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<hr /> As omnichannel continues to evolve digital strategies for brands, composable and <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms">headless</a> solutions are finding growth opportunities across a multitude of industries. This includes the healthcare technology marketplace, where digital experiences and e-commerce are critical to the business imperative. This week, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentstack">Contentstack</a> amplified that growth in the hearing care vertical. The composable digital experience platform (DXP) provider announced the<a target="_blank" href="https://report.sonova.com/2020/en/audiological-care-business/"> </a><a target="_blank" href="https://www.sonova.com/en/audiologicalcare-us">Audiological Care division of Sonova</a> – a global leader in innovative hearing care solutions – has selected Contentstack to power its migration to a <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-is-a-content-management-system-cms">headless CMS</a> solution. This is part of a broader digitalization strategy for Sonova, one that positions omnichannel at the forefront. “Our digital transformation goals required a solution that allows us to get ahead of the market changes and cater to the unique needs of our customer base,” said <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/varungupta85/">Varun Thunuguntla</a>, Digital Marketing Director for Sonova's Audiological Care business. "Contentstack gives us the flexibility to create more content with speed and deploy a number of personalized features to improve our customers' experience. At the same time, it enables us to improve internal collaboration across markets whilst providing the structure we need to scale our business, quickly integrate new and emerging tools, and future-proof our operations.” Futureproofing appears to be a key element in the decision-making for Sonova's selection of Contentstack. According to the company's press release, Contentstack will power web and digital experiences within Sonova’s Audiological Care division across its global markets. As part of its omnichannel strategy, additional touchpoints will follow in later phases. <h3>Powering omnichannel experiences with headless CMS</h3>Sonova’s Audiological Care business required a modern content management system to support content creation and improve collaboration with its new website. The company also sought a solution that enabled it to respond quickly to evolving business needs. With Contentstack’s headless CMS behind its websites, Sonova can now realize these goals. According to the press release, the move to Contentstack will help ensure consistency, improve internal workflows, and enhance content output speed and sharing across markets. By taking a composable, <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen">MACH-based approach</a>, Sonova's Audiological Care division will be able to accelerate the deployment of new features to its websites and deliver more personalized experiences across all channels. In addition, Contentstack’s extensive API library will enable Sonova to deploy and demote applications per their business needs with greater ease.    “Sonova Audiological Care business is a perfect example of how composable technology can empower businesses for years to come,” said <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramonweterings/">Ramon Weterings,</a> VP Sales EMEA at Contentstack. “Through the power of MACH, businesses can benefit from the latest best-of-breed solutions to continue to innovate and accelerate growth at the speed of their imagination. Contentstack’s 'Care Without Compromise' initiative ensures the successful migration into composable whilst working closely with Sonova Audiological Care to introduce new tools to support their evolving business goals.” Sonova’s Audiological Care business chose Contentstack for its leading position in the composable digital experience space. With Contentstack, Sonova is now armed with the latest technology to manage organic growth and adapt more quickly and easily to the ever-evolving needs of its customers.

