This document provides an introduction and overview of the Sitecore Experience Platform. It discusses how marketing technology has evolved over time, with the roles of CMOs and marketers becoming more technology-focused. It then summarizes the key components, capabilities and features of the Sitecore platform, including the Experience Database for collecting customer data, Experience Profile for a single customer view, and Experience Channels for delivering personalized experiences across channels. It also touches on the application lifecycle, hosting options, and Sitecore's global customer base and vision.
Sitecore Helix is the recommended practices and guidelines for Sitecore Development.
Sitecore Commerce is a native integrated Commerce Engine to the Sitecore Experience Platform and development extends the Sitecore Helix guidelines in some areas.
Join Thomas Vochten (MVP) and Spencer Harbar (MCM, MVP) for an all-day interactive tutorial covering design, build and operational service management best practices for SharePoint Server on premises and hybrid deployments. An end to end deployment scenario will be presented, which will be built out in stages throughout the day. Additional coverage of key supporting technologies and the latest investments from Microsoft for SharePoint On Premises and Hybrid scenarios will also be included.
Identity management
Information security
Critical farm deployment considerations
Deployment approach and tooling
Operational service management
Designing for hybrid scenarios
Hybrid configuration
Troubleshooting and Tips and Tricks
Poređenje osnovnih karakteristika SharePoint-a 2013 sa SharePoint Online. Dio sadržaja preuzet sa http://www.slideshare.net/jseghers/speduc-sharepoint-on-premises-vs-online-for-education uz dozvolu.
Starting in May 2010, with SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft began talking more and more about "Personal BI". The focus of this discussion was a paradigm shift moving business intelligence from being something a few BI professionals do with a data warehouse to a practice done by Information Workers every day in familiar tools like Microsoft Excel and SharePoint. Over the course of this session we will show you the improvements that Microsoft has made in the 2013 stack to take this new focus from being a “nice idea” to a truly powerful reality. We will explore the improvements made to Excel, PowerPivot & Power View, & Reporting Services. We will explain the underlying technology that makes the new features possible and walk through demos of some of the shinier toys. At the end of the session you will walk away with a better understanding of what is new in 2013 for business intelligence and an extreme desire to build reusable data model that will undoubtedly bring real value to your business.
Sitecore Helix is the recommended practices and guidelines for Sitecore Development.
Sitecore Commerce is a native integrated Commerce Engine to the Sitecore Experience Platform and development extends the Sitecore Helix guidelines in some areas.
Join Thomas Vochten (MVP) and Spencer Harbar (MCM, MVP) for an all-day interactive tutorial covering design, build and operational service management best practices for SharePoint Server on premises and hybrid deployments. An end to end deployment scenario will be presented, which will be built out in stages throughout the day. Additional coverage of key supporting technologies and the latest investments from Microsoft for SharePoint On Premises and Hybrid scenarios will also be included.
Identity management
Information security
Critical farm deployment considerations
Deployment approach and tooling
Operational service management
Designing for hybrid scenarios
Hybrid configuration
Troubleshooting and Tips and Tricks
Poređenje osnovnih karakteristika SharePoint-a 2013 sa SharePoint Online. Dio sadržaja preuzet sa http://www.slideshare.net/jseghers/speduc-sharepoint-on-premises-vs-online-for-education uz dozvolu.
Starting in May 2010, with SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft began talking more and more about "Personal BI". The focus of this discussion was a paradigm shift moving business intelligence from being something a few BI professionals do with a data warehouse to a practice done by Information Workers every day in familiar tools like Microsoft Excel and SharePoint. Over the course of this session we will show you the improvements that Microsoft has made in the 2013 stack to take this new focus from being a “nice idea” to a truly powerful reality. We will explore the improvements made to Excel, PowerPivot & Power View, & Reporting Services. We will explain the underlying technology that makes the new features possible and walk through demos of some of the shinier toys. At the end of the session you will walk away with a better understanding of what is new in 2013 for business intelligence and an extreme desire to build reusable data model that will undoubtedly bring real value to your business.
[Aleksandar Drašković] The next iteration of SharePoint Server is arriving within the next couple of months. This session will cover the new features coming with the new version of the product, shed a light on the benefits you will gain and considerations you have to make before deploying it in your environment.
What's New and Different in SharePoint 2013Noorez Khamis
There are a lot of great features at the forefront and behind the scenes in the new SharePoint 2013 Server. This is an introductory session which will help you get a good feel for the new features and functionality of SharePoint 2013 Server including first looks and demos. Whether you are an IT Pro, Developer or End User, if you have worked with any version of SharePoint before, this session will give you a good feel of some of the features that you will love in SharePoint 2013.
Discussing the differences between SharePoint Server 2016 on-premise, SharePoint Online and SharePoint hybrid configuration. From the Brighton SharePoint Meetup, 25 May 2017/
Full Trust Solution Development in SharePoint 2013Ed Musters
My presentation on the full trust solution model in SharePoint 2013 for SharePoint Saturday Montreal Feb 2 2013. The premise is you developed full trust solutions in SP 2007 / 2010 and wish to leverage that skillset or legacy solutions in an on premise situation.
