One of the reasons we love working with Sitecore is the continuous evolution of the platform. There is always something new on the horizon.

Over the past three years the Sitecore strategy and product roadmap has mainly focused on moving to a fully “composable" platform with a number of SaaS-based products that are available separately, but also work together seamlessly. This followed a number of strategic acquisitions of niche providers to help build out their product suite. At the same time, the original integrated, single Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) ha still been made available.

Now that journey has been completed, over the past year the roadmap has shifted towards adding AI into the platform and experience, while still evolving all of the separate products with the usual tweaks, improvements and enhancements.

Each October Sitecore holds its flagship Symposium event where it invariably makes some key announcements, does some product roadmap reveals and more. The 2024 Symposium returned to being a full in-person event held in Nashville. While we’d have loved to don our Stetsons and attended, we’re rather busy with some critical client projects. Perhaps next year!

As in previous years there has been a string of interesting announcements. In this update post we’re going to walk through some of the recent Sitecore headline, including key announcements at Symposium.

A new revenue level reached reflects Sitecore’s continuing growth

Earlier in October Sitecore released a statement that is had surpassed $500 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in its most recent financial year. The press release attributes this to strong demand for its “composable" DXP, and makes a number of other statements that showcases Sitecore’s strength in the market, including:

• accolades from the major sector analysts such as Gartner
• 3,000+ clients
• a professional community of around 20,000 developers and practitioners.



While the statement is clearly a prime piece of Sitecore PR ahead of Symposium, it does show that the leading DXP vendors are continue to succeed in the market, with a new revenue milestone (S400m) also reached by Optimizely. It also indicates that Sitecore’s pivot to a composable platform has not hold it back in terms of market growth, and also emphasises the continuity despite a change in leadership with Dave O’Flanagan becoming CEO earlier in the year.

Sitecore ramps up its AI credentials with the launch of Sitecore Stream

The major product announcement at Symposium is the launch of Sitecore Stream, a branded set of artificial intelligence capabilities that are threaded throughout the Sitecore portfolio of products. Recently Sitecore has been talking up its AI capabilities, so this announcement doesn’t come as a surprise.

Positioning Sitecore’s collection of AI features as a branded service makes it easier to tell customers and prospects the story around Sitecore’s focus on AI. Interestingly on the website Stream is positioned not as a product, but as a platform “capability" along with Connect, Sitecore’s integration engine, and interface.

Sitecore describes Stream as a “collection of secure, brand-aware AI capabilities designed for marketers, enabling smarter, quicker end-to-end content creation and delivery at scale with huge productivity gain." It is based on Microsoft Azure Open AI Service and spans across the portfolio of products, including the Sitecore Experience Platform (XP).

While the description and even FAQs around Stream are currently quite generic, there are some over-arching principles:

• Brand aware AI: ensuring that any AI-driven output stays within brand guidelines, for example adhering to tone of voice or colour schemes
• AI-enhanced workflows: automating tasks including content creation, A/B testing and more.
• Generative copilots: interfaces across the product portfolio using natural language to support different processes such as content creation.



With AI now a major front for product competition in the DXP space, it is likely that Stream will evolve further.

Sitecore announces HIPAA readiness to keep ticking the compliance box

Another key announcement at Symposium was the news that a number of Sitecore’s products (XM Cloud, Sitecore CPD, Content Hub and Personalize solutions) have been independently audited to confirm that they now can comply with the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA) act. HIPAA is a US act which requires healthcare providers – and any third party that handles their information – to ensure that PHI (Patient Health Information) is protected, ensuring security, data privacy and relevant consent is obtained.

To be honest this announcement is probably going to be of little interest to most of our customers here in the UK. However, we do think it’s an interesting development and shows Sitecore is aware of the regulatory and compliance challenges around data privacy that are only ramping up the age of AI. It’s good that Sitecore is prepared to invest in certification to ensure that its solutions tick these boxes, particularly to meet sector-specific needs. We hope that Sitecore will continue to ensure the platform ticks all the necessary compliance boxes. particularly for regulated industries and public sector organisations.

Sitecore continues to invest in its XM Cloud roadmap

One of the main milestones for Sitecore’s journey to SaaS and composability was the release of Sitecore XM Cloud in 2022. Sitecore XM Cloud is the SaaS version of the core Sitecore Experience Manager, making the platform’s CMS available to sit at the centre of a composable DXP.

Sitecore remains committed to an active XM Cloud product roadmap with a number of items mentioned at Symposium, including a new user interface and a dashboard aimed at marketing teams both on the horizon. There are also a number of features coming that will help developers including greater support for extensibility, deployment-related features, a new authoring Software Development Kit (SDK), AI support for component building and more.

Sitecore has an underlying strategy to encourage customers to move over to its SaaS products. The continuing evolution of XM Cloud support this mission, as well as initiatives such as the Sitecore Accelerate programme which guides customers who want to transition to the cloud.

Sitecore are still committed to PaaS to satisfy its existing customer base

With obvious investment in the Sitecore XM SaaS-based offering and the relentless focus on the composable DXP in the messages coming out of Sitecore, there is always a question around Sitecore’s commitment to its original Sitecore Experience Platform (XP). This is available on a PaaS bass and even on-premises and is often customised. Overall, there are a significant number of clients still using Sitecore XP, including many of the clients we work with.

The good news is that Sitecore has again reiterated It’s commitment to Sitecore XP. At the conference CEO Dave O’Flanagan is quoted as saying “It’s very important for us that we’re clear with our customers that we’re going to continue to innovate [on Sitecore XP] and deliver a lot of value…we’re delivering [Sitecore} Stream for XP. That’s a clear statement of intent that we have their backs."

This is welcome news for the significant number of Sitecore clients who are still delivering their website using Sitecore XP. It provides some certainty for teams wanting to make medium to long (ish( term decisions about their Sitecore-powered website.

Sitecore marches on

To a certain extent, it’s business as usual at Sitecore. There continues to be market growth and product evolution and 2025 looks like it should be another good year for the platform. If you’d like to discuss any of the latest Sitecore updates, then get in touch!