Sitecore 9 has taken the center-stage of discussions since its launch at Symposium 2017. However for Sitecore users, the decision to upgrade involves a lot of moving parts, both from a strategy and technical perspective.
2. LET’S TALK
THE WHAT – Strategic & technical components
THE HOW – The most efficient way to upgrade
Q & As
THE WHY - Under the hood of Sitecore 9
3. We are a global digital marketing
and technology agency focused
on customer engagement.
4. 4
• Sitecore Gold Partner, since 2003
• Over 200 Sitecore projects successfully
delivered
• 150+ trained Sitecore resources
• 6 Sitecore MVP’s
• Reusable Sitecore connectors built to
extend the ecosystem
• Industry accelerators and reusable
frameworks
SITECORE SPECIALISTS AN INCH WIDE, A MILE DEEP
6. CX drives revenue.
CX leaders’ average revenue outgrows
laggards by more than double digits.
89% of businesses now expect to compete
mostly on the basis of customer experience.89%
Now to be truly competitive your company
must become customer obsessed, which
means you need to have deep knowledge
of, and engagement with your customers.
6
7. Be Relevant or Lose Customers
There is no middle ground.
70% of business buyers says it’s absolutely critical for companies
to provide a personalized experience.
74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their
research online before making an offline purchase.
75% of B2B buyers would purchase again from suppliers that
offered omni-channel capabilities.
9. COLD LEAD
WARM LEAD
HOT LEAD
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DRIVE LEADS CONVERT LEADS MANAGE LEADS
Connected Connected
10. Sitecore xConnect™
Integrate 3rd party customer data
systems to/from xDB
• Set of APIs and services to integrate data from
3rd party systems
• Easy extract or stream using the OData industry
standard
• Model definition and deployment to a centralized
configuration server.
• Push and pull operations on contacts and
interactions.
• Automatic indexing of any contact, facet,
interaction, or event
• Operates across all Sitecore Experience
deployment options
• Sitecore Connect™ for Microsoft Dynamics 365
• Sitecore Connect™ for Salesforce CRM
11. Sitecore Email
Tailor precision email marketing informed by
the customer’s entire cross-channel experience
Harness the insight of the entire customer journey,
beginning with email open and click-through
to website behavior and engagement,
to goals and conversions
Test every single component of a campaign
to establish and optimize customer
engagement A/B test, etc.
11
12. Sitecore Marketing Automation
Enroll and evaluate in session and in real
time
Make decisions based on any data point,
behaviour or time
Perform visible and backstage
marketing actions
True omnichannel orchestration
12
Automate repeated activities to free up
time
Needs Image
Duplicated icons
13. Sitecore Forms – R.I.P. WFFM
Forms that are reusable, and re-skinnable
so can be made available across sites and
devices
Designed for marketers, enables easy Drag
and Drop of fields onto the canvas to design
for sites and devices
Forms data helps to surface when
your prospect starts looking like a
customer
Have a single view of your
customers
13
Collect data of the highest quality at the
right time and in the right context
14. Sitecore Cortex™
Combine advanced machine learning
algorithms and an innovative machine
learning engine to deliver real-time
insights across both native and 3rd party
customer data.
•Decision tree learning - Sitecore Path Analyzer
•Generic Algorithms learning
•Personalization - measure outcome effect.
•Cluster Analysis and Similarity Learning
•Pattern Matching
•Optimization (AB and Multivariate testing)
Sitecore Cortex™
Dedicated engine for
processing Sitecore ML
algorithms at scale
Segment/Audience
Discovery
Attribution
Analysis
Automated
Personalization
Send time
optimization
Other ML
Processors
17. 17
2Week Outcome
60% Increase in Sales
40,000 New EDM Names
37K Completed Surveys
1.25 Million Facebook Hits
1.75 Million FacebookVotes
More Likes than Major Banks
18. #SitecoreSYM
Flying Blind Quick Business Wins 1:1 Marketing
Revenue Engine Roadmap
Engagement Analytics
Easy Personalization
Real Time Profiling
AB Testing
xDB Enabled
CMS Updates
Traffic Analytics
Spray and Pray
Ad Hoc Social
Landing Pages
CRM
MAP
SXC
Core Contact DataCustomer Behavior
Funnel Stage and Lead Score
21. 21
SITECOREDEPENDENCIES
• Sitecore Modules
• WFFM
• GeoIP Location Service
• Marketplace Modules
• Are they compatible with the version you are upgrading to?