Get an Overview of SharePoint and its features & benefits,
With SharePoint, it’s easier than ever before to share ideas and keep track of what your colleagues are working on. You can tap into the knowledge of specialists from across your organization and discover connections to information and people you never knew existed.
itgroove SharePoint consultants, Colin Phillips and Bruce Norman Smith, walk you through the list of recent announcements around SharePoint 2016 - and clarify what's coming, what's changing, what's disappearing and what's staying the same.
From Zero to Hero: A Real World Guide to Building High Availability SharePoin...Eric Shupps
Building SharePoint farms for development and testing is easy. But building highly available farms to meet enterprise service level agreements that are fault tolerant, scalable and connected to the cloud? Not quite so easy. In this workshop you will learn how to plan, design and implement a highly availability farm architecture based upon proven techniques and practical guidance.
Introducing Sitecore - The Experience PlatformAdrian IORGU
Sitecore is a powerful ASP.NET framework for building highly sophisticated and compelling enterprise Web solutions.
During this session we will walk you trough the key-features of the Sitecore Experience Platform, will have a look at some of the tools that keep the Sitecore developers happy and will have a sneak peek at the Sitecore CMS.
xDB, Pipelines, Scalability, Config Patching, Modules and Items...oh, my! Have you recently blown into the wonderful world of Sitecore? Or perhaps your knowledge may be a bit rusty? Either way, this is a slidedeck for you. Take a look in to Sitecore's architecture and see the unique insights into the core.
This presentation has been given during Sitecore Symposium Las Vegas, Sitecore Symposium Barcelona and Sitecore Trendspot Sydney.
Feel free to connect with me on twitter: @pieterbrink123
[Aleksandar Drašković] The next iteration of SharePoint Server is arriving within the next couple of months. This session will cover the new features coming with the new version of the product, shed a light on the benefits you will gain and considerations you have to make before deploying it in your environment.
What's New and Different in SharePoint 2013Noorez Khamis
There are a lot of great features at the forefront and behind the scenes in the new SharePoint 2013 Server. This is an introductory session which will help you get a good feel for the new features and functionality of SharePoint 2013 Server including first looks and demos. Whether you are an IT Pro, Developer or End User, if you have worked with any version of SharePoint before, this session will give you a good feel of some of the features that you will love in SharePoint 2013.
Discussing the differences between SharePoint Server 2016 on-premise, SharePoint Online and SharePoint hybrid configuration. From the Brighton SharePoint Meetup, 25 May 2017/
Full Trust Solution Development in SharePoint 2013Ed Musters
My presentation on the full trust solution model in SharePoint 2013 for SharePoint Saturday Montreal Feb 2 2013. The premise is you developed full trust solutions in SP 2007 / 2010 and wish to leverage that skillset or legacy solutions in an on premise situation.
Get an Overview of SharePoint and its features & benefits,
With SharePoint, it’s easier than ever before to share ideas and keep track of what your colleagues are working on. You can tap into the knowledge of specialists from across your organization and discover connections to information and people you never knew existed.
itgroove SharePoint consultants, Colin Phillips and Bruce Norman Smith, walk you through the list of recent announcements around SharePoint 2016 - and clarify what's coming, what's changing, what's disappearing and what's staying the same.
From Zero to Hero: A Real World Guide to Building High Availability SharePoin...Eric Shupps
Building SharePoint farms for development and testing is easy. But building highly available farms to meet enterprise service level agreements that are fault tolerant, scalable and connected to the cloud? Not quite so easy. In this workshop you will learn how to plan, design and implement a highly availability farm architecture based upon proven techniques and practical guidance.
Introducing Sitecore - The Experience PlatformAdrian IORGU
Sitecore is a powerful ASP.NET framework for building highly sophisticated and compelling enterprise Web solutions.
During this session we will walk you trough the key-features of the Sitecore Experience Platform, will have a look at some of the tools that keep the Sitecore developers happy and will have a sneak peek at the Sitecore CMS.
xDB, Pipelines, Scalability, Config Patching, Modules and Items...oh, my! Have you recently blown into the wonderful world of Sitecore? Or perhaps your knowledge may be a bit rusty? Either way, this is a slidedeck for you. Take a look in to Sitecore's architecture and see the unique insights into the core.
This presentation has been given during Sitecore Symposium Las Vegas, Sitecore Symposium Barcelona and Sitecore Trendspot Sydney.
Feel free to connect with me on twitter: @pieterbrink123
What's New in Sitecore 8 - St. Louis Sitecore User Group MeetupRoundedcube
This slideshare includes presentation slides from the first St. Louis Sitecore User Group Meetup, "What's New in Sitecore 8" hosted on February 25, 2015 and presented by Roundedcube and Fpweb.net. The presentation covers the new features of Sitecore 8, including "What's New in Content Management", "What's New in Digital Marketing" and "What's New in Architecture".
Are you a St. Louis Sitecore user? Join the User Group here: http://www.meetup.com/Saint-Louis-Sitecore-User-Group-Meetup/
Connecting the odds in the brave world!Sitecore Commerce Connectsuneco_nl
A practical approach on what it takes and what you will run into when your customer wants you to integrate their own ERP/PIM with Sitecore by using Sitecore Commerce Connect.