Contentstack Powers Growth in Hearing Care with Sonova

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<hr /> If you build it, they will come. That's always been true for <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/aws-joins-mach-alliance-as-enabler-member-reflects-growth-of-cloud-native-solutions">AWS</a>. As the world's leading provider of cloud infrastructure services, Amazon has maintained an unprecedented pace of innovation, delivering such groundbreaking technologies as <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/">Satellite Ground Station as a Service</a> (yes, it's a real thing).But Amazon has also relied on its partner ecosystem to build on top of these services and make it all marketable. These companies are leveraging AWS cloud technologies in novel ways to swing for the fences and deliver commercial products at scale. Of course, building a Field of Dreams in the AI game has proven challenging for the cloud behemoths. While <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/technology/microsoft-openai-chatgpt.html">Microsoft doubled down on ChatGPT</a> and Google <a target="_blank" href="https://nypost.com/2023/02/08/google-ai-chatbot-bard-flunks-during-firms-highly-touted-rollout/">fumbled Bard</a> at first base, AWS stood by and studied the plays – waiting for the right moment. Some say they dragged their feet, but the long game might just be paying off. In addition to the launch of its <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/">Amazon Bedrock</a> service for building generative AI solutions, the company just invested <a target="_blank" href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/amazon-steps-up-ai-race-with-up-4-billion-deal-invest-anthropic-2023-09-25/">$1.25 billion in Anthropic</a>, a San Francisco-based AI startup that was previously being courted by Amazon's rivals.Now, AWS partners and builders are harnessing the power of Bedrock to enhance their products and services – including headless <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-is-a-content-management-system-cms">content management</a> and digital experience platforms (DXP). Case in point: <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentstack">Contentstack</a>, a leading Composable DXP provider. Recently, the company announced the integration of Amazon Bedrock into its Automation Hub and AI Assistant. This strategic move offers customers access to Amazon’s newest AI capabilities, allowing them to select the best AI provider to match their needs."Contentstack remains committed to pushing the boundaries in AI-driven digital experiences and content management. By partnering with AWS and integrating Amazon Bedrock, we are bringing that power to our customers," said <a target="_blank" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/conoregan/">Conor Egan</a>, VP of Product at Contentstack. "AI has caused a major shift in how companies market and consumers buy. This partnership means our customers will be ready to meet that challenge with a modern DXP experience."<h3>What is Amazon Bedrock, and why does it matter? </h3>Amazon Bedrock is a fully managed service that offers foundation models from Amazon and top AI startups. With this integration, Contentstack users can leverage the power of <a target="_blank" href="https://aws.amazon.com/bedrock/">various foundation models</a> to find the one that best fits their unique use case, all within the familiar Contentstack environment. The company's press release did point out that image-generating models are not supported in the text interface at this time.With Contentstack's flexible approach, customers who prefer Amazon’s cloud solutions for scalability and security can now easily align their AI strategies with their existing operational setup.Benefits of the Amazon Bedrock integration include:<ul><li>Greater AI Diversity: Alongside existing options, users can now select from new AI offerings like AI21 Labs, Anthropic’s Claude, and Amazon’s Titan models.</li><li>Robust Security: Amazon Bedrock's secure API ensures data integrity while allowing private customization of foundational models.</li><li>Streamlined Procurement: Enterprises already using Amazon services can now easily integrate Amazon Bedrock into their Contentstack environment, simplifying the procurement process.</li><li>AI-Powered Automation: Deploy generative AI applications and workflows using the Amazon Bedrock Connector in Automation Hub.</li><li>AI-Driven Content Creation: Amazon Bedrock enriches AI Assistant, making tasks like text summarization and keyword extraction easier.</li></ul><h3>Integrated with Automation Hub and AI Assistant</h3>In a <a target="_blank" href="https://cmscritic.com/a-closer-look-at-contentstacks-ai-features-with-christine-masters-senior-product-manager">previous interview</a> with Christine Masters, Contentstack's AI product manager, we went in-depth on the company's AI Assistant and its full breadth of features. The new Amazon Bedrock integration applies to both its AI Assistant and Automation Hub capabilities, extending the flexibility and resources available to businesses keen on integrating AI into their operations.Contentstack’s Automation Hub, a core product within its Composable DXP, is a visual workflow builder that automates and simplifies content operations and digital experiences. It allows developers and business stakeholders to easily create and manage complex, automated workflows with trigger-and-event architecture. With an array of third-party connectors available in the Marketplace, it enables rapid integration across various digital tools, eliminating the need for costly middleware and additional technical expertise.The Contentstack AI Assistant, now generally available, is a free tool available as a one-click install from the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.contentstack.com/marketplace/ai-assistant">Contentstack Marketplace</a>. It simplifies the content creation process by using AI-powered explicitly by user-selected Large Language Models (LLMs). Users can generate high-quality content, SEO keywords, and translations more efficiently.

Contentstack Integrates with Amazon Bedrock AI to Power the Future of Digital Experiences

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/shock-and-awe-adobe-to-acquire-ui-design-platform-figma-for-20-billion/">Adobe</a>, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-and-the-art-of-the-possible-interview-with-chief-market-officer-jennifer-griffin-smith/">Acquia</a>, and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-integrates-b2b-commerce-cloud-and-content-cloud-combines-headless-commerce-with-cms/">Optimizely</a> are Leaders in the latest <a href="https://www.forrester.com/report/the-forrester-wave-tm-content-management-systems-q3-2023/RES178520" target="_blank">Forrester Wave: Content Management Systems, Q3 2023</a> – a quarterly report published by one of the most prestigious and respected analyst firms in the technology industry.
The report, published today, provides a glimpse of where CMS platforms are positioned. Forrester ranks companies on a visual graph across several concentric strata: Challengers, Contenders, Strong Performers, and Leaders. A CMS platform’s position is then determined based on criteria reflecting its offering strength, strategy, and market presence.
<h2>Leading the CMS category </h2>
According to a <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230822212172/en/Acquia-Named-a-Leader-in-Content-Management-Systems-Report-by-Independent-Research-Firm" target="_blank">press release from Acquia </a>– one of the three platforms in the Leader category – the Q3 Forrester Wave report evaluated 10 CMS providers based on 26 criteria, focusing on the aforementioned criteria.
The report cited that “Acquia performs the strongest in low-code/no-code, translations for global content deliveries, and back-end extensibility – all supported by strong practitioner and developer programs.” The company earned the highest possible scores in the architecture (extensibility and configuration), practitioner and developer communities, partner ecosystem, and global delivery strategy criteria.
Optimizely, another Leader, also <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/optimizely-named-a-leader-in-content-management-systems-by-industry-research-firm-301908245.html" target="_blank">issued a press release</a> about its position. The Forrester report stated that the platform "performs very well in personalization, A/B testing, and translation and localizations."
Additionally, the report indicated Optimizely's CMS "excels at depth of content and audience analytics off the shelf (no additional licensing) and a strong ability to scale content delivery through its partnership with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-offers-microsoft-azure-becomes-only-multi-cloud-saas-cms-qa-with-cto-nishant-patel/">Microsoft Azure</a> and its cloud-native architecture."
<h2>Contentstack drives strong performance</h2>
While the Leader category remains the domain of large enterprise DXPs, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/">headless</a> CMS players are gaining ground. Case in point: <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-raises-57-5-million-in-series-b-round-qa-with-ceo-neha-sampat/">Contentstack</a>.
Buoyed by its <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/new-mach-alliance-maturity-assessment-tool-helps-organizations-evaluate-their-mach-readiness/">MACH</a> (Microservices, APIs, Cloud-native SaaS, Headless) focus and composable approach – along with best-in-class, turnkey, no-code integrations – the company is leading the Strong Performer category in the Forrester Wave report.
According to an article on the <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/resources/report/forrester-wave-report-2023?utm_medium=email-newsletter&amp;utm_source=marketo&amp;utm_campaign=2023-23-08-august-monthly-newsletter&amp;mkt_tok=NDg5LVdOSS0zODMAAAGNwg2flcZin6FEq-r-0_FcJUMeWdg_wzl49C_gzpN1gvxH7TnAnUakU4Mp4aFsa52WTa2dI1bZs97lBpqwBgmvq3Ivq1I0p0AUV9BkNOClolY" target="_blank">Contentstack website</a>, the report stated that “Contentstack performs well in several categories but shines in its ease of back-end extensibility through turnkey integrations, coupled with global deployments.”
Along with its MACH posture, the report also noted that “as a founding member of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH Alliance,</a> it excels in innovation, global delivery, and a straightforward pricing model.”
<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/what-contentfuls-175m-investment-round-means-for-the-future-of-cms/">Contentful</a>, another headless platform, also scored as a Strong Performer in the report.
<h2>A broad CMS field from headless to open source</h2>
While a presumed crop of DXPs dominated the top of the mountain, headless players and managed open source platforms like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/cms-monthly-recap-wordpress-acquires-parse-ly-siteimprove-releases-upgraded-accessibility-product-twilio-segment-releases-2021-cdp-report-and-more/">WordPress VIP</a> provided some variance in the landscape.
As the downstream vendors look to contend and challenge the market, it’s clear that composable is becoming a more important part of the mix – and helping to propel those CMSes to the front of the line.

