now

Sitecore® XP 8.1:
What you need to
know, from those
who know best
Sitecore’s MVPs identify features
they couldn’t live without and
what they think businesses, IT, and
developers will appreciate most
DEMAND MORE PERFORMANCE
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
Contents
Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 2
What’s your favorite feature of Sitecore XP 8.1? E.g., what part do you think businesses couldn’t live without?����������������������������������������������������� 2
What in your opinion is the greatest benefit of Sitecore XP 8.1 for digital technologists and IT leaders?������������������������������������������������������������������� 7
What in your opinion is the greatest benefit of Sitecore XP 8.1 for developers?������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10
The MVP nomination process������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 12
Next steps��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 12
Participating MVPs���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 13
About Sitecore������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 16
Published 11/15. © 2001-2015 Sitecore Corporation A/S. All rights reserved. Sitecore® and Own the Experience® are registered trademarks of Sitecore Corporation A/S. All other brand and product names are
the property of their respective owners. This document may not, in whole or in part, be photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine readable form without prior
consent, in writing, from Sitecore. Information in this document is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment on the part of Sitecore.
1
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
Introduction
Sitecore’s Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) program was
founded in 2007 as a way to acknowledge those individuals
who actively participate in online and offline communities
around the world and share their knowledge of Sitecore
with other partners and customers. At the end of each
calendar year, Sitecore employees and existing Sitecore
MVPs nominate community members to become either a
Technology MVP or a Digital Strategist MVP.
One of the benefits of being a Sitecore MVP is access to
early product releases. For the debut of Sitecore XP 8.1, which
launched officially on Oct. 20, 2015, the MVPs were given
access in August. To acknowledge and introduce the MVPs
and share their initial reactions of Sitecore XP 8.1 to a nonMVP audience, we asked them to answer three questions:
1. What’s your favorite feature of Sitecore XP 8.1? E.g.,
what part do you think businesses couldn’t live
without?
2. What in your opinion is the greatest benefit of
Sitecore XP 8.1 for digital technologists and IT leaders?
3. What in your opinion is the greatest benefit of
Sitecore XP 8.1 for developers?
This white paper curates their responses. Most MVPs say
they welcome the integration of some common tools
like IP Geolocation and Device Detection, and Language
Fallback, which previously were add-on modules. Other
favorite features include SPEAK upgrades, the CMS-only
mode, persistent behavioral profiles, Experience Editor
improvements, faster performance, and the overall maturity of
the platform. Federated Experience Manager also gets several
mentions as a favorite feature, as does the Campaign Creator
functionality. Read on to discover the best of what Sitecore XP
8.1 has to offer, from the MVPs who know Sitecore best.
What’s your favorite feature of
Sitecore XP 8.1? E.g., what part do you
think businesses couldn’t live without?
“In Sitecore XP 8.1, a contact’s
behavioral profile persists between
sessions. This sounds like a relatively
small enhancement, but I think it’s
a massive improvement for marketers. For the first
time, Sitecore provides out-of-the-box functionality
to personalize the experience of returning visitors—
they can pick up exactly where they left off. Profiles
gradually decay with each subsequent visit. This
means that a visitor’s current session provides the
most relevant data for personalization, but their past
activity still informs your overall view of them.”
— Martin Davies, 2015 Technology MVP
“Sitecore XP 8.1 brings the complete
promise of the Experience Platform
to the table. There is no single new
or updated feature in Sitecore XP 8.1
that peaks above all, rather the cumulative effect of
the matured platform is what businesses are waiting
for. Sitecore XP 8.1 marks the completion of a great
amount of things that Sitecore 8.0 started. It now
integrates capabilities that’d been supported from
the community into the core product and irons out
some of the bumps in terms of services and contracts
required to support the rich experience marketing.
Native platform adoption and addition means faster
2
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
time to market which makes all the difference in
today’s economic market. We live in the era where
relevant experiences need to be delivered yesterday
rather than today. Sitecore XP 8.1 might not be able
to do that but it’s the closest you’ll get.”
getFieldValue pipeline looks like it could make some
other customizations much easier. I think a couple
of people are probably already working on a new
version of the Field Fallback Module.”