In this session we will dive into the many pipelines and functionalities of Sitecore Commerce Connect and show you in a straightforward demo, with the potential risks on live coding, how you can connect ERP/PIM systems with Sitecore using the Sitecore Commerce Connect functionalities without using other (non-)commercial third party modules.
Blueprint for a cloud-based Sitecore 8 environment on Microsoft Azure using the Sitecore Azure PaaS Module and a Content Delivery server hosted as an Azure Virtual Machine
The slides from my presentation at the Sitecore User Group Conference in The Netherlands on June 12th, 2015.
Demo source code is available at https://github.com/ParTech/SugCon2015
Myth Busting Sitecore xDB - St. Louis Sitecore User Group MeetupRoundedcube
This slideshare includes presentation slides from the third St. Louis Sitecore User Group Meetup, "Personalization and the Experience Explorer" hosted on June 25, 2015 by Roundedcube and Fpweb.net. Presentation Roundedcube's CMO, Aaron Branson, and CTO, Benjamin Vidal.
Are you a St. Louis Sitecore user? Join the User Group here: http://www.meetup.com/Saint-Louis-Sitecore-User-Group-Meetup/
Sitecore 8.2 Update 1 on Azure Web AppsRob Habraken
The sildes of my presentation on the Sitecore User Group Netherlands meetup on December 7th 2016, hosted by Colours in Den Bosch, presenting and demoing the provisioning of Sitecore into Azure using Azure Web Apps. Note that these slides do not contain the demo itself. For the demo, view the recording of the presentation or read my blog post, both accessable via https://www.robhabraken.nl
Walk through of how Sitecore and CRM can be integrated to create a more personalized experience. This integration can be performed with Sitecore and any CRM platform such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce.com or Oracle RightNow.
As Marketing Technologists we believe that CRM systems off the shelf or custom built are the center of the marketers world, with online and offline touch points feeding data into the system.
What is dynamics 365? And How Microsoft is modernizing Dynamics using Office ...Nicolas Georgeault
We all know and love the way Microsoft modernize his Office stack but let’s talk a bit about the core of your business processes. During last WPC, Satya Nadella unveil the next evolution of Microsoft Business Applications with Dynamics 365. The idea is the modernization of all the Dynamics products using the power of cloud and local services. But the vision of Microsoft is a bit more complex. Dynamics CRM was already part of Office 365, during this session you will learn how Microsoft is planning to rebuilt a complete strategy on top of xRM and people relations like customers and partners relationships. We will talk how Office 365 Groups, Power BI, Power Apps, Microsoft Flow, And many more services will be used and impact to build the future of Dynamics CRM, AX and NAV to deliver an hybrid ERP capable to exploit your corporate Big Data in a global and open solution.
Visartech Inc. is a software solution provider that helps businesses solve challenges and reach specific goals using technology. We focus on delivering intelligent cloud IT infrastructure, digital ecosystems, and interactive solutions.
We create tech excellence, relying on solid engineering expertise, innovative technologies, and software art. Our team has wide experience in software development for different industries - education, fintech, gaming, social networking, real estate, sports, retail, healthcare, etc.
Our expertise covers the following areas:
IT Infrastructure Optimization
DevOps & Cloud Computing
IT Security Services
Backend Development
Metaverse Ecosystem
Digital Twin Solutions
WebGL 3D Graphics
Visartech Inc. develops software platforms, applications & ecosystems that receive industry awards and are used by Google, Microsoft, Pfizer, McKinsey & Company, and other giants.
When you collaborate with us, you are completely sure to be shaking hands with a reliable tech partner who is dedicated to creating digital solutions driving the world’s changes.
Any questions? Connect with our experts!
Alfresco DevCon 2018: Product Direction KeynoteRichard Esplin
In this keynote, Thomas De Meo welcomes the everyone to Alfresco DevCon 2018, and shares the current product direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv-FQwSlo3k&list=PLyJdWuUHM3igOUt49uiFqs-6DCQAgJ1vs&index=14
YouTube presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_egtN-XdsMo
The Microsoft Partner Network is one of the largest and most complex websites at Microsoft. They use Sitecore as the CMS and are part of the Xccelerate program. This presentation presents the Azure-hosted Microsoft Partner Network site, showcasing personalization and context marketing at scale. It also focuses on the unique challenges of such a large-scale environment: content management, multiple language support, governance, global vs local content needs, get outcome based data and much more.
Speakers:
Jim Gascoigne, Director - Digital Marketing Services - Microsoft
Nicol Chadek, Director - Sales and Marketing Digital Services - Microsoft
From Sitecore Symposium 2014 - Las Vegas:
ISITE Design's Brian Payne (@brianpayne) and Sitecore's John Field (@john_field) explain how Sitecore’s Federated Experience Manager (FXM) provides a simple way to deliver a unified and personalized experience across your entire marketing technology platform, keeping the customer at the center of your marketing efforts.
