The Future of Sitecore

At Oshyn , we focus on DXP implementations using tools from Sitecore, Adobe and Optimizely primarily. The Sitecore ecosystem has had a bit of tumult recently and the CEO Dave O’Flanagan addressed it a few weeks ago in an interview with Australian publication Mi3. The interview shed some light on some of the things happening at Sitecore over the last 2-3 years and what it means for their future.

I’ll spare you the speculation on a potential sale and the reasons for changes at boardroom level, but I do want to share my thoughts on what, based on what was said in the interview, it means for Sitecore and the market, for Sitecore customers and partners like Oshyn.?

Focusing on Composability

“Customers don’t buy composability. They buy platforms that allow them to move their business forward. And our message has been a little bit too focused on the composability piece. You will see us focus more on the customer value, how our technology uniquely solves for the customer in retail, in financial services, healthcare and so forth.”

My Takeaway:

I’m happy to see messages like this coming from Sitecore Execs. Composability is still very much a technical rather than a business play, and being focused exclusively on it without taking into account how it will benefit customers can be shortsighted. At the end of the day, you’re selling large investments, and business software needs to solve business problems.

It’s pretty clear that composability and a headless approach can solve performance issues, but other benefits, like the promise of flexibility and agility or ease of integration, make it sound easier than it can be in reality.?

Disruption and Integration

“We disrupted ourselves. We probably haven’t controlled the message in the right way to give people clarity about the level of work that we’ve been doing.”

“We’ve been trying to re-educate the market about what those integrations look like in the SaaS world, which is APIs. All of our products are truly headless, and can be configured programmatically and integrated programmatically. And you can do all of the configuration using low code, no code, which again speaks to, I think, the way people want to integrate in the future.”

My Takeaway:

This is reassuring for anyone using Sitecore XP and wondering if the composability train will leave them behind or whether they should even hop on it. This is one of the positives of the composability movement, but customers with certain solutions might have felt it didn’t apply to them. You don’t need to throw away everything to work with these solutions. For example, you can take Sitecore XP (a product not associated with being composable) and integrate Personalize to build the best solution for your needs.?

Focus Going Forward

“Now, I am refocusing Sitecore on XP, XM Cloud and Content Hub as our core differentiating propositions and being the vendor of choice to support the full end to end content lifecycle for brands.”

“These content products will be our lead propositions in the composable DXP and they are complimented by great supporting capabilities in Personalize, CDP, Search, Connect and OrderCloud for customers who want more from Sitecore.”

My Takeaway:

This is a great confirmation of where we’ve focused our efforts at Oshyn, as we’re generally website and CMS-centric. Knowing the CMS is still Sitecore’s anchor is good. The one thing I’d like to see is continued improvements from the product team for XP and XM Cloud so that XP, in particular, isn’t treated like a second-class citizen.?

What are your thoughts on where Sitecore is headed?

#Sitecore #CMS #DXP #DigitalExperiencePlatform #Personalization #HeadlessCMS #Composability