Sitecore is a customer experience platform that builds a variety of digital experiences, including websites, mobile apps, and social media. 

Sitecore

The writing is on the wall for Sitecore customers. Why? Because most brands that are on Sitecore use XM or XP, which are not built on a composable architecture. However, Sitecore sees the future as composable and just announced that it will release only one more version of XM and XP. As a result, brands have a decision to make. Following Sitecore into the future requires <a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/composable-architecture/switching-vendors-for-digital-architectures-without-replatforming">replatforming</a> to Sitecore XM Cloud, in addition to possible license changes. This amounts to spending a lot of time, energy and money just to end up at exactly where they already are with Sitecore XM or XP. Even the most satisfied Sitecore customers should be, at the very least, considering their options. This post explains how Uniform can help brands that want to move off of Sitecore XM or XP and to embrace a composable future.<h2>Sitecore migration</h2>Whether you are considering a move off of Sitecore because you are unhappy with the platform or want to avoid replatforming, remember that your Sitecore implementation, which likely has taken years to build, won’t simply disappear. Sitecore will remain a viable organization for a while yet. Uniform helps brands continue to get value from Sitecore while allowing brands to continue using Sitecore as long as they like, and throughout the migration process.<h2>The prerequisites and Uniform’s helping hand</h2>Before moving to a new CMS, you must first figure out the following:<ul><li>What to do with the content in the old CMS. Since the Sitecore content model is often a mix of stable and volatile content, there is no easy way to move that out of Sitecore. No worries, however; Uniform is a handy solution with which you can conveniently accomplish two major tasks:<ul><li>Incorporate content from Sitecore into sites and other digital experiences without moving that content elsewhere. You have plenty of breathing room to plan out what to do with it in the long run. </li><li>Extract and bring content from Sitecore to the new CMS. Doing that goes far beyond the one-to-one mapping capability of traditional migration tools, essentially enabling your Sitecore developers to migrate and build content with the Sitecore APIs they are familiar with.</li></ul></li><li>Whether to redesign your site. Brands often see moving to a new CMS as an opportunity to redesign their site, but that’s not a must if you’re happy with the current design. A prudent game plan might be to focus on one project at a time, and moving to a new CMS is a big project. 

Regardless of your decision, keep in mind that all the instructions for connecting content with the design is stored in Sitecore. With Uniform, you can extract and map those instructions to a new front end, focusing on migrating content only, not those presentation instructions, and significantly reducing the scope and complexity of the migration process. </li><li>How to preserve autonomy and control for your business users. Moving to a <a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/headless-cms/uniform-for-headless-cms">headless CMS</a>, which offers the features for business users to manage content but not the ones with which to build pages and other digital experiences, results in a loss of autonomy and control for those users. Uniform brings back those missing capabilities so that business users can do their job fast regardless of where the content lives. 

In the case of Sitecore, for example, business users are free to use content stored in Sitecore, switch over to new content sources when they become available, and seamlessly work with multiple content sources.</li></ul><h2>Flexible and convenient migrations</h2>As described above, by leveraging Uniform, brands can continue to capitalize on their existing Sitecore investment as they plan and implement a migration from Sitecore XM or XP. That way, brands not only reduce their dependence on Sitecore, but also ensure that their business users have replacements for the capabilities those users are used to but are unavailable in headless CMSes. For all that moving off a platform is never easy, Uniform offers the most convenient and simplest path from Sitecore to a composable future. <a href="https://uniform.dev/contact">Contact us</a> for a head start on that journey.<h2>References on Sitecore</h2><ul><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/raise-your-sitecore-sites-performance-with-uniform">Overcoming Sitecore challenges with Uniform</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/the-pros-and-cons-of-migrating-to-sitecore-xm-cloud">Is migrating to Sitecore XM Cloud worth considering?</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/uniform-an-effective-fast-and-flexible-approach-for-composable">Uniform spells versatility, flexibility, and low cost for composable</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/life-after-sitecore-migration">Life after Sitecore migration</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/deliver-better-digital-experiences-with-a-cdn">Deliver better digital experiences with a CDN</a></li></ul>

