5 Ground-Breaking Sitecore 9 Features Revealed at the 2017 Sitecore Symposium
Sitecore continues to evolve into the most powerful digital experience platform on the market. The updates included in Sitecore 9 promise to propel the product to the forefront of .NET digital experience platforms. In this blog, I will highlight the major takeaways from the first day of the Symposium and in future blogs I will dive further into many of them.
This is my third Sitecore Symposium and it feels both bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger in the sheer volume and scale of the changes introduced by Sitecore. Smaller in the sense that the people you meet and relationships you build provide that small-town community feeling where everyone is welcome.
Speaking of strong communities, I would be remiss not to mention the horrific tragedy that took place in Las Vegas just two short weeks ago at the Route 91 Harvest music festival. My heart goes out to all those impacted by this heinous act. #VegasStrong
As thousands of Sitecore employees, vendors, partners and customers immerse themselves in Sitecore this week, they will undoubtedly bring with them a spirit of kinship and revelry. So, let the festivities begin! Oh... and did I mention Mark Hamill (aka Luke Skywalker) is here!
Without further ado, here are my highlights and major takeaways from Sitecore 9 and the Sitecore Symposium.
Sitecore has revamped its data and services hub, xConnect, to make omni-channel integration seamless. Now you can bring together data from fit devices, in-store visits, beacons, call centers, etc. into a single view of your customer and gain immeasurable insight into all of your customer interactions.
Sitecore also introduced two significant new data connectors for Salesforce CRM and Microsoft Dynamics. This allows you to bring all of your valuable client information and personal interactions from your CRM and incorporate them into this single customer view.
One other major announcement was that xDB is now supported on Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL. This has always been a sticking point for Microsoft shops that had limited knowledge of MongoDB and how to install, configure, update, scale, backup, or troubleshoot the platform. Now, you can implement Sitecore and xDB entirely on SQL Server databases and leverage the organizational talent and support infrastructure that you already possess. Sitecore also announced support for CosmosDB coming next year for those fully immersed in Azure and looking for low latency with global distribution.
With all this data comes great responsibility. Sitecore announced options to encrypt data at rest and in transit as well as provide support for handling Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in a way that meets many regulated industries. xConnect also supports General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU regulation that provides EU citizens with the right to be forgotten. The platform supports an operation that seamlessly removes a user’s protected data.
Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA)
I will admit that when the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) was first introduced about a year ago I was excited at first. The concept of a theming framework with readily available drag and drop components built into Sitecore was highly sought after by many. Sitecore implementation partners have been creating their own component libraries for years and this presented a great opportunity for Sitecore to provide some ground rules for consistency and the ability to share components.
However, when the first release came out, it was fraught with problems and did not meet expectations. Now, with the new SXA 1.5 and upcoming roadmap, it appears this really could be a game changer. Sitecore is not only releasing 100s of controls and themes, but they have built many tools that make updating them easier for developers and simplify the cloning and content sharing processes for authors.
After hearing and seeing this in action for the first time, I can tell you it is truly more than marketing spin. Sitecore revamped the API layer to provide layout services that return information in JSON format with all of the presentation details. They have also implemented item OData services for more efficient and flexible item querying. These changes allow front-end developers to work more independently from Sitecore to create a powerful user experience without deep Sitecore knowledge.
Not only did Sitecore bring the API front and center, but they also introduced a set of JavaScript libraries that make using it much simpler. You can now create a rich user experience with your favorite modern front-end technologies using Sitecore supported JavaScript libraries with React JS, Angular JS and Vue JS. All of this can be done without losing many of the features that make Sitecore great. Those who have attempted to build an application using only Sitecore APIs in the past have undoubtedly encountered this disconnect and wondered whether it was worth using Sitecore in this way. Now with Sitecore JSS you can build the same application and keep those amazing Sitecore features like Experience Editor, A/B multivariate testing and personalization.
This new launch is a complete rewrite from the ground up and allows modular implementation of its pluggable components such as merchandising manager and order manager. One remarkable new feature is the SXA Storefront. Sitecore has brought together the drag and drop components and styling of SXA to support building commerce related experiences. This will allow commerce related websites to benefit from the speed to market capabilities that SXA enables.
This is my third Sitecore Symposium and it feels both bigger and smaller at the same time. Bigger in the sheer volume and scale of the changes introduced by Sitecore. Smaller in the sense that the people you meet and relationships you build provide that small-town community feeling where everyone is welcome.
Speaking of strong communities, I would be remiss not to mention the horrific tragedy that took place in Las Vegas just two short weeks ago at the Route 91 Harvest music festival. My heart goes out to all those impacted by this heinous act. #VegasStrong
As thousands of Sitecore employees, vendors, partners and customers immerse themselves in Sitecore this week, they will undoubtedly bring with them a spirit of kinship and revelry. So, let the festivities begin! Oh... and did I mention Mark Hamill (aka Luke Skywalker) is here!