— Ben Golden, 2008 Technology MVP
— Ivan Lieckens, 2015 Technology MVP
“…One of the features that always
seems to pique interest for our
customers is FXM [Federated
Experience Manager]. It is certainly
valuable to collect analytics for other sites, but the
feature that always has everyone ‘wowing’ is the
ability to pull content from Sitecore and present it
on other websites. We’ve demonstrated this a few
times to potential customers and the marketing folks
definitely consider this a novel concept, because they
can create all their marketing content in one place
and be able to present it on all their other (nonSitecore) properties.”
— Bhavik Patel, 2015 Technology MVP
“The integration of common features
that we implement often, like
Language Fallback and IP Detection.
We have a lot of customers looking to
upgrade because of the deprecation of the version
they are on.”
— Jason Hedlund, 2011 Technology MVP
“My favorite part of 8.1 is probably
the Language Fallback. We use the
module on nearly all multi-lingual
solutions, so it’s nice to have it as part
of the core product now. On top of that, the new
“The new, unified approach to IP
Geolocation and Device Detection
solves a common website need
that is traditionally solved through
independent vendors. Having the features baked right
into Sitecore means less of an infrastructure headache
for marketers and puts these tools front and center for
developers when architecting a solution, rather than it
being a late-breaking bolt-on feature.”
— Richard (Rick) Cabral, 2010 Technology MVP
“The feature which instantly caught
my attention was Language Fallback—
something here at True Clarity we
must have implemented into almost
every one of our projects. When something like this
is provided out of the box, it really is of interest. The
ability to provide field-level fall back in such a flexible
way also is extremely interesting.
The simpler it is to get up and running, the better.
Indeed it was really intuitive to set up, which
is fantastic.”
— David Leigh, 2015 Technology MVP
“I really like the improvements made
in SPEAK, but I think the single most
helpful Sitecore XP 8.1 feature will be
Language Fallback as part of the core
installation. Certain businesses won’t be able to live
3
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
without certain features, but I think the ability to do
item- and field-level fallback out of the box makes
it more automatic for companies doing business in
various regions and cultures.”
with SPEAK using prebuilt components regularly
used within the Sitecore CMS. This can reduce
training costs.”
— Michael Robbins, 2015 Technology MVP
— Mark Servais, 2014 Technology MVP
“My favorite feature of 8.1 is the
advanced integration of testing to
the interfaces that we already know.
The prompt to test should be in
the forefront of every content editor / marketing
strategist at every point. Know what the impact of
the change is.”
— Nathanael Mann, 2015 Technology MVP
“Experience Editor Validation is a
small but really a very important thing
that has been missing. That wasn’t a
day too early. Also good to see that it
validates related items as well.”
— Mikael Högberg, 2013 Technology MVP
“The upgrade to Sitecore SPEAK
with version 2.0 in Sitecore XP 8.1
is huge, pushing Sitecore SPEAK
further. Developers have the ability
to create business applications within the Sitecore
platform, and leverage Sitecore framework features
such as user management, security, content, the
media library, and workflow. This is a huge benefit
for business. Applications can be created faster,
with Sitecore acting as a single unified interface and
platform. Knowledge for Sitecore content editors
can be transferred to SPEAK-built applications,
“From my point of view, the features
that have been added to improve
the Experience Editor (EE) are the
best because they are the most used
on a day-to-day basis. At its core, most content
editors spend a lot of time in the EE, whether they
are editing content, making tests, personalization
rules, etc. Making this experience easy and smooth
makes using Sitecore pleasurable. Features such as
optimization on the EE elements loading (I noticed
they load much faster!) are key in making sure
content editors are able to do everything they want
without any obstacles. I also definitely like the ‘edit
all versions’ for the layout. If I am not mistaken, in
pre-8.1 you couldn’t edit the shared layouts in EE,
which would make it difficult for someone to add a
new component across multiple languages, and this
opens it up for more granular control, which again,
makes their lives easy.”
— Mickey Rahman, 2015 Technology MVP
“I still think the coolest feature is the
core CMS. If I had to choose from the
new features, I would definitely say
working with layouts in the Experience
Editor (now it has become much more applicable)
and the built-in Language Fallback.”
