How to go to a Complete Sitecore Cloud Native from Sitecore XP.

Introduction

 In this blog, I’ll try to explain the need to consider going towards a Sitecore Cloud Native solution while upgrading your Sitecore solution to 10.x version & also a high-level road map to get there.

Why Sitecore Cloud Native?

·       Tech landscape will be in line with industry trend Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless (MACH) compliant

·       Sitecore CDP is better and more advanced integration and analytics (in line with current trend of “cookie less marketing”)

·       Sitecore Cloud Native solution is completely different from the way XP works. Here we can plug and play SaaS Components like Personalize, send etc as and when required.

·       Whereas Sitecore XP license brings in all the components as it is a monolithic architecture & in most cases the Out of the box features are never used or underutilized.

·       No more worries about platform upgrades if we choose to go with completely Cloud Native (SaaS) Solution

·       Sitecore XM license will cost much lower than Sitecore XP which would result in some savings on the license cost

·       Sitecore DAM, CDP, Personalize and Send etc. licenses must be bought separately as per the requirements

High Level Approach

Current State

Future state

Road Map

The Road map to go completely native is in two phases.

The reason for splitting this into two phased approach is

·       XM Cloud’s architecture is completely different from XM on PaaS.

·       It does not have the traditional CD server like on the XM PaaS

·       XM Cloud needs pages to be built as headless because it uses static site generation for pre rendering the pages for faster performance and also it uses CDN for optimization.

·       This means that if the website is already built using traditional Sitecore MVC, it will call for rewriting the entire presentation layer using Sitecore JSS or similar technologies

·       Other big change for the content authors community is the introduction of new authoring interface called as "Sitecore Pages”. This will replace the existing Experience Editor and Content Editor. This would mean a learning curve for the content authors.

Phase 1

·       Upgrade Sitecore XP (9 or below) to XM 10.2

o   Downgrade the license from Sitecore XP to Sitecore XM

o   Upgrade the current Solution from 9 or below to 10.2

o   Decommission the OLD Sitecore Infra

o   Save on license cost and infra cost

o   10 App services and 13 Databases related to XP are not required

 

·       Introduce Sitecore Personalize, DAM & Send to reap the benefits of the cloud native, futuristic analytics, marketing, and personalization

o   Introduce Sitecore DAM for fulfilling Documentation requirements

o   Introduce Sitecore Personalize (without full CDP) for personalization and reporting

o   Introduce Sitecore send for marketing campaign and automation

 

·       Introduce Sitecore CDP

o   Upgrade to Full Sitecore CDP, few benefits mentioned below:

o   Data Lake that can be used to aggregate customer data from across the enterprise

o   360-degree understanding of your customers and their customer journey

o   intuitive, personalized experience on your website and digital channel

o   Cross-sell and up-sell products

o   compliance with GDPR and CCPA

 

Phase 2

·       Rewrite the legacy Sitecore MVC pages into Headless using Sitecore JSS or any other headless tech stack

·       Train the content authors to use Sitecore page instead of Experience editor or content editor

·       Transition from XM (PaaS) to XM Cloud

 

Cost Perspective:

1.     For running Sitecore XP

·       Sitecore XP License Cost

·       Infra Cost – Dev

·       Infra Cost – QLTY

·       Infra Cost – Prod

2.     For running Sitecore Cloud Native Solution

·       XM Cloud Subscription

·       Personalize Subscription

·       Send Subscription

·       Sitecore CDP Subscription

·       Sitecore DAM (Optional) Subscription

 

If you do a cost comparison of the current setup (License + Infra) vs the Cloud native solution, it would mostly breakeven or there would be potential savings with the added benefit of being on the latest, future ready platform.