A Quick Sitecore Roadmap Looking at the Next Year #sitecoresym

Sitecore's Senior VP of Product Marketing, Darren Guarnaccia provided an updated Roadmap for Sitecore's stable of product offerings during the Sitecore Symposium 2012 North America in Las Vegas. There's quite a few interesting improvements and additions that will be of interest to both business and technical users.

Here's the highlights of the Roadmap Darren discussed. 

Near Term Additions for Q4 2012

• Version 6.6 of Sitecore CMS will be released
• Good news for Mobile developers as this will include Sitecore's Mobile SDK and a very sophisticated system for simulation of content on many mobile device classes
• Updates to Sitecore's DMS system, adding Engagement Intelligence features that will be of great use to business and marketing users
• A refresh to the Foundry product based on Sitecore CMS v6.6 and an update to their Social Connected tool

First Quarter 2013

• A big, much-anticipated update to Sitecore CMS with the release of Sitecore 7, which includes large scale item storage support
• For business users there's some new and very powerful additions to DMS with the Visual Path Analysis tool which allows marketing folks to dig deeply into how users are reaching (or not) various content
• Email Campaign Manager 2.0 will also be released

Second Quarter 2013

A lot of technical and infrastructure goodies come in Q2 2013, including:

• A refresh to the new SPEAK UI platform
• Updates to DMS to support the CRM Service Layer
• A refresh of the Sitecore Intranet Portal product based on Sitecore CMS v6.6
• Sitecore's DMS will integrate with Sitecore eCommerce, and DMS will become available on Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform
• The Sitecore Adaptive Print Studio will gain ability to interact directly with files produced by Adobe InDesign

Second Half of 2013

• Some significant updates to the core CMS functionality with updates to Sitecore CMS workflow, new features for content reuse, and finally the beginnings of some usability improvements to the administrative interface which will accelerate in the future
• Launch of Big Data for Sitecore's DMS. With all the tracking and analytic requirements of Sitecore's Customer Engagement features, the ability to manage the data requirements of the system has been a concern from Day 1. With this update the DMS system should be able to handle many terabytes of analytic data with the option of storing that data in a variety of locations both locally and in the cloud

… and Beyond

• Significant enhancements to the existing Sitecore Personalization features, including the ability to personalize down to the field level within the CMS

About the Author

Ryan Bennett is a certified Sitecore developer and Principal Solutions Architect at San Francisco-based consulting firm Cylogy, Inc.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sitecore Invests in Komfo to Provide Social Media Marketing Tools

Sitecore has taken a large minority investment in Komfo, a Denmark-based social media marketing platform provider and member of Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer Program. The Komfo platform is designed to allow marketers to create and manage Facebook fan page conversations without needing additional resources.

Sitecore says it plans to integrate the Komfo platform into its Customer Engagement Platform to provide marketers with the same type of control they have within Sitecore-managed web properties within Facebook and other third-party social networks. Specific Komfo features include applications for preferred marketing goals and call-to-actions, communications tools, a performance dashboard and competitor benchmarking.

Marketers Prefer Facebook

While efforts to demonstrate the actual value of social media as a marketing tool have proven difficult, Sitecore is responding to a strong belief among marketers that social media, and Facebook in particular, offers marketing value.

According to a recent survey of more than 700 global marketing professionals by social media promotions specialists Wildfire Interactive, 97 percent of marketers believe social media marketing benefits their business and 75 percent intend to increase their spending in this area during 2012.

Furthermore, 88 percent of survey respondents see social media as a mechanism to increase brand awareness, and 85 percent see it as a way to engage customers. The most popular social network among marketers? Facebook wins easily, with 94 percent ranking Facebook as a top social media marketing channel, trailed distantly by Twitter (74 percent). 

Komfo May Help Sitecore Customers with 2 Key Fan Page Steps

In March 2009, Masahble produced a list of five key steps to creating a successful Facebook fan page that still rings true. With Komfo’s functionality, Sitecore may be able to better equip its users to perform at least two of these steps: creating contests that include participation and targeting the proper demographic.

In terms of creating participatory contests, tools that enable direct communication with consumers via fan pages are a crucial supporting element for effectively recruiting contest participants and managing a contest. And for targeting the proper demographic, a performance dashboard allows marketers to analyze the reaction fan pages create in different user groups, helping to determine what demographics provide the best results, while competitor benchmarking enables them to compare performance in different groups with chief rivals.

In conjunction with Sitecore’s investment, Michael Seifert, Sitecore founder and CEO, will join Komfo’s board of directors. Terms were not disclosed, although unconfirmed reports suggest Sitecore will spend about US$ 500,000 for one-third of Komfo.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com