On November 5, 2019 at the Sitecore Symposium, Sitecore SaaS was announced. This makes Sitecore the first major CMS platform to announce a software-as-a-service version.
Sitecore Symposium
The Sitecore Symposium is a 3-day annual conference hosted by Sitecore providing the opportunity to discuss their vision for the future, upcoming releases, and any other important topics. The announcement of Sitecore Saas was made during the Sitecore Symposium 2019.
Software-as-a-Service Model
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is one of the three primary types of could-based services; the other two being Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (Paas). SaaS can be defined as any software that is owned, managed, and delivered remotely by a provider.
This commonly falls under:
- The one-to-many consumption model
- The pay-for-use subscription model
Details We Know
While we await the release of more details for the launch we do know:
- Summer 2020 release, version 1
- It is a new platform, not an add-on or module for the existing Sitecore platform
- AI as a service, across the platform, built in
- Full integration with Sitecore Content Hub
- The initial release will be supporting limited use cases, and will evolve over time
- We’ll continue to invest and innovate our current platform for years to come
- It will remain true to its existing partnership with Microsoft and will be hosted on Microsoft Azure
- It will likely not include the marketing suite that Sitecore is renowned for
- SaaS platform, partners and customers will still have the ability to customize and extend the platform to meet customer needs
- Its target market will be lower mid-market & mid-size enterprise organizations
- Initial release is not a replacement for customers who require all advanced capabilities that Sitecore offers
Changes To The Current Sitecore Offering
- Sitecore has committed to a 3 to 5 year window to maintain full-support and development of existing non-SaaS offering
- Sitecore will then re-evaluate customer needs and determine the future direction of the SaaS and non-SaaS offerings
Benefits
- SaaS offering will have a modern, elegant interface
- Support different development environments
- Faster time-to-market for digital experiences
- Automatically predict behaviors, act on data, serve up right content in real-time
- Always evolving content services and personalization capability
- Will always have the latest version of the product
- Dramatically reduces the need for Sitecore infrastructure expertise
Things To Come
- What functionality will be included in the initial release?
- How will customizations and extensibility be achieved?
- How will 3rd party integrations be approached?
- What will the development environment consist of?
Closing Thoughts
What does this SaaS offering look like from a technology point of view? Sitecore has announced that this "entails the development of an entirely new platform”, which is quite exciting.
Looking at their current technology, Sitecore’s SXA framework certainly dovetails nicely with the idea of a lower-code SaaS CMS offering. Sitecore Omni also provides a headless CMS that while not truely SaaS, is far ahead of other headless SaaS offerings when it comes to delivering personalized, intelligent customer experiences.
Even if Sitecore SaaS only indirectly leverages SXA and Omni, Sitecore has shown the technology to do something very powerful in the space.
Here is Sitecore’s official press release on Sitecore SaaS.
We're excited about this new Sitecore SaaS offering and look forward to staying on the bleeding edge of these developments. All information found here was shared during the Sitecore Symposium.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published in November 2019 and has been revised and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