• Other third party components
• Clay Tablet Upgrade
• .NET framework (Microsoft Identity changes)
• Marketo
• Demandbase
• Site Search
22. 22
SITECORECONFIGURATION
• Document non-Sitecore web.config changes
• Custom Setting sections
• WCF Endpoint definitions etc.
• Patch in Sitecore Configuration Changes
• Ensure that the patching places your configuration where it needs to be in the
new version
• Show config file comes very handy (/sitecore/admin/showconfig.aspx)
23. 23
PERFORMANCE
• Take Baseline metrics
• Response time for top pages
• CPU
• Memory
• Validate the Current Hardware meets the Sitecore 9.0 specification
• Validate the Current Software (like Windows, SQL server etc.) meets
the Sitecore 9.0 specification
24. 24
GO LIVE
• Final Database Upgrade Timing
• Content Freeze
• Code/Config Deployment
• Rollback
27. 27
LOCALUPGRADE
• On a developer workstation or sandbox environment
• Practice Upgrade Steps
• Work with Sitecore Support on any errors
• Use vanilla CM instances
• Remove customizations – especially pipelines
• Upgrade modules along with Sitecore versions
• Document steps and problems
• Upgraded database can now be used for developer changes
• Re-enable customizations and test
• Make necessary code changes
28. 28
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Upgrade the databases using out-of-the-box Sitecore instances
• Sitecore files and configuration should come from the Sitecore
installer
• Custom config should be patched in!
• Don’t try to follow the pages of config changes – very error prone
• Remember to remove Sitecore support files you might have
• Typically these are hotfixes for a particular known issue
• Remember to test both content management and content delivery
• Don’t forget to review log files, both during the upgrade and after
29. 29
TIPS & TRICKS
• Upgrade Sitecore regularly
• I recommend at least once every 12-18 months
• Planning is key for success
• Engage a partner for help
• Sitecore partners do upgrades all the time!
• Practice helps – often based on content freeze and time it takes to
upgrade, you will need to do the process several times
• Engage Sitecore Support for issues you can’t google
• Don’t use IE to run the upgrade
• Modify the web.config/sitecore.config to increase timeouts
32. KEY PHASES OF AN UPGRADE
32
Pre-upgrade
planning & risk-
assessment
Upgrade
execution &
testing
Ecosystem
upgrade and
growth plan
33. 33
RISKAREAS NOT TO BE IGNORED
• Deprecated assemblies/Custom Pipelines
• Difference between CM and CD instance
• Third party integrations
• Additional modules (WFFM, EXM, Commerce,
xDB (esp. MongoDB) etc.)
• Search (Sitecore 9 doesn’t support Lucene)
• Content Freeze availability
39. 39
Georgia-Pacific LLC is one of the world's leading
manufacturers & distributors of pulp, paper, tissue, toilet and
paper towel dispensers and related chemicals.
G-P struggled for over past 4 months to upgrade multiple sites
from Sitecore 6.6 to the latest version.
Objectives
• edynamic was hired by G-P to rescue its upgrade
project after undergoing delays for months by the
incumbent vendor.
• Using our upgrade utility tool edynamic upgraded 13
sites from Sitecore 6.6 to Sitecore 8.1 within a record
time of 1.5 weeks.
• Test results showed minimal errors which were easily
fixed after the upgrade.
• All existing integrations remained intact.
Outcomes
Upgrade of 13 sites from Sitecore 6.6 to 8.1 within 1.5 weeks
40. 40
Hexagon AB is a global technology group headquartered in
Sweden. The Group employs about 18,000 people in 50
countries.
Hexagon uses multiple Sitecore instances and has built its
sites using a common core-framework. Hexagon always stays
ahead of the tech curve and decided to upgrade all of its sites
to the latest version 9.0 (Update 1) for ensuring best in class
customer experience, as well as better usability for the
marketing team apart from other reasons.
Objectives
• edynamic was chosen as the partner of choice for the
upgrade project owing to Hexagon’s complex environment.
• Auto-vUpgrade tool upgraded all the Sitecore instances
within fraction of time compared to manual approach.
• Areas such as Search (Lucene migration) and xDB
migration had to be manually handled.
• Upgrade from WFFM to the new Sitecore forms.
Outcomes
Upgrade of 21 sites from Sitecore 8.1 to 9.0.1
SA: When we think about a platform, and why Sitecore is building a platform, we need to go back to the beginning...
Sitecore’s vision is to empower organizations to build the effective - meaningful relations - that win customers for life.