Life after Sitecore migration

Like many vendors in the digital-experience space, Sitecore recently hailed composability as the future for brands seeking control, flexibility, and speed that are absent from their current technology stacks. In fact, Sitecore’s marketing machine is moving full steam ahead toward composable with a focus on the products they acquired over the past two years along with XM Cloud. Interestingly, Sitecore is even <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/knowledge-center/sitecore-vs-optimizely">calling out its competitors</a> for using a tired, old monolithic architecture.Sitecore has been, however, markedly less vocal about the role the traditional Sitecore XM and XP products, which are not composable at all, will play in the composable world. That’s because the composable future Sitecore envisions is one in which customers <a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/composable-architecture/switching-vendors-for-digital-architectures-without-replatforming">replatform</a>—a “four-letter word” in digital-experience management—to Sitecore products.Replatforming means moving from one technology stack to another, an incredibly expensive, time-consuming, and risky process. Sitecore’s vision of a composable world is unshakable, however: Even customers already using <a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/the-pros-and-cons-of-migrating-to-sitecore-xm-cloud">Sitecore products must replatform</a>. Uniform <a href="https://uniform.dev/what-is-digital-experience-composition">digital experience composition platform (DXCP)</a> offers a more viable and less burdensome way on the belief that since composability is all about being able to use the right tool at the right time, abandoning your existing technology in favor of composable isn’t just ironic, it’s also wrong. With Uniform DXCP, you not only can make Sitecore XM and XP a part of a <a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/composable-architecture/composable-platforms-what-why-how">composable architecture</a>, but also do that incrementally without replatforming.<h2>The benefits of Uniform DXCP</h2>Composable architectures comprise products that work together. Whereas Sitecore combines capabilities in a single product, Uniform enables you to decouple them so that you can use the parts of Sitecore that work well for you and offload those that don’t. For example, many Sitecore customers find it daunting to build and maintain an efficient yet simple content-delivery environment. Through Uniform, you can continue to manage site content and configure personalization on Sitecore, but move the execution of personalization and delivery to a content delivery network (CDN).Instead of being a Sitecore replacement, a content management system, a personalization engine, or a CDN, Uniform DXCP ensures that  the various products in composable architectures work together. What’s more, incremental adoption is another benefit of Uniform’s composable approach. Feel free to keep Sitecore in place for as long as you like and decouple features at your own pace.<h2>Uniform’s remarkable flexibility</h2>Note these two costly Sitecore upgrades:<ul><li>New software version. The high cost stems from Sitecore’s monolithic architecture, which necessitates that Sitecore upgrades update everything and that, after upgrade, you review and test all the content on your site. </li><li>New license. You never pay less than what you’re already paying. To be sure, many new features might accompany the new license, but most Sitecore customers don’t even use a fraction of the features available with their current one.</li></ul>Uniform extends an excellent option by supporting your current Sitecore version and license, i.e., you gain all the benefits of composability without having to pay more to Sitecore. Plus, you can power as much or as little of your site as you desire. Our customers typically start small on a section of the main site or on a smaller site, expanding on their own timeframe and reaping business value along the way.<h2>The ultimate of the composable bandwagon</h2>Uniform agrees with Sitecore on three viewpoints:<ul><li>Composability is the future of digital-experience management. </li><li>The limitations of monolithic architectures are a roadblock to creating engaging digital experiences.</li><li>Composable architectures uniquely and effectively address those limitations.</li></ul>However, we do believe that Sitecore XM and XP can play an important role in composable architectures. To realize the benefits of composability faster, brands should leverage Uniform with their existing technology, assured of a low barrier to entry in taking up that valuable approach for building and managing technology stacks.<h2>References on Sitecore</h2><ul><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/raise-your-sitecore-sites-performance-with-uniform">Overcoming Sitecore challenges with Uniform</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/the-pros-and-cons-of-migrating-to-sitecore-xm-cloud">Is migrating to Sitecore XM Cloud worth considering?</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/uniform-an-effective-fast-and-flexible-approach-for-composable">Uniform spells versatility, flexibility, and low cost for composable</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/life-after-sitecore-migration">Life after Sitecore migration</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/deliver-better-digital-experiences-with-a-cdn">Deliver better digital experiences with a CDN</a></li></ul>