Without further ado, here are my highlights and major takeaways from Sitecore 9 and the Sitecore Symposium.
Highlights
Data integration / Connectors
If there is one broad statement that can be made about Sitecore 9, it is to state that “Sitecore 9 is all about the data”. We have known for a while that the explosion of data presented both a problem and an opportunity to those that can find a way to bring it all together to drive better business decisions.Sitecore has revamped its data and services hub, xConnect, to make omni-channel integration seamless. Now you can bring together data from fit devices, in-store visits, beacons, call centers, etc. into a single view of your customer and gain immeasurable insight into all of your customer interactions.
Sitecore also introduced two significant new data connectors for Salesforce CRM and Microsoft Dynamics. This allows you to bring all of your valuable client information and personal interactions from your CRM and incorporate them into this single customer view.
One other major announcement was that xDB is now supported on Microsoft SQL Server and Azure SQL. This has always been a sticking point for Microsoft shops that had limited knowledge of MongoDB and how to install, configure, update, scale, backup, or troubleshoot the platform. Now, you can implement Sitecore and xDB entirely on SQL Server databases and leverage the organizational talent and support infrastructure that you already possess. Sitecore also announced support for CosmosDB coming next year for those fully immersed in Azure and looking for low latency with global distribution.
With all this data comes great responsibility. Sitecore announced options to encrypt data at rest and in transit as well as provide support for handling Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in a way that meets many regulated industries. xConnect also supports General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU regulation that provides EU citizens with the right to be forgotten. The platform supports an operation that seamlessly removes a user’s protected data.
Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA)
I will admit that when the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) was first introduced about a year ago I was excited at first. The concept of a theming framework with readily available drag and drop components built into Sitecore was highly sought after by many. Sitecore implementation partners have been creating their own component libraries for years and this presented a great opportunity for Sitecore to provide some ground rules for consistency and the ability to share components.
However, when the first release came out, it was fraught with problems and did not meet expectations. Now, with the new SXA 1.5 and upcoming roadmap, it appears this really could be a game changer. Sitecore is not only releasing 100s of controls and themes, but they have built many tools that make updating them easier for developers and simplify the cloning and content sharing processes for authors.
Azure Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Sitecore has been busy rebuilding the Sitecore platform with a cloud-first approach. Sitecore 9 now claims full feature parity with its Azure PaaS implementation. Sitecore announced new ARM templates available in the Azure marketplace to make Azure PaaS setup easier than ever. In conjunction with this change, Sitecore announced a new licensing model that allows unlimited servers (both non-production and production) when using the Azure PaaS subscription based Sitecore license.Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS) Framework
When I first heard about Sitecore’s new headless framework and capabilities, I wondered how this would be any different than the full API support that goes back to the very beginning of the product. Was Sitecore simply trying to capitalize on an industry buzzword or did they create something unique and different?After hearing and seeing this in action for the first time, I can tell you it is truly more than marketing spin. Sitecore revamped the API layer to provide layout services that return information in JSON format with all of the presentation details. They have also implemented item OData services for more efficient and flexible item querying. These changes allow front-end developers to work more independently from Sitecore to create a powerful user experience without deep Sitecore knowledge.
Not only did Sitecore bring the API front and center, but they also introduced a set of JavaScript libraries that make using it much simpler. You can now create a rich user experience with your favorite modern front-end technologies using Sitecore supported JavaScript libraries with React JS, Angular JS and Vue JS. All of this can be done without losing many of the features that make Sitecore great. Those who have attempted to build an application using only Sitecore APIs in the past have undoubtedly encountered this disconnect and wondered whether it was worth using Sitecore in this way. Now with Sitecore JSS you can build the same application and keep those amazing Sitecore features like Experience Editor, A/B multivariate testing and personalization.
Sitecore Commerce
Sitecore has been working on building their new Commerce platform for some time. It seems we will need to wait just a little bit longer as the new Sitecore Commerce 9 launch will arrive sometime in January.This new launch is a complete rewrite from the ground up and allows modular implementation of its pluggable components such as merchandising manager and order manager. One remarkable new feature is the SXA Storefront. Sitecore has brought together the drag and drop components and styling of SXA to support building commerce related experiences. This will allow commerce related websites to benefit from the speed to market capabilities that SXA enables.
Other Noteworthy Items
While there were far too many updates and announcements made on day 1 at the Sitecore Symposium, it is worth briefly mentioning the following:- Sitecore completed a major revamp of Web Forms for Marketers (WFFM), now called Sitecore Forms
- Significant performance improvements were made in Sitecore 9 reducing load times up to 49%
- Sitecore has redoubled its effort to build new releases that are stable and accompanied by better documentation
- New migration tools were created to further simplify and speed up the upgrade process
- Sitecore Cortex, it’s artificial intelligence feature, builds additional support for automated user segmentation, automated personalization, automated testing and maintenance
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