— Sebastian Winslow, 2009 Technology MVP
4
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
“One area that clients are getting
keen on are the possibilities that FXM
[Federated Experience Manager] is
opening. Client-side analytics really
appeals as they can make use of their existing edge
caching providers but also achieve personalization.
Based on this, the improvements to FXM would get
my vote, things like the ability to pass data back to
the beacon through the framework are great.”
— Nick Hill, 2015 Technology MVP
“Sitecore XP 8.1 introduces the ability
to personalize based on visitor
behavior from previous visits, with
a built-in decay mechanism. This
further advances Sitecore’s capabilities to enable a
continuous, coherent visitor experience across visits,
devices, and channels, and is a big step in realizing
the full potential of the xDB Contact.”
— Dan Solovay, 2013 Technology MVP
“Federated Experience Manager. Omnichannel is huge
right now, and this tool seems pretty unique.”
Favorite Sitecore XP 8.1 features
from Reactive, part of Accenture
Interactive
■■
■■
■■
■■
■■
xDB can now utilize actions from
previous visits as well as decay aspects
of profiles over time, which should
allow us increased accuracy and
continuity in personalization.
Packaging of the product into
Experience Management (CMS-only)
and Experience Platform versions
should help get the product into a
lower price point.
Ability to associate marketing actions
to a venue (e.g. kiosk vs. mobile device)
allows more relevant personalization
for each device.
Federated Experience Manager now
supports Web Forms for Marketers,
meaning Sitecore forms can be
displayed on third-party sites.
Supports Mongo DB 3.0, which is the
most mature release to date. Starting
to become a very stable and reliable
platform.
— Michael Tandrup, 2014 Digital Strategist MVP
“My favorite feature is Device
Detection. Up until this point it has
been a bit of a hassle to implement
something that would take into
account different conditions. Having rules to define
how devices are resolved is a big deal.”
— Julia Gavrilova, 2014 Technology MVP
“I’m very happy with the
improvements to the content
management parts of Sitecore. Of
course we all value its marketing
features and, to be honest, we base most of our
pitch story lines on them. But I think Sitecore XP
8.1 is really a release for the content managers and
developers working on the content-centric features
of a website. A true highlight obviously is the
5
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
Language Fallback feature, which relieves us from
using the language fallback module. And last but not
least the Page Editor improvements bring this tool
one step closer to being a full replacement for the
Content Editor for page creation tasks. Especially
with component-enabled presentation layers (maybe
even with dynamic placeholders), the Page Editor is
a must for power editors, too. And now it seems the
Page Editor gets the attention it deserves.”
— Reto Hugi, 2013 Technology MVP
“My favorite thing is the performance.
Sitecore XP 8.1 feels a bit quicker
than 8.0, especially once the AppPool
is warmed up. It feels like Sitecore
improved some of the stuff that was new to 8.0.”
and are run in a more ad hoc fashion by marketing
managers who have no qualms spinning up a new
Wordpress or Drupal site that only needs to live for
six months. FXM helps fix the major problem with
this—loss of centralized data.
Since FXM isn’t new with 8.1, I enjoyed the Campaign
Creator [CC] functionality. It really helps to solve the
problem that arises when non-technical marketers
need campaign metadata in a time-sensitive
fashion. With CC they can specify campaign details
themselves, get their campaign code, and move
on quickly.”
— Andrew Blackmore, 2015 Digital Strategist MVP
— Charles Turano, 2014 Technology MVP
“I’m very excited about the ability
to act on historic behavioral data.
Personalizing based on visit was
powerful, but this historic view of
the customer significantly expands the scope of
personalization decisions. This is a capability we are
very excited about.”
— Corey Caplette, 2010 Technology MVP
“My favorite feature, by a mile, is FXM
[Federated Experience Manager].
It answers the reality that most
organizations are not in a dream world
of single-platform, neat-and-tidy IT environments.
The reality is, as marketing leverages digital channels
more and more, there is an increasing likelihood that
IT projects are less controlled in a top-down fashion
6
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
What in your opinion is the greatest
benefit of Sitecore XP 8.1 for digital
technologists and IT leaders?
presence and customer retention practices become
more robust. Indirectly, customers benefit by utilizing
the CMS that implementers prefer, and have invested
talent, infrastructure, and process to support—the
‘value add’ for CMS implementations in the first place.”