Enterprises are investing in cloud computing to manage their IT budgets more efficiently. Gartner predicts that the public cloud revenue for SaaS application service will be $73.6 billion in 2018, a 22% increase as compared to the previous years. This has led organizations to look for offerings that are specifically engineered to deliver their expected business outcomes.
The ease of adoption of cloud SaaS applications is promising greater flexibility and reduced cost to the business. At the same time due to the increase in adoption of SaaS applications, the information silos have increased which has created the need for integration across the cloud and enterprise.
Join us for the webinar to learn how you can resolve your integration challenges. We will also help you with how to:
Accelerate time to market and connect to SaaS applications in just minutes
Free up IT resources to do more innovative, customer-focused work
Improve and automate business processes via the sharing of data across applications
Extend investments in legacy systems and applications
Adapt SharePoint Add-ins are the best solution for your business processes automation. Be it SharePoint on premise or Office 365, you do not need expensive SharePoint resources to deploy or manage these Add-ins.http://www.adapt-india.com/default.aspx
Adapt SharePoint Add-ins are the best solution for your business processes automation. Be it SharePoint on premise or Office 365, you do not need expensive SharePoint resources to deploy or manage these Add-ins.
Adapt SharePoint Add-ins are the best solution for your business processes automation. Be it SharePoint on premise or Office 365, you do not need expensive SharePoint resources to deploy or manage these Add-ins.http://www.adapt-india.com/default.aspx
Platform Strategy to Deliver Digital Experiences on AzureWSO2
This slide deck introduces Choreo, a cloud native internal developer platform by Microsoft independent software vendor (ISV) Partner, WSO2. It enables your developers to create, deploy, and run new digital components like APIs, microservices, and integrations in serverless mode on any Kubernetes cluster with built-in DevSecOps.
Recording: https://wso2.com/choreo/resources/webinar/platform-strategy-to-deliver-digital-experiences-on-azure/
2. Lifetime of MarketingTechnology
1 2 3 4 5 6
Lifetime
in Years
Presence
Content
Experience
http://www.greenfieldbelser.com/blog/2012/12/how-often-should-websites-be-redesigned/
3. “The CMO will outspend CIOs on IT by 2017.”
Gartner 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaarthur/2012/02/08/five-years-from-now-cmos-will-spend-more-on-it-than-cios-do/
“The Customer has risen from #8
concern in 2004 to #1 today.”IBM 2014
https://www.ami.org.au/imis15/librarymanager/Resources/IBM%20CMO%20study%202014.PDF
Richard Vancil, IDC Research
http://www.cio.com.au/article/555618/coming-terms-marketing-technology/
“You just cannot be a good marketer today
unless you are a good technologist”
10. 3.0
2001, Sitecore Established
First Commercial Release
Patented LayoutTechnology
6.1
2009, Feature Rich Enterprise CMS Platform
Online Marketing System
Disruptive MarketingTechnology
7.0
Content Foundation
StoreAnything
Search andTagging
7.1, 7.2
User Interface Foundation
Process Based Framework
(SPEAK)
7.5
Data Foundation
Experience Database
Experience Profile
One Single Integrated Platform
8.0
CXM Functional Foundation
Experience Analytics
Segmentation
12. SitecoreExperienceManagement
Any
Channel
Any
Process
Any
Data
• Complete freedom in
content and information
architecture
• Store or integrate digital
assets and media
• Seamlessly integrate
products and commerce
• Work with versioning,
workflows and translation
across all content types
• In-built search, faceting
and taxonomy
25. Technology Landscape
Microsoft
SQL Server
Microsoft
Windows Server
MicrosoftASP.NET
MVC |WebForms
Microsoft
.NET
Lucene.NET
| Apache SOLR
Microsoft
DynamicsCRM
| Salesforce
iOS | Android
Windows Phone
Xamarin
MongoDB InDesign
Microsoft
SharePoint
Microsoft
Azure
Windows
Active
Directory
26. Sitecore System Components
SITECORE
EXPERIENCE
PLATFORM
• One or more Sitecore xPlatform licensed servers.
