Paths Forward on Sitecore: XM headless or XM Cloud?

The Paths Forward on Sitecore XM Headless or XM Cloud? Date: December 13, 2024 Presented at: SUG Jaipur

Today, technology teams are trying to modernize, get more efficient, and focus as a business. Some areas of Sitecore XP make that a challenge.

Local development is using outdated Sitecore MVC technology Full installations are required, often in Docker, frustrating the front-end development team

Teams are having to maintain a variety of custom build scripts, deployment scripts, manual or automated blue/green deployment processes.

Teams are fully managing Kubernetes pods or virtual machines, scaling out the full infrastructure for delivering the website as well as hosting all of the backend XP infrastructure like xDB and the CMS And everytime there is an upgrade, all of this needs to be updated.

This is bringing teams to look at how they can modernize and offload responsibility and risk.

On Local Development

• Faster feedback loops
• Able to drop .NET, work on front-end frameworks like Next.js
• Can work fullstack, or with only the head, great for front-end teams.

On CI/CD A) We don’t have to manage our own builds, deploys and infrastructure accepting and processing the deploys B) We can get rid of doing Sitecore .NET builds and just push the front-end + items C) XMC handles the CMS deploys, Netlify handles the front-end apps

On Serverless hosting

• No need to run Sitecore instances as a delivery endpoint or even as a layout service.
• Netlify and XM Cloud’s Experience Edge gets you full global delivery at scale
• Great observability on the application
• No infrastructure maintenance and no Sitecore version upgrade projects

Resolve Out of Support Versions: An upgrade project will get you back onto a supported version. However, upgrading to a new version of Sitecore XP/XM without changes can incur a significant cost without providing any real benefit.

Refresh While Moving to Headless: If a redesign is in the roadmap in the near future this is a great time to also re-architect for headless. Already done a refresh recently? Maybe this isn’t the time to move.

Align to Sitecore’s Roadmap Headless aligns with where the industry and Sitecore are going. Already headless? The path to XM Cloud might be easier for you. If not, a rebuild to headless on XP could be an intermediate step.

Minimize Content Migration How much content is re-used? Redesigns often make existing content no longer relevant. Analyze what moves and what doesn’t to reduce scope.

Netlify and XMC both have several common certs like ISO, SOC2, and XMC will be HIPAA soon. You need to check it has what your org needs. You might also have region requirements, so that’s a good thing to check for a match.

Start small An incremental approach allows you to get started faster with smaller slices and get return on the investment faster. Launch a site or two on XM Cloud, then move others over.

Grow adoption iteratively Allows you to roll out training and upskilling for new technologies gradually as you bring teams online to the new platforms.

Plan for dual environments Requires operating production in both architectures simultaneously. May have licensing/budget impacts for you.

Identify a data strategy Sitecore analytics data will be distributed across multiple systems with an incremental approach. How will you reconcile and share insights?

Pick your headless site search tool: Sitecore XM Cloud’s Experience Edge layer provides an API-layer over a global content index, but it is not a search engine. Sitecore offers Sitecore Search to fill the need for a headless offering for website search. This is a separate product.

Plan for new Form implementations Sitecore XM Cloud Forms are evolved from technology from Sitecore Send. They are headless and not compatible with existing Sitecore XP Forms. XM Cloud Forms also does not store any data, sends it to a webhook.

Plan a new strategy Search and Forms strategies on XM Cloud need to be rethought and re-implemented when migrating to XM Cloud. How many sources do you need to index? How many forms do you need to migrate? Do your forms interact with other systems?

Upskill to Next.js Traditional .NET MVC teams may need upskilling to learn more modern development frameworks like React and Next.js. There are some options on frameworks for XM Cloud but the recommended approach is Next.js to use all functionality.

Learn about serverless hosting Serverless hosting management provides a lot of improvements to the DevOps flow but may require traditional operations team to learn how to adapt their current policies and procedures to adapt to a more modern approach to hosting applications.

Remove CMS customizations Sitecore XP is often heavily customized by developers but Sitecore does not recommend doing this level of customization directly in XM Cloud. A configuration and webhook strategy for integrations is preferred over deploying code directly to XM Cloud. Many teams will need to remove their customizations to prepare for a migration, often moving it to the Next.js application or a separate app

UPDATE SERIALIZATION Just a small note here that a lot of old builds are on TDS and Unicorn. If you are running XP Headless, that’s totally fine, but on XM Cloud it’s Sitecore Content Serialization (SCS) or bust. There are some hacky ways to get Unicorn to work, but not at all recommended by Sitecore. So this means planning for a change in the dev flow around serialized content.

Know the Differences XM Cloud uses headless personalization driven by Sitecore Personalize, not a server-side rules engine. They approach personalization differently.

Start with Basic Personalization Good fit for XM customers, should meet needs of about 80% of customers personalization implementations on XM/XP

Don’t Try to ‘Migrate’ Personalization XM Cloud creates variants using audiences at the page level, not conditions at the component level, and the conditions are not the same. This is not a migration of existing rules, this is a rebuild of your personalization strategy.

Grow When You Need It You can add Sitecore Personalize later to extend into more powerful use cases as needed.