable DXP is here

We previously learned about the industry shift from the pure CMS space to the broader DXP landscape along with a new architecture pattern emerging, composable software. Sitecore's ongoing journey over the past two years to a Composable DXP is materializing before our eyes through acquisitions and existing product re-architecture. Many of the pieces to the new Composable DXP are here, so let's dig in more to learn more.

Content Hub

Sitecore’s 2018 acquisition of Stylelabs has provided the foundation for many components of the new Composable DXP, from digital asset management to content operations and marketing resource management. Let’s learn more about these individual capabilities in the new software suite.

Content Hub’s Enterprise DAM

Enterprise digital asset management is available as a SaaS solution from Sitecore via Content Hub DAM. While the built-in Media Library of the CMS is a lightweight DAM solution for web-specific assets, Content Hub DAM provides full-scale enterprise capabilities across all channels. As with all capabilities of a composable solution, it can be independently licensed and used as a stand-alone DAM. Content Hub also includes a native 1st party connector between Content Hub DAM and Sitecore CMS to enable the CMS as a downstream consumer of assets.

Content Hub’s Content Marketing Platform

CMP focuses on the content strategy and ongoing publication process of the content lifecycle. While the CMS capability of the DXP focuses on content being orchestrated for a specific experience, a lot of the content lifecycle happens before content gets assembled in the CMS. CMP provides ideation and production tools for the early stages of the lifecycle as well as governance tools to monitor and manage production.

Content Hub’s Marketing Resource Management

MRM provides a set of capabilities to manage the lifecycle of content from the planning stages though activation. It provides marketing operations tools to plan and schedule activities, align teams and processes, and manage tasks, resources, and budgets for marketing campaigns. Think of it as a way to manage a one-off marketing campaign project, or recurring campaigns.

CDP and Personalize

Sitecore CDP and Sitecore Personalize are the yin and yang of offering truly tailored 1:1 experiences to customers.

The prominence of Customer Data Platforms in the market is growing with the forthcoming end of 3rd party cookies, currently set for 2023 by Google. Sitecore CDP enables organizations to capture their own 1st party data for marketers to drive tailored experiences for their customers.

Sitecore CDP delivers on that promise as a SaaS solution through the 2021 Boxever acquisition. CDP handles data collection of customer behavior though 3rd party (external) and 1st party (internal) known data, profile unification and merging, as well as analytics and data segmentation. Think of CDP as the one-stop shop data engine that gives you a full view of every customer, whether they are a known customer or an anonymous visitor.

While Sitecore CDP provides the data management engine under the hood, Sitecore Personalize offers the downstream activation system to put the data to use. Personalize provides a new personalization system as a SaaS solution also through the Boxever acquisition. Personalize provides marketers with rules-based decision tables they can define as well as the ability to tap into machine learning to inform recommendations and next best actions to take with customers. Personalize also takes over the content testing and optimization capability through A/B testing, goal tracking, etc.

Email marketing automation with Sitecore Send

The 2021 acquisition of Moosend brings along a new email marketing automation capability to Sitecore’s suite. Now called Sitecore Send, this service provides email campaign management through template-based emails, A/B tests in emails, campaign landing pages and newsletter subscriptions forms, as well as email list management and segmentation.

This is an incredibly powerful addition to the composable suite for marketers that reach their audiences thought traditional email campaigns and need a SaaS solution that can scale. What’s even more incredible is that the product was recently named the #3 Leader in the G2 Grid for Email Marketing.

Headless commerce with OrderCloud

Sitecore OrderCloud – another 2021 acquisition – comes from Four51, a well-known headless commerce engine. OrderCloud is truly API-first, with a headless architecture that enables you to build both your front-facing storefront as well as back-end seller applications. OrderCloud uniquely supports complex buyer and customer commerce business models allowing you to compose your own operation, from B2B, to B2C, to D2C.

Sitecore's new cloud-native SaaS CMS, XM Cloud

The final piece of the composable puzzle is arguably the most revolutionary change in the Sitecore product landscape: a new cloud-native SaaS CMS. Experience Manager Cloud – XM Cloud for short – is a rearchitected CMS based on the existing .NET-based XM product. XM Cloud is rearchitected to be truly cloud-native and offered as a SaaS solution by decoupling the content delivery (and website hosting) side of the existing product.

XM Cloud is a major evolution in the world of Sitecore, so it deserves its own piece focused on its capabilities and architectural changes. Stay tuned for the next part of this series which will focus on XM Cloud.