• Standard Windows Environment
• Standard .NET Framework Web Application
• Can be scaled vertically and horizontally for high
availability using standard infrastructure
• Available for on-premise or cloud based hosting
8 Cores
8+ GB RAM
250+ GB HDD
Windows Server 2012
R2 .NET Framework
4.5
CONTENT DATABASES • Standard Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle environment
• Multiple databases for security and separation of
concern
• Can be scaled and secured using best practises for
the platform
8 Cores
8+ GB RAM
250+ GB HDD
Microsoft SQL 2012/20014
Oracle 11g
250GB per Content DB
SITECORE
EXPERIENCE
DATABASE
• Database for collecting customer data and interactions
• Services for aggregation and reporting
• Available as on-premise or SaaS based offering
Sitecore Licensed
Server
Windows Server 2012
R2 MongoDB and
Microsoft SQL 2012/20014
33. Sitecore® Experience Database™
- Dimensions
- Facts
REPORTING DATA
- Aggregation
- MapReduce
PROCESSING
- Query
- Indexing
REPORTING SERVICE
- Reporting
- Analytics
- Business Intelligence
- Contacts
- Interaction Behaviour
- Conversions & Automation
COLLECTION - Personalisation
- Marketing Automation
- Business Intelligence
Social
CRM
Media
Website
POS eDM
34. Sitecore® Experience Database™
REPORTING DATA
PROCESSING
REPORTING SERVICE
COLLECTION
SITECOREEXPERIENCECLOUD
REPORTING DATA
PROCESSING
REPORTING SERVICE
COLLECTION
ON-PREMISE
Social
CRM
Media
Website
POS eDM
35. Sitecore® Experience Cloud
SITECOREEXPERIENCECLOUD
REPORTING DATA
PROCESSING
REPORTING SERVICE
COLLECTION
Sitecore Supported SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)
offering
Experience Database and Reporting services
1 production endpoint
5 non-production endpoints
Request customer account id from Sitecore App
Center
Edit and enable included cloud configuration file
Hosted on Microsoft Azure
40. Sitecore on MicrosoftAzure
Supports PaaS and IaaS
Sitecore Azure Module for
deployment and scaling
Supports the Azure SLA
For more information see: http://www.sitecoreonazure.net/
43. Sitecore Development and Release Process
PowerShell
DEVELOPER MACHINE
DEVELOPER MACHINE
SERVERSDEPLOYMENT SERVICE
ENVIRONMENTSRELEASES
CONTINUOUS
INTEGRATION
DEVELOPER MACHINE
DEVELOPER MACHINE
DEVELOPMENT
VERSION CONTROL
MODULES
BACKUPS
DEVELOP RELEASE DEPLOY
TEAM DEVELOPMENT
FOR SITECORE
SlowCheetah
Network
Share
44. You Choose theTools and Frameworks
TEAM DEVELOPMENT
FOR SITECORE
Sitecore
Unicorn
Sitecore
Instance Manager
SlowCheetah
PowerShell
46. Sitecore is a global leader in customer
experience management software
that delivers highly relevant content and
personalised experiences across
multiple channels that delight
audiences, build loyalty and drive
revenue.
Who is Sitecore?
47. “To empower organisations to build effective,
meaningful relationships that win customers
for life.”
OurVision:
35,000+
WEBSITES
4,000+
BRANDS
850+
EMPLOYEES
1,500+
PARTNERS
10,000+
DEVELOPERS
50+
COUNTRIES
Marketing has changed dramatically over the last decade.
With customer insights and experience management across all touch points becoming increasingly important, the need for a truly integrated marketing technology is becoming more and more vital for the business.
My name is… and I would like to give you a conceptual and technical introduction to the Sitecore Experience Platform.
There is little doubt that investments in marketing technology is increasing and getting branding, customer experiences and communications right is very important for businesses today.
Statistics show that most marketers and designer would suggest a visual redesign every 2-3 years while people think a website refresh is needed every 1—2 years.
With the emergence of web content management systems and the consolidation of content, the need for major investments in technology has been prolonged, and today we see most businesses changing their web content management platform on a 3-5 year basis.
In the latter years marketing systems are moving more into the core of the business. The systems are no longer merely acting as a management portal for the presentation channels, but are actually providing vital insights and analytics which is used to steer the business.
Choosing a platform not only flexible enough to drive the customer experience all channels now and in the future, but also give those valuable customer insights is becoming increasingly important.
There has been much talk about the roles of the CMS and CIO since Gartner announced that the CMO would outspend the CIO by 2017.
The fact is that that marketing is becoming an increasingly technology focused area, and with the huge focus on customer data, insights and analytics, the need for traditional IT processes is becoming increasingly important. This in turn means that collaboration between the traditional CIO role and the traditional CMO role becomes more and more essential.
The marketing technology landscape is incredibly fragmented. This diagram spans over 1800 vendors but more notably spanning 43 categories. This often makes the marketing platform a patchwork, stitched together in a bespoke and complex manner. And IT often uses resources on keeping the platform running and upgraded – not extending and enriching it.
Furthermore the marketing organisation is stuck with tools which are hard to use together and often gives a fragmented view of the customer.
There is little doubt that marketing efforts today has to be centred around the customer. To succeed in the modern marketplace, you have to provide personalised, compelling customer experiences – for to do this, you have to be truly obsessed with knowing your customers.
And in this context, integration is key.
For us to have a truly complete view of the customer, we need to collect and integrate relevant customer data from all touch points and systems across the organisation, be it website or mobile behaviour, online or offline commerce interactions, CRM, Call Centers, ERP or anything else.
But collecting or even analysing this data is not the end goal. We need this data to be actionable.
We need the marketing system to provide not only intelligent insights but actually drive business decisions and automate processes – all in a intuitive and manageable way.
And finally we need those insights to drive the customer experience across all touch points and channels. Effectively delivering the right content to the right customer at the right time – and on the right channel.
And this is precisely what the Sitecore Experience Platform aims at.
The Sitecore Experience Platform is a platform evolved over many years as a single connected platform. Sitecore as a company and platform is not grown by acquisition, hence users wont have to switch between different part of the product and in terms of technology there is no patchwork of integration or multiple frameworks underneath. Sitecore is truly one connected marketing platform.
