Nowadays, creating interactive digital experiences has become the norm. Organizations need to be mindful of how they engage with customers’ interests, learn agile ways of operating through teams as well as gain the ability to easily personalize and develop experiences. And that’s exactly what the new Sitecore Experience Platform 10.0 provides. It enable companies to shift with pace and intuition to reach, attract, convert and retain customers based on their expectations and behavior changes. This blog post aims to be an eye-opener for enterprises that are still on older versions of Sitecore as we will explore why enterprises should upgrade to Sitecore XP 10.
Do you know that mainstream support for older versions is ending soon?
Sitecore 6.x – Web experience management
Sitecore 7.x – Omnichannel digital experiences
Sitecore 8.x – Advanced cloud deployment models
Sitecore 9.x – Integration to Content Hub and availability of xConnect
Although Sitecore’s previous versions provided you with some excellent features, you still need to consider upgrading to the latest Sitecore version XP 10.0 to benefit from a fully-integrated solution that aligns your marketing and IT teams to work together in delivering personalized experiences to your customers.
2020 marks the final year of sustainable support for version 6.x, indicating that it has reached its end of life, thus, no further support will be provided for its continuity. Moreover, version 7 and 7.1 also entered support by December 2019 while version 7.2 and 7.5 are expected to end by December 2020. And, mainstream 8.2 support ended in late 2019 and for 9.0 it expires at the end of the 2020 calendar year.
Here’s an alert for all those who are on previous Sitecore versions – upon the termination of support, you will lose access to security and bug fixes, development and compatibility fixes and assistance with unexpected behavior during installation.
Calculating the business benefits of Sitecore XP 10
Assuming you are doing great with your current Sitecore implementation, you may ask why upgrade. So, here’s an evaluation exercise to help you find out how much you spend on the use of multiple applications, deployments, infrastructure and data management. Create a spreadsheet and list down every marketing technology your teams may be using including its costing and term contract. Here are some of the costs you should consider adding –
1. Include costs for purchasing/ subscribing, maintaining, training, integrating and supporting business users.
2. Think about the technical cost encountered, in terms of both time and money, when you try to deploy to several locations.
3. Add the cost related to the underlying operating systems, licensing and other costs associated with maintaining these systems.
4. Consider your hosting and processing costs for legacy and unnecessary data.
Putting these numbers together will help to determine the financial considerations you are likely to make. Now, here’s a question for a quick check – would you want to use disparate systems, or would you rather take advantage of Sitecore’s integrated customer experience suite? The choice is for you to decide.
Nevertheless, it’s not about the involved technology costs; it’s about resource costs. With Sitecore XP 10.0 you are most likely to empower your marketing users to focus on what is required to be achieved in less time and effort.
Four core reasons to migrate to Sitecore XP 10.0
- Upgrade to Sitecore XP 10.0 and never run out of Sitecore support
- Empower your marketing and IT teams to work together and drive collaboration to accelerate customer experiences
- Leverage Martech stack and get to know your customers better while delivering them amazing brand experience across channels
- Allow your IT teams to become more effective as well as reduce costs with new capabilities of Containerization, Kubernetes and .NET Core
Check out another Sitecore blog post titled “New features of Sitecore XP 10.0 unlocked for marketing and IT team” to find out the new and enhanced features of Sitecore XP 10.
The closing thought
The new Sitecore XP 10.0 is a feature-loaded suite that easily meets modern and challenging marketing requirements. It is focused on innovations for better usability, accelerating faster time-to-market and provides a continuously improved performance. Embrace personalized marketing and fulfill the expectations of your digital consumer. If you’ve made up your mind or have doubts regarding Sitecore upgrade considerations, reach out to our experts and discuss your project.