Adobe, Acquia, Optimizely Top Latest Forrester Wave for Content Management Systems

It's "wheels up" this week for <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/?utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=2021_07_bigcommerce_press_release">Contentstack</a><a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/">,</a> a composable Digital Experience Platform (DXP) provider.
The company just announced that it has been selected by European airline group <a href="https://www.airfranceklm.com/en" target="_blank">Air France-KLM</a> to support its new digital transformation initiative: a composable solution that aims to provide seamless and curated omnichannel experiences to its customers worldwide.
According to the press release, Air France-KLM sought a composable DXP that could be integrated with its existing technology stack – specifically with a new CMS.
Contentstack was selected for its expertise in composable architecture and its easy-to-use interface. Along with its headless CMS, the platform offers a range of capabilities, all of which align with the composable principles of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH</a> (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless).
“For enterprises like Air France-KLM, speed and agility are critical to efficiently managing content processes as well as customer demand,” said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramonweterings/" target="_blank">Ramon Weterings</a>, VP Sales EMEA at Contentstack. “By harvesting the power of composable, headless technology, Air France-KLM is now better equipped to adapt to change without having to compromise on quality. In partnership with Contentstack, they’re able to continue delivering superior digital experiences while benefiting from rapid, agile, and reliable internal workflows. Our goal is to help our partners set up for success and we’re excited to be working with Air France-KLM on their composable adoption.”
The partnership will enable Air France-KLM to benefit from a more agile journey while working with Contentstack to improve and update its technology capabilities.     
<h2>Taking flight with composable </h2>
Contentstack will be part of a composable digital strategy that empowers Air France-KLM to create seamless and personalized customer journeys, with streamlined publishing processes for e-commerce developers, content creators, and SEO specialists.
Contentstack’s extensive API library will also allow applications to be easily integrated into the Air France-KLM technology ecosystem while offering the agility required to support growth channels and adapt to changing customer needs.
“Whether it’s onboard our aircraft or on our digital touchpoints, we aim to offer unique experiences to our customers," said <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugorousset/" target="_blank">Hugo Rousset</a>, VP Digital Products &amp; Services at Air France-KLM. "We needed a solution that allows us to get ahead of customer needs, providing them a personalized user journey. Migrating to Contentstack contributes to delivering more consistent content across all our touchpoints and all markets. At the same time, it enables us to integrate our existing tech stack and adapt quickly to the changing landscape.”
Contentstack is being implemented to integrate with Air France-KLM’s consumer websites, powering the next generation of digital experiences, with additional websites to follow later this year.
<h2>About Contentstack</h2>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/?utm_source=prnewswire&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=2019_06_19_contentstack_comes_to_europe">Contentstack</a> – the leading composable digital experience platform (DXP) provider – empowers marketers and developers to deliver digital experiences at the speed of their imagination. Companies such as ASICS, Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences with uncompromising scale and dependability. Famous for its Care without Compromise™, Contentstack has achieved the industry's highest customer satisfaction rating. Contentstack is also a founding member of the MACH Alliance, setting the industry agenda for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. Learn more at <a href="http://www.contentstack.com">http://www.contentstack.com</a>.