From the onset, the architecture of the system is built for extension and integration, This means everything from authentication and authorization over to content integration and customer data is built to be integrated with existing systems – whether 3rd party standard systems through our supported modules or bespoke in-house systems.
Sitecore has been around since 2001 and since 2008 here in ANZ. Not only do we have offices in 5 location in Australia and New Zealand and over 30 offices around the world, we also have over 1500 partners worldwide and 100 partner companies locally available to support you. With over 35000 websites in all business verticals running Sitecore, we have a truly proven track record.
Sitecore and the Sitecore platform has its origin back in 2001 has grown organically over the last decade.
Back in the original version, the foundation was laid for the platform running today and some of the disruptive patented architecture is still very much present in the platform today, this includes the strong focus on flexibility and integration as well as the presentation layer technology which allows the platform to share content across all channels including web, mobile, apps and even offline print.
2. With the introduction of the Online Marketing suite back in 2009, Sitecore disrupted the marketspace again by giving the traditional web CMS a customer centric focus and moving into personalisation.
3. With version 7, we enhanced the platform further, introducing an advanced search and faceting framework into the platform. This allowed us to not only surface search and faceting on the website, but also allowed the platform to integrate or store massive content repositories with no or little apparent structure in the platform.
4. Content and campaign management can require a lot of work and many marketing technologies do not lend a hand in making these processes easier. In Sitecore our vision is allow marketers to overcome the workload and complexities of management and focus their time on creating value for the business. In version 7.1 and 7.2 we added SPEAK, a user interface framework which forms the basis for moving from the traditional management and data centred tools over to business process based tools.
5. With the introduction of the Sitecore Experience Database we enhanced the Online Marketing System introduced in 2009 even further. The platform can now integrate with all customers touchpoints, effectively storing behaviour and integrations across all channels and data from all systems, thereby truly giving a single view of the customer.
6. With the release of Sitecore 8, the strides we made in the previous version has really come together, and with the additions of for example experience analytics and advanced segmentation tools, Sitecore now delivers the industry’s only truely integrated customer experience platform.
Sitecore is now a platform truly delivering on the marketing promise to deliver to the right message to the right customer at the right time and on the right channel.
Sitecore empowers the organisation, giving access to all business and marketing content, complete data insight into your customers, control over the experiences across all channels and delivering tools which fits the processes and workflows in your organisation.
The Content Management component of Sitecore, or rather the Sitecore Experience Management tools is based on a content centric approach. This means that the organisation is free to organise and manage the content in a way which fits the business while reusing content across channels and presenting it in a customer centric fashion.
The platform offers supported and best practise integrations for many types of systems including Digital Asset Management systems and document and collaboration tools. This means that vast repositories can be integrated seamlessly into Sitecore and the content be used across all of the Sitecore tools and channels.
The Content Management platform includes state of the art support for versioning, workflows and languages across all content and assets and content can be secured both internally and on the public facing channels.
Sitecore CMS also offers and integrates with commerce platforms to bring a single customer experience platform across all online and commerce channels.
The Sitecore Experience Database is where all relevant customer data and interactions are integrated and stored. It gives us not only access to the individual customers and powers personalisation and marketing automations, but also gives us aggregated analytics and insights on customer behaviour and campaigns.
Integrated with not only the in-house systems such as CRM or call centres, but also with third party data such as geo-location, demographics or social media, the Sitecore Experience Database will be your marketing powercenter.
The Sitecore Experience Database also offers bi-directional integration, for example providing valuable behavioural profiling of the customers back to the sales or support organisation or pushing data back to the enterprise business intelligence systems in the organisation.
The Sitecore Process Enablement and Acceleration Kit, SPEAK, is a framework which forms the foundation for the process based tools in Sitecore.
SPEAK also allows partners and developers to build business specific tools fitting a single organisation and targeting specific roles such as analyst, marketers or subject-matter or channel responsible editors.
Sitecore brings all the tools and data together to form the personal and relevant experience for your customers across web and mobile, native mobile apps, email, social media, offline print, commerce and even third on party online channels though our Federated Experience Manager.
The Sitecore Experience Platform is a single marketing platform, integrated to fulfil the digital marketing needs for the organisation across all channels and giving a truly complete view of the customers.
Lets take a dive into some of the specific channels and highlight how Sitecore lets marketing to control a personalised multi-channel presence.
Through the power of the Sitecore presentation and personalisation engine, Sitecore allows you to create a compelling experience across devices. The reusable nature of the content database allows the same content and assets to be applied across devices both in a responsive and adaptive format. The power to shape the customer experience is in the hands of the marketing organisation and the creative teams – without restrictions.
Sitecore offers marketing automation and email support as a native integrated channel. This means that segmentation and targeting of campaigns can happen though the Sitecore experience platform and will be powered by the same customer data which drives personalisation and insights.
Furthermore this allows the business to get insights into the true value of a campaign, not just click or open rates, and measure the value of the email channel all the way to purchase or acquision.
The Federated Experience Manager allows Sitecore to connect to non-sitecore websites or apps through simple javascript integration and rest services. The connection means that the behaviour and actions of a customer across all owned websites or channels can be tracked and can form the basis for personalisation and marketing automation.