That is what drives us, what forms what we need to do and how we need to evolve our products to be able to help our customers grow and build those relationships with their customers, that becomes a lifelong relationship.
SA: When we think about a platform, and why Sitecore is building a platform, we need to go back to the beginning...
Sitecore’s vision is to empower organizations to build the effective - meaningful relations - that win customers for life.
That is what drives us, what forms what we need to do and how we need to evolve our products to be able to help our customers grow and build those relationships with their customers, that becomes a lifelong relationship.
SA: When we think about a platform, and why Sitecore is building a platform, we need to go back to the beginning...
Sitecore’s vision is to empower organizations to build the effective - meaningful relations - that win customers for life.
That is what drives us, what forms what we need to do and how we need to evolve our products to be able to help our customers grow and build those relationships with their customers, that becomes a lifelong relationship.
Automation is critical to executing experiences at scale and can benefit the organization in many ways such as
Applying consistency by improving workflow and optimizing messaging
By increasing ROI with full visibility into efforts and easily attracting new users, thus converting them into leads, and nurture them through the sales funnel.
And having a big picture view which will show a person’s relationship with your brand and making it easier to align your outreach.
Sitecore marketing automation, not only has a drag and drop UI, but also the architecture to support many channels.
Sitecore Marketing automation is laser focused on the ease of use for the marketer adding:
Pre-loaded sample engagements and
Native integration across all channels, and not just email
Capturing prospect information at the key point when they might consider becoming a customer is vital to ongoing marketing efforts whether through Sitecore’s Marketing Automation and Email Experience Manager or through a third party system via xConnect or the CRM Connectors
Purpose-built Sitecore Forms
Designed specifically for marketers, the all new Sitecore Forms enables easy Drag and Drop of fields onto the canvas to design for sites and devices. Forms are reusable and re-skinnable, making time to market far faster when delivering content across other sites and devices. Data captured via Forms is captured and managed in xDB in real-time, providing marketers with richer data that enables greater personalization and in-context marketing.
SA: When we think about a platform, and why Sitecore is building a platform, we need to go back to the beginning...
Sitecore’s vision is to empower organizations to build the effective - meaningful relations - that win customers for life.
That is what drives us, what forms what we need to do and how we need to evolve our products to be able to help our customers grow and build those relationships with their customers, that becomes a lifelong relationship.
SA: When we think about a platform, and why Sitecore is building a platform, we need to go back to the beginning...
Sitecore’s vision is to empower organizations to build the effective - meaningful relations - that win customers for life.
That is what drives us, what forms what we need to do and how we need to evolve our products to be able to help our customers grow and build those relationships with their customers, that becomes a lifelong relationship.
CASE HEADLINE – BANK REAPS 60% INCREASE IN SALES / 37,000 COMPLETED SURVEYS / MORE “LIKES” ON FACEBOOK THAN MAJOR BANK
ALL IN JUST 3 WEEKS
WORK UNDERTAKEN BY ONE STAFF MEMBER
3 week “micro-site campaign called “Staffrooms for Improvement”
Kids and parents give the school teacher a virtual apple every day, school with most apples wins a staffroom makeover valued at 20K
KPI’s
20,000 players – capture 20,000 new names for DM
Marketing intelligence through online surveys during game
Game to “go viral”
Increase in Facebook Likes
Case Study available on www.sitecore.net
It sounds simple but is very critical to realize that an Upgrade is just a stepping stone. The main objective is to move closer towards a superior customer experience initiative e.g. personalization, or security (GDPR compliant).
Hence an upgrade is done best if it is done quickly and without much errors.
I love the classic way of breaking down every process into three phases.
Similarly for an upgrade, the first phase being planning and Risk assessment. As Sathish rightly highlighted this is the most critical part of the entire upgrade. If not done carefully we may end up in a situation where the entire upgrade might be required to roll-back. Risk assessment needs to be done by an architect who has done multiple Sitecore upgrades. These risks need to be registered and mitigation plan should be prepared before starting the upgrade.
Execution can be done in multiple ways that we will see in the upcoming slides. Testing is probably the most cumbersome part of the entire testing exercise and depends on the volume such as number of pages, forms, components, integrations etc.
Final step is to upgrade the surrounding ecosystem such as Search, Commerce etc. All these components need to be upgraded to be compatible to the new Sitecore version.