Contentstack Selected by Air France-KLM to Support Composable Digital Experience Transformation

Highlights:
<ul>
<li>Christine Masters is driving product management for Contentstack's AI roadmap</li>
<li>The company's new AI Assistant offers generative content capabilities powered by ChatGPT</li>
<li>Contentstack’s AI approach is helping to mitigate concerns like data privacy</li>
<li>The combination of AI Assistant and Automation Hub delivers unique advantages</li>
</ul>
<hr />
 
Artificial Intelligence has long been a popular trope in the sci-fi genre. Most of us could rattle off a string of films about machines gone amuck, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Ex Machina.
The stories are almost always identical: Humans create AI. The world marvels at its promise. People check out. AI becomes self-aware and decides humans need to be exterminated. Epic battles ensue.
And it’s all downhill from there.
While advancements in real-world AI have been profound, they’re a far cry from the popcorn pop-culture dystopias we see in the movies. Sure, there’s trepidation, but no threat of total machine domination (we hope). And AI models like <a href="https://openai.com/chatgpt" target="_blank">ChatGPT</a> – which has captured the moment's zeitgeist – are already proving their value in multiple use cases. 
Generally speaking, the AI features being added to CMS platforms show promise, not peril. At the same time, they’re fraught with challenges – and if there’s one Schwarzenegger-level threat suffering from a bit of time dilation, it might be the customer experience. Compounded by pressure to seize the opportunity and a need to remain in competitive lockstep, many AI features have been rushed to market at hyperbolic speed.
But what makes them different? And are they really delivering value? That depends a lot on how a user creates content in a CMS.
When I was in Europe last month, I met with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehasampat/" target="_blank">Neha Sampat</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/conoregan/" target="_blank">Conor Egan</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/susancbeermann/" target="_blank">Susan Beerman</a> – the leadership team at Contentstack. One of the discussion topics was Contentstack's new AI Assistant, which I had previewed and found quite compelling. I wanted to dive deeper, so they sent me to the source: Senior Product Manager <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/masters/" target="_blank">Christine Masters</a>.
Christine’s bailiwick is Emerging Products, where she’s working on the front line of innovation. Her months-long mission to launch Contentstack’s new AI features has yielded dynamite results, and she gave me a guided tour. We also talked about the big challenges the market is wrestling with, and how Contentstack's approach to generative AI – from content to code – is supercharging their composable DXP.
<h2>Mastering product management</h2>
Christine joined me on Zoom from her home in Iowa – an easterly track from her California roots, but a more temperate 80 degrees on an otherwise sweltering summer day.
“I remember 119 degrees,” she reminisced. It’s worth noting that the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/californias-death-valley-sizzles-near-record-temperatures-as-brutal-heat-wave-continues#:~:text=The%20hottest%20temperature%20ever%20recorded,as%20keeper%20of%20world%20records." target="_blank">record in Death Valley</a> is 134, which makes 80 sound downright cool.
And cool is precisely the right word for Christine. She's easygoing, confident, and genuinely passionate about her work. From an experience perspective, she's a fluent industry stalwart that’s seen the evolution of content into the digital realm, starting in print at a newspaper in Fort Wayne, Indiana – where she used tools like QuarkXPress.
After operational roles in media, she managed CMS platforms at BLOX Digital, focusing on digital transformation for media applications in cloud and SaaS. She later became a senior director of core platforms, where she conducted focus groups to help build better CMS experiences.
Coming from a more traditional monolithic CMS background, Christine brings an unmatched perspective to her work in Emerging Products, specifically with Contentstack’s new AI features. The company <a href="https://demandgenreport.com/features/news-briefs/contentstack-adds-openai-chatgpt-integration-to-its-platform" target="_blank">announced</a> its ChatGPT integration in late March, relatively early in the hype cycle.
The new AI initiative was ambitious, enabling in-line user extensions that assist in creating brand-specific content in seconds. The stated capabilities were simple but powerful: editors would be able to quickly publish summaries, outlines, metadata descriptions, keyword-optimized blogs, and more – all by using prompts. But that was just the beginning.
In April, Contentstack <a href="https://community.contentstack.com/podcast-media-and-more-81/introducing-contentstack-live-383" target="_blank">hosted a webinar</a> introducing its ChatGPT connector and the future of AI-driven composability. The messaging established that the company sees AI and automation technologies touching virtually all facets of the digital experience stack – transforming content creation, code development, and asset creation.
Quite a charter, and one that will keep Christine busy for some time to come.
<h2>Understanding customer concerns with AI </h2>
Death by PowerPoint is a common fatality in the tech world, but Christine offered a single yet poignant slide before diving into the demo – one that crystallized the key challenges most companies face when considering AI. This educational entry point has become common for her.
“We’ve had a ton of interest, but a lot of concerns as well,” she said. “Many companies are asking, what should we be doing with AI? I’ve been on maybe 30 or 40 calls not just consulting, but talking and listening to their concerns. Some people are much more AI-friendly, and some are very nervous. There’s kind of this fear that when we let ChatGPT in, it’s going to suck up all our data to learn things and use it elsewhere, even with my competition.”