The Federated Experience Manager also allows personalised content to be pushed onto non-sitecore websites, effectively expanding the reach of the marketing organisation onto websites outside their normal reach.
Acknowleging the business specific demands in the commerce space, Sitecore not only offers our own commerce offering, Sitecore Commerce Server, but also delivers an integration framework and vendor agnostic approach which we have called Commerce Connect.
Brings the commerce concepts into Sitecore. Orders, Products, Customers, Basket, Loyalty, Wish lists, Merchandise, etc. and allows you to manage and enrich the experience on your commerce channels.
Commerce Connect integrates commerce actions such as browsing products, putting products into the basket and the checkout flow into the Experience Database and customer experience platform and thereby lets you optimise and personalise the shopping experience.
The Sitecore Print Experience Manager is the conduit by which digital content can become print content.
Through PXM, Sitecore serves as the central content hub with connectors for Adobe InDesign and InCopy, but PXM also contains a web-based interface for marketers and a connector to InDesign Server for automation of asset creation.
The Sitecore Print Experience Manager can save an organization great amounts time and money by managing content for both offline and online in a central repository, and by controlling print content through the Sitecore workflow and versioning features.
Finally through Sitecore Social the organization can understand social ad spend, understand what you customers are doing on social channels and reuse content across social platforms.
Lets have a closer look at the technology behind the platform.
Sitecore is built primarily on the Microsoft Technology Stack and is dedicated to its patterns and practises.
The primary technologies powering the platform are Microsoft.NET, Microsoft Windows, SQL server and ASP.NET, but also industry leading technologies such as the search and indexing framework Lucene and the highly scalable NoSQL database MongoDB is part of the platform.
Secondarily, Sitecore has native connectors and integrations to many Microsoft technologies such as Azure, Sharepoint, CRM, AX and ActiveDirectory.
These technologies speaks primarily to our dedication and collaboration with Microsoft as a close technology partner, but also highlights the extensibility and breadth of the platform.
Overall, the Sitecore consists of three system components:
1: The Sitecore Experience Platform is the content management and content delivery platform servicing content editors and visitors across different channels.
This component is built as a standard Microsoft .NET web application and is running on a windows environment, setup and scaled using the best practises and standards defined by Microsoft.
2: The Content databases are running on Microsoft SQL server or Oracle, and can be provisioned using standard practices and recommended.
3: The final component, The Sitecore Experience Database, is a composite component hosting the potentially vast customer and interaction database and powering the personalisation, automation, analytics and insights of Sitecore.
Lets look into the Sitecore Experience Database to see how it works and what powers it…
The concept of the single Customer View is being thrown around by all customer related system vendor these days. The truth is that each system often is relying the information from their own channels and will therefore only see just a slice of the customer and never achieve complete customer insight.
To truly achieve a single view of the customer in every single systems, they would all have to be integrated to each other which is simply not practically possible and would often not even lend even value to individual systems.
The Sitecore Experience Database or xDB is built to serve as a single integration point for marketing related customer data, bi-directionally consuming and feeding data to all customer related systems. This allows each of the systems to get the insight to the customers they need to create compelling and valuable customer experiences.
Through the Experience Profile in the Sitecore Experience Database, view we can find and investigate each individual customer and through the timeline drill down into every individual interaction across customer touchpoints. So the Sitecore Experience Database gives us a very granular view of the customer.
We can also investigate the customer experience through aggregate views to understand how the business is performing, how you can improve and optimise the experience.
Sitecore 8 provides a brand new, flexible Experience Analytics platform with an extensive suite of reports to give you those insights.
As mentioned, to power a true single customer view, we need integration, so we need all the customer related systems to contribute relevant information to the Sitecore Experience Database.
1: The data is collected through a standard integrations or through standard API endpoint into the collection database of the Sitecore xDB. The collection database hosts all the collected data and powers the live personalisation and marketing automation. It also allows data to be extracted for processing in other business intelligence tools. The collection database is extensible to host interactions from any customer touch-point and any customer data.
2: Secondly the Sitecore Experience Database consists of a aggregation layer which processes the potentially vast amounts of collected data and breaks it into tangible business insights. The aggregation service can be extended to break down business specific dimensions and facts.
3: The broken down data is stored in a reporting data…
4: Which is exposed by the reporting service of the Experience Database. This service is what drives the Sitecore Experience Analytics.
Running the Sitecore Experience Database on premise involves running the following technology stack.
The collection database is powered by the MongoDB database, which both vertically and horizontally offers a highly scalable NoSQL database technology.
The aggregation and reporting services are native Sitecore technologies which allows developers to adapt these services to the business in a easily extensible manner.
Finally the reporting database runs on a Microsoft SQL database.
1: The alternative to the on-premise model is to take advantage of the Sitecore Experience Cloud offering.
The Sitecore Experience Cloud is an easily managed and fully serviced software-as-a-service offering including all the components of the Experience Database.
The service is running on Microsoft Azure and offers support through the whole development lifecycle with both production and non-production endpoints.
Let us take a deeper plunge into how the platform works and how to scale and host the platform in a way which suits your organisation.
