Sitecore Cloud on Azure: All You Need to Know About the Recent Update

Sitecore, a leader in experience management software that specializes in web content management (WCM), enables marketers to engage their audience by delivering brand experiences based on each user’s unique behavior. Well, things are getting better now that they’re partnering with Microsoft Azure to help digital marketers deliver websites, marketing campaigns, landing pages, and other projects, all within minutes.

Sitecore and Microsoft: a Love Story

Let’s start from the beginning, which would be last year when they announced their upcoming partnership with Microsoft Azure, ensuring:

● Scalability, simplicity, and stability
● Time and money saving during deployment of a solution to a new server
● Faster and relatively cheaper geographically distributed load balancing
● Reduced redundancy between geographies for performance, as well as disaster preparedness
● Automation of most of the process of migrating a website to Microsoft Azure

This was last year, and now Sitecore announced that they’ll be delivering next-generation platform-as-a-service (PaaS) native support for the entire Sitecore solution, not only for the Sitecore Experience Manager, which is what the previous announcement entailed. As such, users will be able to leverage the speed of Microsoft Azure’s PaaS development and deployment environment to quickly execute digital initiatives.

Sitecore and Microsoft’s Expansion

Straight from Sitecore’s most recent announcement detailing their continued partnership with Microsoft, “Sitecore Speeds Digital Experience Time-to-Market for Customers; Delivers PaaS Agility, Scale, and Cost Benefits for Entire Sitecore Solution; and Launches Managed Cloud Options for Deployment Flexibility.”

We’ll go over specifics soon, but this essentially means that the entire Sitecore Cloud platform is now offered on Microsoft Azure, meaning that users will be able to enjoy native Azure support for the Sitecore Experience Manager (XM), Experience Platform (XP), and Sitecore Commerce.
Okay, so why is this happening? As Ryan Donovan, SVP of Product Management at Sitecore, said, “Azure provides exceptional speed, scale, and reliability all the while saving costs associated with last-generation infrastructure-as-a-service and on-premises infrastructures...Sitecore and Azure is a winning combination that enables digital marketers and IT teams to get up and out in market fast, without the traditional long wait times associated with digital marketing technologies.”

Adding more, Jason Zander, Corporate VP at Microsoft Azure, said,  “Sitecore has architected its platform to natively support Microsoft technology from the beginning. Now it brings its digital marketing cloud to Microsoft Azure. The powerful combination will deliver customers a competitive edge through faster time to market.”

Some Specifics with Benefits

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The Sitecore / Azure combination allows businesses to get a leg up over their competition through faster time to market, the ability to scale with demand, and control over total cost of ownership (TCO). Expanding a bit more, Sitecore Cloud on Azure delivers everything from websites and landing pages to full-scale integrated campaigns, Internet of Things (IoT), and augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR) digital experiences.

Furthermore, the winning combination entails faster time to market for digital marketing, familiarity, speed and scale for IT, and deliverable results for business.
Faster time to market for digital marketing allows users to get the best of the Sitecore Experience Platform on Azure and:

● Track every individual customer interaction over time, across every channel
● Instantly support the dynamic world of content marketing by instantly employing sites and campaigns in minutes

Familiarity, speed and scale for IT give marketing teams:

● Speed: Users can simply point-and-click a Sitecore XM or XP deployment in minutes through the Azure Marketplace, or deliver more customized Sitecore environments utilizing the Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates
● Flexibility: While Sitecore offers a fully managed cloud for all of its customers, both Sitecore customers and partners also have the freedom and choice to manage the cloud deployments on their own
● Scalability: Users have the ability to scale up and scale out as campaigns and programs evolve, with pay-as-you-go metering for cost control

And finally, deliverable results for business:

● Integrates with your existing back-end systems and marketing investments with connectivity to Microsoft Dynamics, Marketo and Salesforce
●  Meets all enterprise compliance and security requirements
● Reduces costs associated with on-premise infrastructure; Azure optimizes budget with pay-as-you-go metering

As for deployment, you can deploy Sitecore Cloud on Azure in under 30 minutes using Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, or for more speed and simplicity, you can use WYSIWYG-like templates in the Azure Marketplace:

Wrapping Up

Wrapping up, this recent update turns Sitecore into a fully managed cloud that lets customers choose basic mobile and web content management and then expand to add other integrated solutions, such as email automation, commerce, and other Omni-channel options.
A final word from Olivier Deneef, Client Service Director of The Reference NYC, as to why Sitecore and Azure work well together, “Azure and Sitecore is a great marriage. We have to worry less about managing the infrastructure, and instead we can focus on what we do best—creating innovative digital solutions that clearly contribute to our clients’ business.”