It’s a real concern – and one I’ve heard repeatedly from platforms and users. Will my company’s proprietary content become fodder for the training model? Or will <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/23/chatgpt" target="_blank">another bug</a> allow my competitors to see my chat sessions?  
I asked Christine how Contentstack is assuaging these fears. She quickly pointed out that their new service taps the ChatGPT API, but none of the data is being trained by the broader model. Additionally, only prompt data is stored for troubleshooting purposes and cleared out after 30 days. All of these tactics meet <a href="https://gdpr.eu/" target="_blank">GDPR compliance</a>, providing greater assurance around data privacy.
<hr />
<h4>"You need to make sure you have humans at the right step, particularly if it’s content created from scratch."</h4>
<hr />
That said, OpenAI has become a powerhouse tech company with more than 100 million users, making it a prime target for hacking. Last month, <a href="https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-stolen-accounts-passwords-dark-web" target="_blank">Group-IB reported</a> that thousands of ChatGPT login credentials were leaked to the Dark Web, forcing Google and other companies to warn employees not to add sensitive information to the large language model. Contentstack addresses some of these risks with a combination of optimization and policy.
Accuracy is another blocker, and ChatGPT’s well-documented <a href="https://www.securityweek.com/chatgpt-hallucinations-can-be-exploited-to-distribute-malicious-code-packages/#:~:text=The%20issue%20is%20related%20to,information%20that%20may%20look%20plausible." target="_blank">hallucinations</a> have caused significant challenges to trust. “Sometimes it sounds very convincing, but it’s a total lie,” Christine added. “You need to make sure you have humans at the right step, particularly if it’s content created from scratch.”
Given this, Christine focuses on the use cases where ChatGPT excels, such as creating short summaries from longer-form content or extracting keywords. “We’ve been doing things like this for years now, so it’s become table stakes,” she said, noting that AWS has been making AI scalable for quite some time with products like <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/managedservices/latest/userguide/rekognition.html" target="_blank">Amazon Rekognition</a>.  
But what is novel are the prompts being used to simplify and execute – and how Contentstack is harnessing its automation capabilities to streamline AI at exactly the right places in the content creation experience.
“That’s where we’re coming from with these products,” she punctuated.
<h2>Conjuring content with AI Assistant </h2>
Contentstack’s ChatGPT integration has two main products it intersects with: AI Assistant and Automation Hub. The combination of the two provides a unique ecosystem of capabilities that enriches the generative creation of content and the automation and streamlining of its entire AI workflow.  
As Christine pointed out, an important distinction with the AI Assistant is its nature as an app in Contentstack’s composable ecosystem. I knew other platforms had instrumented their AI with a more coupled architecture, so I asked her to elaborate on the advantages.
“One really great thing about our CMS is the extensibility,” she explained. “You can build your own apps and modules to extend the capabilities through a marketplace approach. With monolithic CMS platforms, you might keep adding features – but after ten years, it gets bloated and filled with toggles. By extending CMS through apps, you can keep it agile and lean.”
With the AI Assistant being an app, Christine began her demo in the most logical place: the installation process. This is critical, as users can choose to connect ChatGPT using their own API keys, or use Contentstack – which is free. In either case, the whole piece is painless.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/07/contentstack-screen-installation-1024x727.jpg" alt="Contentstack screen showing the installation process" />
Inside the tool, there are lots of pre-configured features that allow you to build prompts for almost anything. You can add a pre-defined set of icons that conform with your brand standards or build custom prompts aligned with your organization’s content style. (Sidenote: <a href="https://learnprompting.org/" target="_blank">prompt engineering courses</a> have now emerged to help assist users with this new skill. Go figure.)
In Contentstack’s AI, the prompts can get very granular. For example, a customer can enter explicit instructions like when to use associated trademarks or which competitor should never be mentioned. 
From a UI perspective, the AI Assistant “lives” where the content writer creates new entries, enhancing the experience without disrupting the editorial flow. The whole experience is lightweight and elegant, and reflects thoughtful analysis of where the elements should co-exist. Users can interface with the tool via custom actions already configured for spelling and grammar, then add functions to write summaries, extract keywords, and even provide translations. 
As Christine pointed out, writers and editors aren’t typically creating content from scratch with AI. In most cases, they use it to augment their writing in different ways.
“As a quick example, let’s say I want to write a blog post about something,” she said. “You can use our pre-built Idea Generator to create ideas and use custom prompts to be in the tone and voice of your brand. Most of the time, writers want ideas and outlines, so they have more control.”
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/07/contentstack-screen-ai-ideas-1-1024x747.jpg" alt="Contentstack screen showing the AI idea prompt." />
From a success standpoint, Christine offered some experience-based advice about prompting, explaining how the assistant can produce better and more accurate results when properly fed. This includes prompt curation around overused terms that might seem cliché or incompatible with a brand’s voice.
