This article was originally written by Avanade alum Dave Moore.

Sitecore 10 is here to help IT and Marketing create a better digital experience
For organizations that are considering or already leveraging Sitecore to host their digital experience, they’ll be excited to learn that Sitecore announced the release of Sitecore ® Experience Platform ™ 10, (XP 10 for short), plus Sitecore Experience Commerce™ 10 (XC 10). 

The most significant headline updates include Sitecore Containers, enhanced audience segmentation capabilities and a supercharged connection with Sitecore Content Hub ™ that amplifies the power of each part of the platform. In this post, we’ll explore how these can create a better digital experience.

Content Hub updates are enabling modernization
Sitecore Content Hub ™ has become a central tool to organizations looking to accelerate digital transformation. The latest Content Hub 3.4 release, in conjunction with the improved integration with XP10, enhances each of the main features of Content Hub, including its DAM, CMP, MRM and web to print capabilities. What’s more, a new JavaScript SDK allows Content Hub to be integrated to the rest of your martech stack quickly and easily. 

So what do these changes mean for brands that are leveraging Sitecore today? How will Sitecore 10 help marketers create better experiences for customers, and how can it enable IT to make these experiences technically possible?

Sitecore Containers 
This new feature merits a blog post in its own right. What marketers need to know about Containers now is that they allow Sitecore to be managed more effectively by IT and development teams. 

Docker is a key technology that can now be used to quickly (think: minutes instead of hours or days) spin up complete Sitecore instances, make changes, save those changes and then have those changes available to anyone else that decides to spin up a copy of that Sitecore instance. 

For IT, this is as revolutionary an advancement as Virtualization was to Infrastructure Management and delivers massive improvements to developer efficiency.

Sitecore 10 can help marketing teams do more

1. Faster time to market: Containers make developers more efficient. Your campaign, content, and digital experience updates take less time to build and launch.
2. Greater control: deeper analytical insights allow you to make more informed decisions.
3. Master your content: XP10 and Content Hub in combination allow you to control the whole content lifecycle with maximum efficiency, leveraging AI to reduce laborious tasks and free you to spend time on value-add activities.

Sitecore 10 can help IT teams do more

1. Simplification: Sitecore Containers simplify the process of installing and managing changes to Sitecore.
2. Faster development: developers spend less time wrestling with complexity and more time adding value.
3. Lower cost of ownership: developer timer = $$$. Faster developers = less $$$ for builds and more $$$ to spend on value-driving activities like A/B testing and optimization.

We think these updates are great, stabilizing and accelerating development on the Sitecore platform. It enables developers to take advantage of what is already a feature-rich platform, while moving faster with lower overall cost of ownership – which is especially critical in today’s market with retracting budgets and increased scrutiny of enterprise investments. 

Whilst the headline features may not grab as much limelight as the new features we saw in XP 8 or XP 9, we think that these changes may herald the shift to Sitecore being a headless-first Digital Experience Platform (DXP). As a Sitecore customer, you have the power to decide how you build around Sitecore and leverage its well-recognized Content Lifecycle Management, Contextual Insight and Digital Experience capabilities. You and your development teams are free to build with the approach that suits your requirements and free to take advantage of the latest advancements in technology and hosting.

For those organizations that were already considering an upgrade to Sitecore 9.3, it likely makes sense to upgrade straight to Sitecore 10 as 10 is very much an evolution of Sitecore 9.3. Architecturally they are very similar which means the process of upgrading to 10 is likely to be very similar to 9.3. The benefit? You can take advantage of these new updates plus get an extra year of support. 

Increase business impact by harnessing your Sitecore investment
To learn more about how to upgrade and take advantage of your Sitecore investment, contact our team of Sitecore and CX experts. Sitecore MVPs like myself are dedicated to learning as much about the technology as possible and using those insights to drive better business outcomes.
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