Explains some of the new capabilities and upcoming features in the Sitecore product, based on learning from Sitecore Symposium 2016

1. © Mindtree limited 2016
Sitecore
What To Look Forward To…
October 19, 2016

2. Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA)
• A new Sitecore add-on module that is downloaded and installed like any other
Sitecore modules
Accelerates…
Brochure ware
Content Production
Information Architecture
Branding
Multisite
Neutral…
System Integration
Heavy Customization
Single Page App

3. SXA Features
• 70+ components
• Template structures
• Experience Editor first; drag and drop approach to building website
• Theming
• Creative Exchange
• Multisite support

4. Creative Exchange
SXA – Value Proposition
Develop
Wireframe
Site Design
Content Entry
Export
Wireframe
Import
Design /
Theme
Finished
Site
…enabling multiple teams to work in parallel (agencies, developers, content authors)

5. SXA – Wireframes
• Build wireframes directly in Sitecore’s
Experience Editor

6. Creative Exchange – Exporting and Importing Site Design

7. SXA – Few additional points
• Architected, designed and implemented with adherence to Helix principles
• Developers can build custom components adhering to SXA architecture and
design
• Currently tied to the 960 Grid system
• Lookout for:
• Supporting other CSS frameworks through a plug-in based architecture
• Additions to the component library?
• Needs a separate license 

8. Publishing in Sitecore – Challenges
• Very expensive to run publishing; performance issues on large scale
implementations
• Even with parallel publishing…
• Even more long to complete a publish when having
• Multiple languages
• Multiple publishing targets, with geo-located targets making it worse
• Dedicated publishing instance required extra Sitecore license

9. Sitecore Publishing Service
• A new, ground-up developed add-on solution from Sitecore providing high-speed
publishing
• Default Sitecore installation will continue to use the legacy approach
• Installed as a standalone service – IIS or Console app
• Does the actual publishing
• Creates new tables and SPs in the database
• Built on .NET Core
•Sitecore Publishing Service
• Installed on Sitecore instance as any standard module
• Provides publish dialogs, publishing dashboards
• Communicates with publishing service endpoint
•Sitecore Publishing Module

10. Solution Breakdown
• Move away from “single content item publish” to a “bulk publish” approach
• 8753 API calls to 11 API calls for a single item publish
• Watch-out: any custom publish pipeline processors will no longer work; can
hook into publish completion events
• Parallel promote
• Move media and items together
• Publish to targets in parallel
• Transactional capability; rollback on failure

11. Publishing Dialogs

12. Publishing Dashboard

13. Sitecore Publishing Service – Lookout For…
• Ability to run Publishing Service as a Windows Service
• High availability of publishing service through Warm Standby option
• More documentation around extensibility / customization?

14. Sitecore on Azure
• First class support for Sitecore on Azure coming in the next few months
• Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates being made available for the
following Sitecore deployment configuration:
• Session State – Azure Redis Cache
• Search – Azure Search
• Database – SQL Azure
• Logging and Telemetry – Application Insights
• Support for various scalable deployment topologies

15. xConnect
• Capture interactions
and events across
online and
offline touchpoints
• Collect and act on any information about any individual – from any channel at
any time
• Unified API to interact with Contacts and their Interactions; so any interaction
with xDB will be using xConnect

16. Sitecore Commerce
• Current Sitecore Commerce offerings
• Powered by Commerce Server – since v7.2
• Powered by Microsoft Dynamics – since v8.0
• Sitecore Commerce vNext
• Completely ground up development of commerce capabilities in Sitecore and
built on ASP.NET Core
• No more “powered by” Commerce Server or Dynamics AX
• Integral partner of Sitecore Experience Platform
• Continues to use the Commerce Connect API
• Plan to be released by end of the year / early next year

17. Sitecore Commerce Engine

18. Data Exchange Framework
• A new framework to support exchanging data between Sitecore and any external
systems
• The intent is to have everyone build integrations in a consistent / standardized
way
• Product catalog import into Sitecore CMS from Sitecore Commerce vNext uses
the Data Exchange Framework
Example Source Target
Read contacts from a CRM and create contacts in xDB CRM Sitecore
Update a contact in CRM using information from a contact in xDB Sitecore CRM
Create items in Sitecore that represent products in a catalog PIM Sitecore

19. Sitecore Data Services
• Content as a Service (CaaS) through OData compliant micro services and token
based authentication
• Sitecore’s attempt to enter into the “Headless CMS” space
• Based on .NET Core
•Item Web API
• Legacy approach
Sitecore Services Client
• More of a framework to build
RESTful services
Data Services
• OData compliant

20. Helix and Habitat
http://helix.sitecore.net/
•Helix
• Principles, conventions, design patterns and recommended best practices for modular and
multi-tenant Sitecore implementations
• Sitecore advises you to follow Helix principles, but not mandated
• Sitecore also trying to internalize this and is evident with the SXA implementation
which uses Helix principles
https://github.com/sitecore/habitat
Habitat
• A reference implementation to demonstrate the use of Helix principles
• Not meant as an accelerator; for that, consider SXA

21. Sitecore Nuget Feed
• Sitecore libraries are now available through a
public NuGet repository
• Feed for Sitecore version 7.2 and above
are available, including a few add-on modules
• This is only for Sitecore assemblies and not for
Sitecore items
• Can leverage this in Build and Deployments
tasks
• https://sitecore.myget.org/gallery/sc-packages

22. .NET Core Strategy
• Sitecore appears to make attempts to align all their ground-up development with
.NET Core
• Publishing Service, Sitecore Commerce vNext, Data Services and xConnect (?)
are a few examples
• Do not expect core Sitecore product to be converted to .NET Core anytime soon;
it would be a huge undertaking

23. References
• Content and images in some of the slides have been referred from:
• Decks used in Sitecore Symposium, 2016
• Sitecore Developer Portal