Uniform spells versatility, flexibility, and low cost for composable

Sitecore as a monolithic system has had a long, productive life. Over the years, as it grew from a content management system (CMS) to a digital experience platform (DXP), Sitecore has become more complex, more expensive, and hard pressed to keep up with changing business requirements and technical preferences. But fear not! Uniform for Sitecore addresses the challenges you face vis-a-vis performance, scalability, and front-end development without your having to upgrade, <a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/composable-architecture/composable-platforms-what-why-how">replatform</a>, or change your license.A common problem with Sitecore is slow sites. Sitecore was created at a time when webpages were simple, network speeds were slower, and visitors were willing to wait five seconds for a page to load. Things are vastly different nowadays: Webpages are bloated with client-side scripts, network speeds are 10-100x faster, and data shows that visitors bounce off if a page does not load instantaneously.<h2>Personalizing webpages on a CDN with Uniform</h2><a href="https://docs.uniform.dev/sitecore/optimize">Uniform improves Sitecore performance</a> by reducing or eliminating the need for Sitecore CD instances, which are usually a foundational obstacle to high performance. To do that, Uniform caches Sitecore sites with a CDN, greatly reducing CD instances. Uniform does that even with personalized sites by moving personalization to a CDN. That way, even though configuration of personalization is done with the Sitecore rules editor, personalization runs in the CDN. Plus, since Uniform supports all leading CDNs, you’re free to pick your preferred vendor.Uniform can remove CD instances with what’s called a “<a href="https://docs.uniform.dev/sitecore/deploy/introduction/what-is-jamstack">Jamstack approach</a>,” whereby a site built and managed in Sitecore is rendered to static files that can be deployed on any CDN or hosting service. This Uniform capability applies to sites built on any version of Sitecore with any Sitecore license, including those created with <a href="https://docs.uniform.dev/sitecore/deploy/getting-started/sitecore-mvc-tutorial">ASP.NET MVC</a> or Sitecore Headless Services (formerly called JSS). Because it runs on a CDN, personalization continues to work apace.<h2>Scaling website delivery with Uniform</h2>Another common problem for Sitecore customers is scalability. Sitecore’s architecture was created way back when websites ran on a single server capable of serving all the visitors. Those days are long past. In the meantime, Sitecore’s initiatives to enable applications designed to run on one server to run on multiple servers all turned out to be difficult to implement and expensive to operate.In contrast, Uniform offloads the task of delivering websites from the Sitecore CD instance to the CDN, which handles scalability reliably, saving you the costly burden of maintaining a complex delivery infrastructure yourself.<h2>Modernizing front-end development with Uniform</h2>Front-end development is another challenge for Sitecore customers. Sitecore’s front-end technology has traditionally been <a href="https://docs.uniform.dev/sitecore/deploy/getting-started/sitecore-mvc-tutorial">ASP.NET MVC</a>. Today, Sitecore offers products like Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA) and Sitecore Headless Services. Neither of them—except, possibly, for Sitecore Headless Services, which is seldom used—lends itself well for modern front-end development processes. As a result, Sitecore developers cannot reap the benefits of modern processes, automation, efficiency, and quality improvements available to most front-end developers.On the other hand, not all brands are interested in moving to a modern development approach for the front end. Uniform does not require you to do so in order to get the performance and scalability benefits. But for brands that forge ahead with a switch, they can do that incrementally with Uniform by using ASP.NET MVC without upgrading their Sitecore server or changing their Sitecore license.<h2>Getting started with Uniform</h2>Uniform for Sitecore offers solutions to the most common and intractable problems Sitecore customers face with no need to switch to another Sitecore version or license. Since incremental adoption is at the core of everything we do, you can implement Uniform at your own pace, ensuring that it works for you before extending it to other parts of your Sitecore site. Ultimately, Uniform helps you get more from your Sitecore investment. We’d love to show you how. Check out our <a href="https://docs.uniform.dev/sitecore/">Sitecore documentation</a> and <a href="https://uniform.dev/contact">contact us for a demo</a>.<h2>References on Sitecore</h2><ul><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/raise-your-sitecore-sites-performance-with-uniform">Overcoming Sitecore challenges with Uniform</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/the-pros-and-cons-of-migrating-to-sitecore-xm-cloud">Is migrating to Sitecore XM Cloud worth considering?</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/uniform-an-effective-fast-and-flexible-approach-for-composable">Uniform spells versatility, flexibility, and low cost for composable</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/life-after-sitecore-migration">Life after Sitecore migration</a></li><li><a href="https://uniform.dev/blogs/sitecore/deliver-better-digital-experiences-with-a-cdn">Deliver better digital experiences with a CDN</a></li></ul>

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