— Richard (Rick) Cabral, 2010 Technology MVP
MVPs claimed digital technologists and IT
leaders would benefit from more tightly
integrated features, the new packaging,
expanded FXM capabilities, xDB, the
integration capabilities of the .NET framework,
improved analytics capabilities, and more.
“Tighter integration with Page Editor,
through which users can now do
the majority of their work. That and
Campaign Creator functionality.”
— Jason Hedlund, 2011 Technology MVP
“The historical personalization with
the decay algorithm sounds pretty
cool. It has the potential to make
personalization seem much more
natural and less noticeable to the end user. The
integrated GeoIP also sounds like it would be nice
for this group.”
— Ben Golden, 2008 Technology MVP
“From a licensing perspective,
Sitecore XP 8.1 allows implementers
to recommend Sitecore to a wider
audience. Sitecore’s incredible ability
to scale and flex can serve growing businesses and
marketing departments for years as their digital
“The platform continues to evolve to
meet the needs of marketers, which
I think serves marketers as much as
it serves IT in making it easier for IT
to provide a solution to marketing. The platform
is continuing to move in the direction of having
marketing fully integrated into every aspect of the
solution. With marketing as a first-class stakeholder
for the platform, I expect to see greater collaboration
between IT and marketing to make truly great
customer experiences.”
— Andrew Blackmore, 2015 Digital Strategist MVP
“Sitecore XP 8.1 brings back a CMSonly mode and along with it a new
array of pricing. This will heavily
influence decision-making as the
platform no longer is ‘all-in’ or ‘nothing.’ It enables
enterprises to dip their toes in the water and be
supported all the way through this journey of digital
transformation both in platform capability and
pricing. We are in the era of cloud where everything
can infinitely scale, and you pay for only what you
use. Bringing these concepts to the 8.1 platform will
convince digital technologists and IT leaders to select
Sitecore as their bedrock upon which to build a
successful strategy.”
— Ivan Lieckens, 2015 Technology MVP
7
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
“In my opinion, a key feature here is the complete xDB
and all its possibilities.”
— Kevin Brechbühl, 2015 Technology MVP
“I still think Sitecore’s extensible
capabilities as a platform and the
abilities of the .NET framework allow
easier integration with existing
investments within an organization. I think out-ofthe-box features make it easier for a technologist
to manage versus having to worry about add-in
modules. But the fact I can leverage the Sitecore
investment to tie into other systems not necessarily
on the same platform is gold to me as a technologist.”
provided a massive added value for IT leaders to
enable their marketing organization to really see
how their content is working (via all the different
analytical tools). I think 8.1 adds to that by refining
some of those features, such as Device Detection.
Given this feature, implementations can now have
this data point in the already rich analytics to give
even more insights. Venue tracking is another one,
that when added to the bigger set of data points,
add a lot of value. So, in my opinion, it’s the whole
package of all the individual features that add up
to a big benefit that IT leaders can implement for
their organization.”
— Mickey Rahman, 2015 Technology MVP
— Mark Servais, 2014 Technology MVP
“From a digital tech point of view, I
think the most important benefit is
actually that Sitecore continuously
stays up to date with technologies
from its partners, like Mongo, Microsoft MVC. So
upgrades to match release cycles are important.”
— Nathanael Mann, 2015 Technology MVP
“Ability to edit the shared rendering
in Experience Editor is key. The new
Device Detection feature and the new
IP Geolocation service are good.”
— Mikael Högberg, 2013 Technology MVP
“I’m not sure there is ONE thing that
makes 8.1 a standout, for IT leaders,
but more a combination of the whole
package. The changes in 8.0 already
“I think for one set of customers
the option of having a CMS,
while still retaining the in-session
personalization option, and for the
other set of customers (using Analytics) I think
[the greatest benefit] is the improvements in the
Content Testing.”
— Sebastian Winslow, 2009 Technology MVP
“I think four features of Sitecore XP 8.1 will be
beneficial for IT and digital technologists:
1. Outcome tracking: Being able to roll a bunch
of goals up under an Outcome is a great leap
forward for Experience Analytics. I’m looking
forward to tackling exactly how we go about using
Outcomes as a way of validating performance.