What You Need to Know About the Impact of AI in Ecommerce

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Artificial intelligence is everywhere. It’s on Facebook guiding the top stories you see, in your pocket helping Siri help you, everywhere. What’s most interesting about AI is the many uses and applications it has, especially in the data-rich retail and ecommerce industries.

AI for an Ecommerce Business

Artificial intelligence trends show us that it (AI) has completely transformed the way we shop. It understands our preferences and personalizes options for us, answers complex questions that help us on our purchase journey, and as Michelle Peluso, CMO at IBM, says, “what I think is most exciting for marketers is the opportunity to use AI to improve CX (consumer experience). AI empowers marketers to not just use readily available data, but to put dark data to use for the first time.”
Going deeper into what Peluso meant, she gave four examples of how AI is enhancing the consumer and retail experience:

1: AI Powered Gift Selection

Peluso used 1800-Flowers.com’s GWYN (Gifts When You Need) AI powered gift concierge service as an example of a brand making use of AI to improve their customer’s experience. In essence, it acts as a personal assistant that learns from your actions. It asks you questions, and the more you answer, the more it knows and can use to help you.
For example, imagine you’re buying a gift from an AI powered site for a significant other. You’re unsure of what you want, so you decide to use their gift selector option. It asks about your relationship with the person you’re buying a gift for, their gender, their age, their preferences, etc. Once you finish answering, you’re presented with a couple of gift options that you can like or dislike to further personalize suggestions.

2: AI Powered Product Selector

A perfect example for artificial intelligence, the North Face is a brand with a mission to apply technology to transform the retail experience. Peluso explains that they launched an interactive online experience powered by IBM’s Watson that uses natural language processing to help consumers discover and refine product selections. Similar to the previous point of answering questions to tailor suggestions, the North Face’s AI feature asks you questions about apparel type, location, gender, temperature, etc., to deliver personalized recommendations.

3: AI Powered Out of Stock Management

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Peluso notes that a key challenge for retailers is managing their inventory levels, as being out of stock leads to unhappy customers who take their business elsewhere, and too much stock leads to wasted money that could have been invested somewhere else. Essentially, you need to understand consumer demand and act accordingly.
Well, one of Watson’s features is helping retailers monitor everything from weather conditions to purchase rates and consumer behavior to better manage supplies. This feature is perfect for accounting for factors that would otherwise be detrimental for a business.

4: AI Powered Consumer Insights

The last example we’ll cover today is one of the most useful uses for AI in a retail or eCommerce business: consumer insights. By analyzing everything from social profiles and behavior to the weather and the season, AI helps marketers understand what consumers want and need. In other words, AI can monitor someone’s word choice, their online clicking, and even their tone, to learn more about them and what possible actions they’ll take.

Conclusion and Other Uses for AI in an Ecommerce Business

Before we wrap up, let’s look at another use for AI in retail and eCommerce: picture matching. Deep learning and similar technologies allow consumers to capture an image of something they like and then match it with similar images online. In retail and eCommerce, this can be used for practically anything. For example, you’re walking down the street and see a display with a shirt you really like. The price is higher than you’d like, so you take a picture and find similar styles at cheaper prices.
Artificial intelligence trends are quickly taking over and guiding our shopping behavior. For consumers, they provide recommendations and suggestions, help them find what they’re looking for with a single image, and a lot more. For retailers, they help them manage their stock and provide consumer insights to better provide products and services to their customers.
Whether you’re a consumer, a retailer or both, it’s best to keep an eye out for artificial intelligence and what it entails.