Growth plan is many-a-times missed out by marketers but this is certainly the step that yields to maximum ROI from an upgrade
As I said, it is critical to register every area of risk before starting an upgrade. Some of the most common areas to look out for are:
Deprecated assemblies or customizations. Such pieces of code often are written to enable specific functionalities and many-a-times hidden beneath the larger code. If not noted descriptively, such customizations lead to errors in those functionalities post upgrade and that time back-tracking becomes a huge effort
Often CM and CD environments have differences mainly for internal testing purposes. This leads to duplication of efforts while doing an upgrade
Third party integrations are often tricky as lot of these third party vendors take time to release their compatible versions with the new Sitecore versions. In case such integrations are critical for running the application, it may lead to a complete bottle-neck post upgrade
Sitecore’s additional modules also bring complexity post upgrade and require invidual upgrades.
The thumb rule of technology: Every installation is unique and every upgrade poses new challenges. There are some big confusion creators where answer might be unique everytime.
e.g. the most common one: should I go for step-wise upgrade e.g. from 7.2 to 7.5 lower update and then higher by each update and then version.; Or, should I go for a direct jump into the desired version. The answer will depend on the complexity of that instance e.g. customizations and integrations. I personally suggest to direct jump only in cases of minimal complexities.
Though rare, but lot of us still have sites which are non-responsive. The big question is whether we should make changes to the UI first or should we go for the upgrade first. Again there is no straightforward answer. Remember- I said the first planning phase is critical. All these decisions are taken that time by the architect.
All of you must have heard about Helix which is now promoted by Sitecore and is certainly the future for service oriented architecture. Updating the framework is not an easy task and hence the question again arises – should it be done before or after the upgrade. I will say again, no generic answer here. All this needs to be decided during the planning phase.
Let us talk about different approaches to an upgrade. I will talk about the two most common approaches. Let me explain it with the help of a simpler illustration like upgrading your house.
The first one is Migration. In migration a fresh new house is built at a separate place and then the content (such as furniture) is migrated into this newly built bigger house. The biggest issue with this approach is that the customizations and integrations we had built in our previous house are lost and have to be re-built within the new instance.
The second approach is to build the new house on top of the current house itself. This is typically step by step process keeping the existing customizations/integrations etc. in-tact. Typically this approach is preferred when there are critical customizations and integrations in the current instance.
Talking about the means to do an upgrade,
We can do it in the traditional way of doing it manually. This is the most tedious and prone to human errors.
You must have heard about Sitecore’s Express migration tool. This tool follows the migration approach we just discussed.
Edynamic – as Greg said initially has a very strong innovation arm that works continuously to bring value to Sitecore projects. One such intellectual property is the Sitecore Auto vUpgrade tool. This tool is based on the upgrade approach we just saw.
Edynamic’s Sitecore Auto-vUpgrade tool was launched more than an year earlier than any other such tool including the Sitecore express migration tool. Every tool has a maturity curve and due to its early launch the auto vUpgrade is highly mature and being used to perform over two dozens of successful Sitecore upgrades.
The results are extremely promising – compared to manual updrades, this tool can saving 75% time – the most critical aspect in any upgrade and with 90% better quality. Off-course this lowers down the cost of doing the upgrade and leaves marketers with time and budget to focus on upcoming critical initiatives such as personalization and analytics.
An example in hand is the upgrade we did for Georgia-Pacific : the largest pulp and paper product manufacturer and distributor in North America. They are market leaders with their brands such as sparkle and anglesoft.
G-P had Sitecore 6.6. for its 13 websites and was struggling to complete it since last 4 months. In fact, they had to roll back the last effort of upgrade due to the errors and failures post upgrade.
Believe me you, with edynamic’s auto vUpgrader, we did this upgrade from 6.6 to 8.1 (that time 8.1 was the latest version)
This project is still going on and is in UAT phase while we talk. I wanted to talk about this since this is on the latest 9.0 (update 1).
Hexagon’s environment is very unique, built using their own component based core-framework. There are multiple Sitecore instances that run over 20 websites. There are hundreds of integration as well as customizations built in.
Hexagon’s always wants to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to technology and hence didn’t take much time to decide to go for the upgrade as soon as Sitecore announced Version 9 update 1. edynamic was chosen the partner of choice because of our deep expertise in upgrade as well as handling such complex environments.
The upgrade was quickly done using the Auto-vUpgrade tool and then areas such as Search and Analytics were dealt manually. E.g. they were using Lucene which is not supported anymore. Also, they were using MongoDB which now required to be migrated to CosmosDB. Migration to the new forms is also one of the key part of the project.