2. Addition of real-time live engagement tracking:
Being able to do real-time state tracking will be
awesome for changing the experience as users
move through engagement plans.
8
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
3. Content Testing with Reach and Effect metrics in
context will be very useful.
4. Path Analyzer: I’m looking forward to using this
as a way of assessing customer goal-funnels for
different segments and outcomes. This could be
an incredibly powerful way of assessing what’s
working for specific audiences to achieve specific
outcomes—I’m trying to wrap my head around
exactly how we’ll utilize it, but am excited by the
promise of it!”
— Stephen Foxworthy, 2014 Digital Strategist MVP
“Sitecore XP 8.1 has greatly enhanced
reporting capabilities, such as Reach
and Effect metrics on personalization
rules, drill-down in dashboard reports,
and a significantly extended Path Analyzer, which
now provides visualization of which paths are leading
to goals being met or contacts being acquired.
This will make it much easier for business users to
understand what is happening from an experience
marketing perspective on the website and across
channels.”
“I think that the expansion of the
FXM [Federal Experience Manager]
capabilities in 8.1 is going to be
welcome for digital technologists
who have to maintain a landscape of legacy sites in
addition to Sitecore. The ability to support WFFM
[Web Forms for Marketers] over FXM is of particular
interest. I think that’s a fantastic feature. This
together with the acknowledgment that Sitecore
is continuously improving their analytics I think
means that people will begin centralizing customer
engagement within Sitecore instead of using
additional products like Marketo or Pardot.”
— Matthew Kenny, 2013 Technology MVP
— Dan Solovay, 2013 Technology MVP
“Improved interface. Both a slightly
better UX, but also better integration
of the tools, which will make it easier
to use them as part of the workflow.
Testing is a good example.”
— Michael Tandrup, 2014 Digital Strategist MVP
9
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
What in your opinion is the
greatest benefit of Sitecore XP 8.1
for developers?
“Scalability has always been an
important asset of Sitecore, and 8.1
does a lot to simplify the process for
developers working with customers of
varying sizes and requirements.”
— Martin Davies, 2015 Technology MVP
Not surprisingly, many MVPs thought
developers would benefit most from SPEAK
2.0, while others pointed to MVC upgrades,
WFFM improvements, and a speedier start-up
in Sitecore XP 8.1.
“I would list several:
■■
Better integration of common modules. Less
dependency on separate modules, which in turn
makes the upgrade process more seamless.
■■
Better integration with Page Editor.
■■
More maintainable configuration files.
■■
New SPEAK controls.”
— Jason Hedlund, 2011 Technology MVP
“Aside from the Language Fallback, I think the best
part for developers will likely be SPEAK 2.0.”
— Ben Golden, 2008 Technology MVP
“I know it’s not actually a core
feature per se, but actually I’m
quite excited about the SPEAK 2.0
‘guidance repository.’ I think it will
make SPEAK development practices a lot more
accessible to everyone.”
— Matthew Kenny, 2013 Technology MVP
“Sitecore XP 8.1 is the first stepping
stone to a more complete SPEAK
framework, [which helps] adoption and
migration paths transition smoother.
Aside from this, the fact that an existing community
module was included into the core product is a boost
to all developers [trying to improve] the platform.
Everyone from the Sitecore community can add
value to the platform as a whole, making the Sitecore
Experience Platform the powerhouse it is today and
will be tomorrow.”
— Ivan Lieckens, 2015 Technology MVP
“I like the new implementations
coming for Microsoft MVC. And I like
that a lot of features implemented
[address community requests].”
— Kevin Brechbühl, 2015 Technology MVP
“The SPEAK improvements, including
the changes to the ListControl and
the introduction of EntityDataSource
(which takes the place of the
WebDataSource). I think the new data source allows
me to process JSON a bit easier and, based on the
SPEAK Component Guidance and examples in the
related assembly, I should be able to quickly create
abstractions to existing data stores of information
10
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
to consume in SPEAK applications without the
additional needs of extra parsing or integration
directly into Sitecore.”