“You might tell ChatGPT to ‘make it more exciting’ and it returns words and phrases like ‘trailblazing’ or ‘revolutionary.’ Everything can start to sound the same. ‘In the realm of digital experiences’ is another example that you see out there. These would be my guidelines for what not to use.”
Looking at the prompt capabilities, I asked if there was a plan to make the customizations more repeatable and sharable. Christine said that’s on the roadmap – along with other features.
“We really want to make sure that we’re providing something very useful for our customers they can actually use.”
<h2>Adding some magic with Automation Hub</h2>
The 1-2 punch of Contentstack’s AI offering is the unique combo of AI Assistant and <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/automation-hub/?creative=650999267431&amp;keyword=contentstack%20automation%20hub&amp;matchtype=p&amp;network=g&amp;device=c&amp;campaign=19810684522&amp;adgroup=146523337843&amp;placement=&amp;utm_campaign=fy24-glob-dg-automation-hub-us-ca&amp;utm_medium=paid-search&amp;utm_source=google&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwwvilBhCFARIsADvYi7L-bNoQPTRPXR4ba5lah7uPBz6xovMlmKayTKrMh-G4nO9xaoVQ8XUaAuRDEALw_wcB" target="_blank">Automation Hub</a>.
If you’re unfamiliar with the service, it’s an existing feature of the Contentstack DXP that delivers an easy, no-code solution for streamlining business processes. It starts with a trigger or action and allows you to define a specific workflow using a graphical interface – which is incredibly lithe and intuitive. The tool is designed to help simplify the complexity of integrations and automate routine tasks. 
“Now [with Automation Hub], you can build up a series of automated steps with the ChatGPT connector, which brings in an automatic prompt trainer,” Christine described. “It’s a webhook with a trigger – like publishing a new article – and you build steps afterward that are API calls or snippets of code performing functionality.”
According to Christine, Automation Hub is ideal for applications like translations, where ChatGPT can be automatically tapped to return languages based on specific fields and requirements. ChatGPT does a decent job with translations, and there’s already broad market trust with third-party tools like <a href="https://www.weglot.com/" target="_blank">Weglot</a> that leverage AI.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/07/contentstack-screen-translation-1024x749.jpg" alt="Contentstack screen showing translation with ChatGPT and Slack connector." />
In just a few minutes, she demonstrated how simple it is to activate the "ChatGPT for Translation" automation in the UI and configure both the connector and the associated actions. Once the translation was completed, we even added a step with Slack, automatically letting team members know the task was completed. Pretty slick. 
“Summaries, keywords, translations – if you do something a hundred times over and you never have to change it, this can take the place of people. But you always want a human in the loop knowing what’s going on.”
In an upcoming version, Christine mentioned that users will be able to add in multiple prompts, but also specific function calls via API or http connections. For example, ChatGPT could be harnessed to tap a stock or sports score database at 9 AM and send an email to a list of recipients in a pre-defined format.
“Text enhancement is really the starting point,” she said. “I can’t wait to get this into the hands of more users. I don’t think we’ve even started to think about the cool ideas they’ll be able to implement.”
<h2>What’s ahead for Contentstack and AI</h2>
We’ve been on the ChatGPT “hype train” for well over six months now. I asked Christine how the landscape is unfolding, particularly with similar offerings from other platforms. She agreed that competitors are driving AI in a commoditized direction, but that Contentstack’s app architecture – and its focus on streamlining and automating processes – is unique.  
So what’s driving that value quotient for customers in these early days?
“We’re seeing a lot of use with things like extracting keywords, tapping language translations,” she motioned, “but there are also cost savings when you consider replacing other tools for things like SEO optimization. And if you’re using our Contentstack API keys, it’s even free.”
Free is good, but will it last? Christine did suggest that large organizations will likely opt to use their own ChatGPT keys – and if more translation is required, costs may increase with the scaling token requirements. But it's clear that Contentstack sees its AI features as a value-add, and having a free entry point is a smart move to build adoption. 
Based on the demo, there’s ample room to streamline the clicks required within Contentstack's AI experience. This is where Automation Hub really sings, delivering both efficiency and control to users. As she noted, it’s the “boring” integrations – the undifferentiated heavy lifting – that Contentstack is endeavoring to supplant. By doing so, users can focus on building high-value, high-utility apps and experiences. You know... the cool stuff. 
“Whatever you trust AI to do, we can automate that,” she declared.  
<h2>Get started with AI Assistant</h2>
If you want to join Contentstack’s AI Assistant program, sign up by <a href="https://explore.contentstack.com/ai-assistant?utm_medium=internal_docs" target="_blank">filling out this form</a>. After agreeing to a few terms, you’ll receive a link to install the app – which, as mentioned, is currently free.
Christine said we can expect more announcements in the coming months. You can also check out Contentstack’s recent <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/docs/changelog/#ai-assistant-june-release-highlights" target="_blank">June release highlights</a> for current details.  
All challenges aside, the introduction of AI in CMS platforms has tremendous potential to improve productivity for content editors and developers. I’ve always contended that AI should stand for augmented intelligence, because it’s really about enhancing our creativity and productivity – not replacing it.
“Humans are great at the interesting things,” Christine observed.
Exactly. Like writing sci-fi scripts... about AI.

