Sitecore Upgrade: Your Roadmap to Sitecore SaaS & a Composable Architecture

Keeping your Sitecore application and infrastructure environment always on the latest version with the full feature set is akin to the ease and efficiency you experience when your phone smoothly operates on the latest operating system. It provides you access to new features, improved security, and enhanced performance.

Just as smartphone software requires regular automatic updates to keep it running smoothly, staying up-to-date with the latest version of Sitecore requires ongoing maintenance and updates to ensure optimal operation.  When managed correctly this approach positions you to stay competitive, protect your digital infrastructure, and deliver superior digital experiences. 

Getting ahead of your Sitecore platform 

CIO’s, CMOs and Digital Teams that own a Sitecore implementation want to be seen as business enablers. This means ensuring flawless availability from an end-to-end optimized full-stack, and operating a secure and trusted platform for growth. These leaders increase the velocity of their teams to build iterative, quick results to win the dynamic world customer experience transformation.

But, many Sitecore Platform owners and their digital teams find it hard to get ahead of the platform. They have unreliable infrastructure that stifles innovation, and reckless releases that increase tech debt and cause digital teams to focus on maintaining the infrastructure rather than building valuable digital experiences. They spend too much of their time trying to figure out how to enable what should really be a commodity by doing it all themselves, which in the end is too costly, both in operational effort and lost opportunity.

To overcome these challenges, platform owners need flawless performance of their Sitecore DXP, driven by automation and specialist skills. This gives them the ability to make decisions with velocity because they have an operating environment they can trust.

So, as a platform owner, how can you:

• Focus on strategic business value
• Minimize risk
• Optimize performance
• Maximize platform value, and
• Provide certainty and peace of mind?

One of the key elements is always being on the latest version and architecture, with access to the newest competitive features that enable you to deliver more engaging digital experiences, to ultimately grow revenue.

Upgrade Sitecore & start your journey to Sitecore SaaS & Composable

There are many reasons why organisations might be stuck on older version of their Sitecore platform. But the simple truth is that the capabilities of digital experience platforms are cumulative. Simply put, if you’re not on the latest version - you’re already on the back-foot. 

Agility is a part of business, especially when embarking on a customer experience transformation journey. Being on the latest version and architecture should always be possible, and never be blocked.  

Your digital experience solution should also allow you to constantly and easily move to the latest version, but many organisations find that their environment is so customized that they feel as though an upgrade is not possible. They might also be blocked on leveraging key features of the platform because “it breaks”, leading to teams believing that it would be easier to start again because the cost to upgrade would compromise resources, time and budgets.  

Further to this, the evolving nature of Sitecore offerings and the wider Digital Experience market directs a push towards headless and composable architectures. This implies that being on the latest version of the platform will ultimately entail a transition to a fully composable architecture, using a headless CMS, such as Sitecore’s XM Cloud. This future of enterprise content management from Sitecore is a viable option today, offering enhanced author experiences, built-in analytics, and personalization that works at the edge.

However, transitioning to XM Cloud, as part of the journey requires careful planning, execution, and a clear roadmap.

It's not a simple switch, but a gradual process that involves upgrading your Sitecore solution to leverage Sitecore Headless Services, establishing a headless foundation, deciding on a hosting platform for your front-end application, automating deployments, and creating a prioritized backlog of sites and components to migrate to the headless structure overtime. Consideration of how you can manage a hybrid environment (part Sitecore SaaS and composable and part traditional DXP) concurrently is important for those with larger ecosystems. 

Why upgrading is imperative 

There are some key frustrations of organisations running on older version of Sitecore - here are a few reasons why it's important for Sitecore platform owners to always be on the latest version:

Security

Ensuring platform security is crucial. The latest versions of Sitecore provide the most recent security updates, helping to protect your website and data from vulnerabilities that may exist in older versions.

Performance

Performance is about tuning your code, application, and infrastructure together to deliver a fast, responsive website. It is also heavily influenced by the engineering approach taken. The finer the control, the better the performance, availability and cost surety will be possible. The new versions of the Sitecore DXP (10.3) give you more control over performance at a granular service level, especially when paired with the benefits of proven cloud infrastructure or moving towards a composable SaaS model like XM Cloud.

Functionality

Sitecore is constantly evolving, with new features and functionality being added with each release. This is not new information now, especially with the release of XM Cloud and the push to move to a composable architecture. By staying on an older version of Sitecore, you may not only miss out on new features that can improve the customer experience, streamline workflows, or provide new ways to engage with your audience – but are limiting your flexibility of decision-making when it comes to the future of your platform.

Support

Sitecore provides support for its versions for a limited time – with many older versions coming to the end of their extended support. After this time, support may be discontinued, which means that you won't receive any new bug fixes or security patches.  

How Dataweavers WebOps helps 

We upgrade and manager Sitecore at scale.

Ensuring that your Sitecore platform is on the latest version is critical for your organisation to stay competitive, secure, and ready to deliver superior digital experiences. This might mean transitioning to a fully composable architecture like XM Cloud ultimately.

It's a challenging journey, but with careful planning, execution, and a clear roadmap, it's an achievable goal that can ultimately grow your revenue and position your organisation as a business enabler. 

Whether you’re considering the journey to composable, or simply taking your first step with a platform upgrade to 10.3, Dataweavers WebOps has you covered.   

Download our proven Sitecore SaaS & Composable Roadmap below.

Don't forget to reach out to our team for guidance on your next steps.