— Mark Servais, 2014 Technology MVP
“MVC areas out of the box I think is
probably the greatest benefit. The
segregation of independent sites on
the same installation is a constant
challenge in the Sitecore development arena.”
— Nathanael Mann, 2015 Technology MVP
“The MVC upgrade will probably be
very much appreciated. Performance
improvement of the Experience Editor
and the revised Language Fallback is
really nice, too.”
“xDB Mongo upgrades and xDB Cloud make
accessing and utilizing data easier, with less server/
infrastructure issues.”
— Stephen Foxworthy, 2014 Digital Strategist MVP
“With Sitecore XP 8.1, developers will
be able to build authoring experiences
around the Experience Editor, with
confidence that it is now fully featureequivalent to the Content Editor. It loads much faster
than before, supports item validation when items are
saved, allows managing versions, and editing shared
fields and layouts. In addition, client-side JavaScript
errors are now logged, making troubleshooting of
Experience Editor and end-user front-end issues
much more effective.”
— Dan Solovay, 2013 Technology MVP
— Mikael Högberg, 2013 Technology MVP
“From a development perspective, I
like the improvements on the Web
Form for Marketers module. Little
things, like having switchmastertoweb.
config as part of the main repo, is also helpful. And
the greatest one would probably be the start-up time.
I’ve noticed that getting to the login screen and firsttime previews (with no cache) is much faster than
in 8.0.”
“The possibility to work with MVC. And improved
browser capability.”
— Michael Tandrup, 2014 Digital Strategist MVP
“Device Detection and the new
version of SPEAK. … If the new
version provides a more consistent
and documented way of creating
applications, it would be awesome.”
— Julia Gavrilova, 2014 Technology MVP
— Mickey Rahman, 2015 Technology MVP
“The default edits to configuration, which free up a
ton of web configuration space.”
— Kam Figy, 2013 Technology MVP
11
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
The MVP nomination process
Wondering how you can become a Sitecore MVP?
At the end of each calendar year, Sitecore employees
and existing Sitecore MVPs nominate community
members for the MVP award. You may also nominate
yourself, but only Sitecore MVPs and employees
may recommend a nominee. The nomination period
lasts one month, starting November 1st and closing
December 1st.
All nominees then undergo an evaluation by a panel
of teams from Sitecore, which considers the quality,
quantity, and level of impact of the nominee’s expertise
and voluntary community contributions for the
past year.
The Technology MVP award is awarded to individuals
who are actively participating in online and offline
communities and events. They share their expertise
and experience through different types of media with
other partners and customers all around the globe.
Criteria includes:
Content contributions (e.g., writing/publishing
of white papers, articles, blog posts, videos,
and presentations)
■■
Sitecore Marketplace contributions
■■
Online podcasts and webinars
The Sitecore Digital Strategist MVP award is for
individuals with strong experience executing datadriven marketing and using the Sitecore Experience
Platform to drive business results. These individuals
are capable of using Sitecore Experience Marketing
capabilities, such as Analytics, Testing, Experience
Automation, Social Connect and/or Personalization.
The individuals are also strong advocates for Sitecore
Experience Marketing and have evangelized its use
through either public speaking, webinars, blogs, articles
or in case studies.
Sitecore Community forum product
contributions and feedback
Contributions on community.sitecore.net and
other online communities
More information on Sitecore’s MVP program can be
found on our website.
General (technical) advocacy
■■
Blog contributions
■■
■■
Sitecore User Group Management,
contributions, and participation
For 2016, Sitecore is introducing a Commerce MVP
award. This will be awarded to commerce experts and
enthusiasts who use Sitecore to empower e-commerce
solutions and who are actively participating in online
and offline communities and events. Commerce MVPs
will share unique commerce-related expertise and
experience through different types of media with other
partners and customers around the globe.
■■
■■
■■
Next steps
Interested in hearing more from Sitecore’s MVP community?
You’ll find them answering questions and discussing issues in
the Sitecore Community, where you’re welcome to join in the
discussion, and posting guest blogs on our Technical Blog site.
And if our MVPs have piqued your interest in Sitecore XP 8.1,
you may be interested in our white paper “Why upgrade to
Sitecore XP 8.1?”. That paper outlines what users on Sitecore
6.x and 7.x systems gain from upgrading to 8.1 and discusses
upgrading from a TCO perspective as well as upgrading vs.
migrating from scratch.