A Closer Look at Contentstack's AI Features with Christine Masters, Senior Product Manager

matt-garrepy

<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a>, a leading composable digital experience platform, has announced the details of its annual customer conference <a href="https://hopin.com/events/contentcon-2023-b457f92b-1b36-4b14-ab98-2e9997fd6326/registration" target="_blank">ContentCon</a>, which will be held May 8-10, 2023. The conference will host in-person attendees at the <a href="https://www.hotelvanzandt.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwov6hBhBsEiwAvrvN6BrprCkd8CfhkkHMLTmec3hO_vjpADrx_azcyRskPIA22yckdrggGhoCUDIQAvD_BwE" target="_blank">Hotel Van Zandt</a> in Austin, Texas, with an exciting lineup of speakers, workshops, and networking opportunities.
Attendees who cannot make the trip to the Lone Star state can also register to attend virtually and for free.
<h2>Who’s who at ContentCon?</h2>
Contentstack just revealed its keynote speakers for the event, which include an all-star lineup of strategic business leaders, thought leaders, and composable evangelists.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/heylgo/" target="_blank">Laura Gassner Otting</a> – Best-Selling Author, Catalyst, and Executive Coach
Laura inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep great ideas in limbo by helping audiences think bigger and accept greater challenges that reach beyond their current, limited scope of belief.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/julietteolah/" target="_blank">Juliette Olah</a> – Senior Senior Manager, Editorial Content at <a href="https://www.booking.com/?aid=2062892&amp;label=147268094501561094234084590185684619184&amp;anid=147268094501561094234084590185684619184" target="_blank">Booking.com</a>
Juliette leads and inspires happy teams who delight audiences with awesome content. Juliette's keynote will cover The Art and Science of Content Strategy.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardbilton/" target="_blank">Richard Bilton</a> – Director of Technology at Leesa Sleep
With a background in sales, development, and eCommerce, Richard helps businesses see the value of the website as their superstar salesman that never sleeps. Richard will share How Leesa Sleep is Realizing the Personalization Dream.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjmontgomery/" target="_blank">Mindy Montgomery</a> – Associate Director, Product Management, ASICS
Mindy has deep expertise in consulting and transforming industries through technology. Mindy's keynote will be a guide to surviving RFPs, titled It Takes a Village to Raise a Platform.”
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurrevanruth/" target="_blank">Jurre van Ruth</a> – Strategic Program Manager, ‘Composable DXP’, at PostNL
Jurre helps PostNL, a mail and logistics solutions provider, build the future of delivery from the Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Jurre's keynote will address Headless as an Accelerator for Innovation.
<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nehasampat/" target="_blank">Neha Sampat</a> – Founder and CEO at Contentstack
An outspoken advocate for equality &amp; women leaders, Neha was named Female Tech Trailblazer in 2020, CEO of the Year by Aragon in 2018, and an “SF Business Times 40 under 40” honoree in 2015.
<h2>What to expect</h2>
While promoting the event on its website, Contentstack stated it is “calling all status-quo-busters to join the composable future.” This customer-focused event promises to empower new Contentstack users or seasoned veterans to elevate their skills and expertise in composable technology and composable leadership.
Contentstack knows something about customer satisfaction. One of its promises to users is <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-launches-new-marketplace-to-accelerate-composable-digital-experience-innovation/">“Care Without Compromise,”</a> which helps customers find solutions often using cross-vendor resolutions.
Throughout the event, attendees can stop by the Contentstack Help Bar for expert advice or attend an expert-led workshop to hone their knowledge about the composable space. Participants can also expect vibrant discussions at one of the many networking events.
For more information on logistics and details of the event, please <a href="https://hopin.com/events/contentcon-2023-b457f92b-1b36-4b14-ab98-2e9997fd6326/registration" target="_blank">register here</a>.
<h2>About Contentstack</h2>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a> – the Content Experience Platform (CXP) category leader – empowers marketers and developers to deliver composable digital experiences at the speed of their imagination. Companies such as ASICS, Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences with uncompromising scale and dependability. Famous for its Care without Compromise™, Contentstack has achieved the industry's highest customer satisfaction rating. Contentstack is also a founder of the MACH Alliance, setting the industry agenda for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. Learn more at <a href="http://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">http://www.contentstack.com</a>.

Contentstack Presents the ‘Future of Composable’ at ContentCon, May 8-10

mk-patterson

CMS Kickoff 24

Don't miss CMS Kickoff 2024, January 16-17 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Seats are limited.

