Sitecore just released Sitecore 9 at the 2017 Sitecore Symposium here at the Mirage in Vegas.
Not the official logo. Credit goes to Kamruz Jaman for creating it.
Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) consists on three major foundation pillars. Sitecore XP combines Experience Management (xManagement) with features of xConnect to get marketing and customer intelligence information stored in the Experience Database (xDB).
Experience Management (xManagement)
xManagement is the Content Management part of Sitecore which lets you create, manage, personalize and publish content. It comprises of three sections:
Data Definition: This is the part of Sitecore which we use to define the data using Templates. Templates contain fields and the template standard values can define the presentation of that specific template item.
Content: The content in Sitecore is based on templates. Either templates which you created or system templates. This content also includes media items in the Media Library.
Presentation: The presentation layer in Sitecore is where the items are combines with the presentation to render items on your website. Presentation is primarily built using ASP.NET MVC, although there are some who still use WebForms.
xDB
The Experience Database (xDB) provides data storage for all contact interactions across all data channels. This enables xDB to provide valuable information on marketing and analytical capabilities in Sitecore.
xConnect
xConnect provides services to get data from xDB. This information can be used on the Sitecore back-end or on your user facing website. xConnect enabled xDB to be decoupled from Sitecore.
Notable features in Sitecore 9
xConnect
The introduction of xConnect enables native omni-channel collection and segmentation at scale. This includes upgraded features for modeling your data, marketing automation, a unified view of the customer, as well as major architectural improvements including updating contacts from any channel at any time, automatic indexing of your data and built-in PII compliance support.
New Forms module
The Sitecore 9.0 release sees the introduction of a new Forms module, including:
– A completely redesigned UX with strong focus on business user
– A ’drag and drop’ form builder
– Form and field metrics showing the form and field performance
– Multi-page forms
– A Clean MVC (only) approach
– The ability to create form templates
Be sure to attend the Introduction to Sitecore Forms session by Pieter Brinkman and Hylke Heidstra on Webnesday October 18, 2017 at 3:15PM.
New Marketing Automation module
Marketing Automation provides a new way to create automated online campaigns in Sitecore. With a user friendly drag-and-drop interface, Marketing Automation provides an extendible set of tools.
Dynamic Placeholders
Sitecore MVC now supports Dynamic Placeholders allowing the use of the same placeholder key multiple times in the same rendering and across multiple renderings in the same placeholder
If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with me. (@akshaysura13 on twitter or on Slack).