12
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
Participating MVPs
Technology MVPs
Kevin Brechbühl
Senior Application Architect
Unic AG
Technology MVP since 2015
ctor.io
@aquasonic
Julia Gavrilova
Architect
XCentium
Technology MVP since 2014
sitecoreexperiences.blogspot.com
@julia812
Richard (Rick) Cabral
Director of .NET Development
Genuine Interactive
Technology MVP since 2010
Blog
@sitecorerick
Ben Golden
Dir. of Technology/Sr. Solution Architect
Aware Web Solutions, Inc.
Technology MVP since 2008
Blog: Aware Insights
@BenGGolden
Corey Caplette
Chief Technology Officer
Velir Studios
Technology MVP since 2010
velir.com/blog
@cjcaplette
Jason Hedlund
VP of Technology
Aware Web Solutions, Inc.
Technology MVP since 2011
Blog: Aware Insights
@hedj17
Martin Davies
Consultant Developer
Kagool
Technology MVP since 2015
sitecoreskills.blogspot.co.uk
@twentygototen
Nick Hills
Sr. Web Developer
True Clarity
Technology MVP since 2015
blog.boro2g.co.uk
(Not on Twitter)
Kam Figy
Sr. Technical Architect ConnectiveDX (formerly ISITE Design)
Technology MVP since 2013
kamsar.net
@kamsar
Mikael Högberg
CTO / Solutions Architect Stendahls Agency
Technology MVP since 2013
mikael.com
@mikaelnet
13
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
Reto Hugi
Senior Consultant, Section Leader
Unic AG
Technology MVP since 2013
sitecore.unic.com
@retohugi
Bhavik Patel
Technology Manager SymSoft Solutions, LLC
Technology MVP since 2015
Blog
@bushland25
Matthew Kenny
Sitecore Architect
Codehouse Group
Technology MVP since 2013
matthewkenny.com
Mickey Rahman
Senior Techncial Architect
MindShift Technologies, Inc.
Technology MVP since 2015
mickeyrahman.wordpress.com
@mickrhm
David Leigh
Principal Developer
True Clarity
Technology MVP since 2015
daveleigh.co.uk
@technologytalks
Michael Robbins
Senior Software Developer
True Clarity
Technology MVP since 2015
mikerobbins.co.uk
@Sobek85
Ivan Lieckens
Sitecore Architect
Cegeka NV
Technology MVP since 2015
@ivanlieckens
Nathanael Mann
Sitecore Solution Architect
Test-Aankoop / Test-Achats
Technology MVP since 2015
cardinalcore.co.uk
@cardinal252
Mark Servais
Director, Software Research and
Development
XCentium
Technology MVP since 2014
markservais.com
@mservais
Dan Solovay
Lead Architect
XCentium
Technology MVP since 2013
dansolovay.com
@dansolovay
14
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
Charles Turano
Sr. Developer, Partner
Hedgehog Development, LLC
Technology MVP since 2014
hhogdev.com/blog
@charlesturano
Sebastian Winslow
Partner
Codehouse A/S
Technology MVP since 2009
Digital Strategist MVPs
Stephen Foxworthy
Strategy Director
Reactive
Digital Strategist MVP since 2014
@stephfox
Michael Tandrup
Senior Digital Strategist
Dis/Play DK
Digital Strategist MVP since 2014
@michaeltandrup
Andrew Blackmore
Solution Principal
Slalom Consulting
Digital Strategist MVP since 2015
slalom.com/thinking
@amblackmore
15
White paper // Sitecore® XP 8.1: What you need to know, from those who know best
About Sitecore
Sitecore is the global leader in experience management
software. The Sitecore® Experience Platform™ manages
content, supplies contextual intelligence, and automates
communications, at scale. It empowers marketers to deliver
content in context of how customers have engaged with their
brand, across every channel, in real time. More than 4,400
of the world’s leading brands—including American Express,
Carnival Cruise Lines, easyJet, and L’Oréal—trust Sitecore for
context marketing to deliver the personalized interactions
that delight audiences, build loyalty, and drive revenue.
Visit us at sitecore.net
16