Key takeaways from Sitecore Symposium 2024 – Nashville, Tennessee

This year's Sitecore Symposium was very special not only for me personally but also for many other people who attended the event with great hope to learn about new products and to see an expected change in the way Sitecore operates and marketing communication that over the last years was focused too much on the SaaS offering. Did Sitecore deliver the expectations?  

I was lucky enough to attend all the events that Sitecore organized during the Symposium week. I heard NDA-protected information during the Sitecore MVP Summit, then I attended Sitecore Partner Connect where I had a chance to hear more about new strategies and products to finally dive into the knowledge shared by the community and Sitecore employees during the Sitecore Symposium.  

Read on to learn about the topics that I find key to everyone using Sitecore. 

The DXP platform is dead : Long live the DXP platform!  

This is the tile of one of the presentations that I attended (presented by Matt Dinovo – Solutions Architect at Sitecore).  Matt during his presentation summarized how currently Sitecore DXP is perceived and why it should change. Terms like “old” or “legacy” were attached to Sitecore XM/XP due to the large investments of Sitecore in the SaaS products and marketing focused on the promotion of these products. Yes, XM Cloud is a cutting-edge product, one of the best in its class but this is not a product for everyone.  

There are multiple reasons why customers need fully manageable on-premise products like Sitecore DXP:  

• Security requirements 
• Data residency  
• Custom networking 
• Heavy customizations 

During the Symposium I could see more XM/XP-related presentations that proved that Sitecore is treating seriously their best-seller. Even during the opening key-notes, Dave O’Flanagan emphasized that all new composable products (like Sitecore Stream) will be integrated with XM/XP and will stay fully operational for the customers that have chosen to stay on-prem.

From other Sitecore employees, we could also hear about the plans for the next Sitecore 10.5 releases and what comes next. The future is bright and Sitecore will invest heavily in Sitecore DXP to answer expectations of the market.  

Matt finished his presentation with the slide the reminds everyone that: 

• Sitecore XM/XP is composable!  
• You can make your XM/XP a XM Cloud compatible by moving from MVC to Headless SXA which is available for you 
• You decide what ‘modern’ is for your organization!  

At this point I could not forget also about great presentation from Peter Kapsopoulos about XM/XP/MC R&D roadmap.  

Peter presented a slide with Sitecore’s commitments:

“Sitecore is committed to supporting Platform DXP with support into 2032 and beyond.  

Sitecore is committed to continually modernizing XM and XP in its ability to orchestrate and connect across your digital experience ecosystem with a proven industry platform.  

Sitecore is committed to providing customers with alternative hosting solutions via Managed Cloud” 

This commitment has been proven also with the actions that were presented on the slide showing key roadmap items: 

If you take a look carefully at the list, you will notice there a completely new modules that can be used to make your XM/XP instance even more powerful – it is not only about migration anymore!  

 

Sitecore Stream – Sitecore moves into the space of Intelligent Digital Experience Platforms

Sitecore always has been different and better than the competitors in understanding what marketing teams need to provide a better experience to all the customers of the brands that they manage. Sitecore DXP, Sitecore XM Cloud together with Sitecore CDP & Personalize are great digital experience platforms – but it was not enough for Sitecore. To stand out from the competitors Sitecore announced Sitecore Stream which empowers marketers with a set of tools supported by Artificial Intelligence crafted for particular brands to provide the best on the market results.

Sitecore Stream (also integrated with XM/XP) changes Sitecore Digital Experience Platforms into Intelligent Digital Experience Platforms that will be like additional members of your marketing team.

Summary 

To shortly summarize the event, I think that I can say that it was exactly what everyone was expecting from it. New product announcements, shift on the marketing side, and commitment to well-known XM & XP products. Great openness of the new Sitecore leadership in terms of sharing experiences, strategies, and feedback. Sitecore definitely changed the direction, and it is a good change.   

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