Lets start by taking a rough look at how the moving parts of the platform fits together. Please note that although this is a realistic example of a systems architecture in Sitecore, it is by no means the only architecture supported.
The management server is where the editors and marketers work….
When content is edited and have gone though the business workflow and is approved, it can be published. The publish process in Sitecore effectively copies the approved content from the master database onto the web database – which is located in an accessible location to the websites and public facing servers.
The web database powers the webservers serving one or more websites to the visitors. The delivery servers can be load balanced and scaled in a standardised manner to accommodate the visitor traffic. Furthermore Sitecore supports the use content delivery networks for assets, media and any non-personalised content.
As visitors visit the websites, behaviour and actions is written to the Sitecore Experience Database (in this instance running in the Sitecore Experience Cloud), which also powers the live personalisation and marketing automation.These moving parts effectively makes up the Sitecore Experience Platform.
For development, Sitecore – with all the moving parts – can run on a single development machine. This makes it highly effective to set up development teams and work with the system.Teams can then consolidate changes and additions in version control which either through Continuous Integration or manual processes integrates the solution on a server, where integration testing and initial quality assurance is performed.
Hereafter, the newly built version can be deployed onto a production-like environment for user-acceptance, load and performance testing. The changes is deployed through standard .NET development processes and tools and through Sitecore specific change packages.
When the changes are accepted, the version can be submitted to production.
In a distributed environment, the Sitecore platform can be scaled even further to accommodate different geographical locations.
In this scenario, the management environment is scaled for high availability and placed in a single location in Australia. To avoid publishing bottleneck, the publishing process has been separated onto a separate server.
This solution then scales the website onto three datacentres around the world, catering for low latency for local users. Each of the datacenters are scaled for high availability.
For the Sitecore Experience Database, this solution leverages the Sitecore Experience Cloud as a central customer data repository.
Finally Sitecore supports active and passive disaster recovery scenarios, by placing standalone solutions in alternate datacenters.
Every part of the Sitecore platform can be scaled to accommodate 100% uptime and to avoid bottlenecks.
Sitecore offer not only the ultimate flexibility in scaling, but also in hosting, ranging from a secure and easily integrated on-premise model to the low maintenance, high availability and elasticity of the cloud.
Everything in the Sitecore stack can be hosted on-premise, including the content management, content databases and the experience database.
Just as easily Sitecore offers support for the infrastructure as a service offerings from for example Microsoft, Amazon or Rackspace. This will eliminate the need for supporting hardware and infrastructure on the servers.
Through a tight partnership with Microsoft, Sitecore offers complete support for Windows Azure, including running the content management services on the Azure Platform as a service, offering managed services for even operating system and middleware.
Finally Sitecore the Sitecore Experienced Database as a fully serviced Software as a Service.
Sitecore is a native fit for the Microsoft Azure Cloud offering. Everything required to run the Sitecore application is available through Azure, including very low maintenance virtual machines through platform as a service, SQL server and the Sitecore Experience Database. Furthermore Azure offers a large number of complimentary services such as Media Encoding & Streaming, API management and multi-factor authentication.
By leveraging the Sitecore Azure Module, many of the tasks associated with deploying and scaling to Microsoft Azure can be eliminated.
Application Lifecycle Management is the process of developing, configuring, maintaining and supporting a software application and getting the process right is critical for the ROI on any platform.
Sitecore as a platform is committed to taking advantage of and supporting the best practises, patterns and tools provided by the technologies we are built on. This means that Sitecore as a development platform is a natural fit for a Microsoft organisation and a .NET development team.
We have a very dedicated development community building describing practises and patterns for Sitecore development as well as contributing modules and extensions to the platform through our marketplace.
In an ideal scenario any software development would go through the development, test and deploy phases of the application lifecycle in an automated manner taking out as much manual intervention as possible. This makes it possible to do quicker and more agile development and get faster time to market.
Sitecore supports the agile development methodology and tools and will fit with any development tools, continuous integration or automated deployment tools supported by .NET.
Sitecore is a global leader in Customer Experience Management software and we are rated as a top leader by both Gartner and Forrester analysts.
Our vision is to help you build meaningful relationships with your customers and win customers for life.
Ranging from system integrators to creative agencies to enterprise full service partners, e.g. Oakton, Deloitte, Avanade, Bullseye, Accenture / Reactive, Speedwell, Razorfish, DT.
Tiers based on criteria such as number of certified developers, implementation quality, and customer references / satisfaction
Blended Team Approach and Subject Matter Expertise across the project
Sitecore has a Customer Success team in Australia and New Zealand with the goal of to ensure that every customer gets the most out of the Sitecore platform and is able to deliver online experiences that exceed their expectations.
All our valued Sitecore customers are assigned a Customer Account Manager from the Customer Success team who can help customers establish and sustain a strategic relationship with Sitecore. Acting as a trusted advisor, the customer account manager collaborates with our clients to share the latest about Sitecore’s evolving product offering specific to future business opportunities and strategic goals.
The customer account manager also works to collaborates with customers to promote customer reference-ability and customer community.
I hope this presentation gave you a good overview of the Sitecore Experience Platform and its capabilities. Please contact Sitecore for more information.