The #1 global event dedicated to CMS

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It’s hard to avoid the rocket allusions, but with a product called “Launch,” it’s almost a requirement.
For <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-launches-new-marketplace-to-accelerate-composable-digital-experience-innovation/">Contentstack</a>, a leading <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/">headless CMS</a> and <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/cms-guides/building-digital-experience-platform-dxp/" target="_blank">composable DXP</a>, the liftoff of its new front-end hosting solution comes at a perfect time. As the market’s focus on composable accelerates at warp speed, organizations are looking for more complete ecosystems to simplify the challenges of building, deploying, and scaling their experiences.
This is where <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/launch/" target="_blank">Contentstack Launch</a> can take businesses orbital. The new solution, which is currently pre-GA, promises a MACH-compliant, low latency hosting solution with fully automated functionality from back-end to front-end.
I had a chance to connect with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dean-haddock-24697870/" target="_blank">Dean Haddock</a>, the Senior Product Manager at Contentstack who’s helping to pilot the Launch mission. We talked about the new offering and how it completes a vision to deliver everything needed for building composable experiences.
Dean is a fellow CMS journeyman. His story began in open source, working on the early frontier of APIs before they became native to platforms. That eventually led him to Contentstack, where he’s spent the last year focusing on cutting-edge products in the company’s evolving portfolio – which is now reaching beyond its core headless CMS and into middle layer tools like Contentstack’s <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-launches-new-marketplace-to-accelerate-composable-digital-experience-innovation/">Automation Hub and Marketplace</a>.
“Contentstack is now a multi-product platform,” he said. “So a lot of my work is stitching together the fundamental and foundational parts of that architecture and infrastructure.”
This might sound like rocket science, but Dean and the team at Contentstack have been executing on a clear vision for quite some time. That’s led to some stellar investments – including an <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-raises-80-million-series-c-focuses-on-accelerating-the-path-to-composable-for-enterprises/">$80 million Series C</a> that closed in November of 2022. To date, the company has raised $169 million.
Is it enough to reach the moon? Even in a highly competitive market, that’s one giant leap for a headless CMS. Compound it with the gravity of a softening economy – particularly in tech – and the escape velocity shifts.
But this is where Contentstack has a distinct advantage: they’re market leaders. The company is solid and expanding globally from its San Francisco headquarters. They’ve also cultivated a dynamic culture under <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-raises-57-5-million-in-series-b-round-qa-with-ceo-neha-sampat/">CEO Neha Sampet</a> and consistently demonstrated a commitment to innovation.
Couple all that with a solid multi-product strategy and you have the rocket fuel to blast off.
<h2>Bringing content creators and developers together</h2>
From the get-go, Dean wanted to focus our conversation on the critical relationship between content creators and developers, which he believes is the most interesting story around Launch. He was very enthusiastic about it, and I asked him what’s driving his passion. 
“I couldn't be more excited about [Launch],” he said. “Because it's the front-end, putting the head on the headless with CMS and providing this end-to-end digital experience where we have the CMS, the automations, integrations, extensions. Things you can do in the middle layer of your content delivery. And now the front-end, where you can deliver to all to your audiences in a super-efficient, very delightful, easy breezy way.”
“Easy breezy” might be the operative terminology, and what Dean proceeded to share in his demo was exactly that: Launch is helping to eliminate the friction around completing the composable puzzle when building and deploying websites – making the entire process seamless and, well, easy breezy.  
<h3>Deploying Launch with Next.js</h3>
Dean took me through a typical deployment example, and as billed, it all felt smooth. He used a starter stack for Next.js, for which they provide tutorials and documentation. You can do this on your own, but Contentstack offers these flexible “launchpads” that use common rendering methods and auto-populate environment variables.
In seconds, we were able to deploy a staging and production environment with all the essentials – and this is where he notes the connective tissue between content creators and developers.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/03/create-new-project.jpg" alt="Contentstack Create New Project" />
“You'll be able to see the opportunities to bring folks together on the same sides of a ‘walled garden’ instead of tossing things over the fence from content manager to developer using other platforms – and where we can get some efficiencies and scale,” Dean said.
The staging and production environments use Contentstack’s CDN, which automatically triggers rebuilds. You can also schedule rebuilds to help reduce routine DevOps tasks, and there’s a nice Slack integration that allows you to message team members around your workflows.
What was really slick was the degree of visibility across the environments. With Launch, you can always see what’s deploying, what’s live, and what might have failed in the build process.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/03/environments.jpg" alt="Environments" />
Launch is also framework agnostic, so developers have their choice of any common JavaScript front-end frameworks like <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/">Next.js</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-acquires-gatsby-aims-to-accelerate-adoption-of-composable-web-architectures/">Gatsby</a>. This fits squarely with the composable promise of enabling developers to work in the language they prefer.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/03/portfolio-overview.jpg" alt="Portfolio Overview" />
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/launch/?creative=651180332057&amp;keyword=contentstack%20launch&amp;matchtype=p&amp;network=g&amp;device=c&amp;campaign=19806932844&amp;adgroup=146548710469&amp;placement=&amp;utm_campaign=fy24-glob-dg-launch-us-ca&amp;utm_medium=paid_search&amp;utm_source=google&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwzuqgBhAcEiwAdj5dRrCGvcWB6oY89DiyAitLebtNklaEF5zT2t22x2RXcJYxcqSUG8ZZSBoCx64QAvD_BwE" target="_blank">According to a video</a> Dean hosted, Launch was originally conceived as a tool that developers would use. To that end, it’s effectively an active CI/CD system that builds and deploys your code immediately after pushing it. This reduces the cumbersome challenges with building CI/CD from scratch.
After our environment was in place, Dean brought us back to Github, where we selected the Next.js starter and gave it a name (aptly, “CMS Critic Demo”). Going back to the prod environment, we were able to pick a delivery token and import the variables. From there, it was as simple as clicking “Deploy” to start building the front-end site.
“So what [Launch] is doing here is going to Github, grabbing my code, downloading it onto our platform, running the build commands, and compiling the application,” he said, describing the automagical process. “When folks start accessing my content, it's going to be caching it on the CDN for super low latency, as you would expect for a front-end, headless hosting solution.”
<h3>Powering content creators </h3>
Deployment took a few minutes to complete, which included the SSL provisioning – yet another headache that Launch resolves. From there, we shifted to the content publisher’s realm and walked through the experience of our new homepage. With everything running off the same codebase, it was a snap to preview changes to any aspect of the page and then push to production in seconds.
"So I could say, ‘here's a production publishing environment where all my production content is going to go,’’ Dean said, narrating the use case. “I can also create lower-level environments, if I want to try out content or maybe write content that then needs to be approved by legal before it goes to publish on the web. The legal team can look quickly for any changes, hit approve, and then content could be delivered to environments as it’s promoted all the way up to production for a final approval.”
It's clear that this use case around governance and compliance is crucial for modern enterprises. While Contentstack’s CMS can certainly handle organizational permissions, the addition of Launch further simplifies vital workflows while accelerating the entire process – allowing content to be published faster and with greater control.
We played a little more with the staging and production sides of the flow, changing colors in headers and updating content elements – and it all felt easy breezy and lightning fast. As Dean explained, with this particular front-end, updates in the CMS were being automatically delivered to the presentation layer. With other packages that use SSG (such as Gatsby) it would require a quick rebuild.
The promise of Launch is greater freedom to build with clicks, not code. Modeling exists on both sides of the “walled garden,” where dev, staging, and prod are all handled in once place like cream cheese – so developers can focus on building while marketers push content and new experiences faster than ever.
“You could also create front-end templates, sites, and microsites that can be deployed from the content management side without ever really needing to engage the developer,” Dean said, codifying that promise of freedom. “So your developers set you up with a handful of different templates and you can just deploy front-ends for any kind of marketing purposes with a really quick turnaround time.”
<h2>Stacked for composable success</h2>
I asked Dean what the roadmap looks like for Contentstack in 2023. They’re now a multi-product vendor – so what does that mean in terms of market strategy?
“You should expect to see more products in the future, more innovations,” he eluded. “I got off a demo today and my mind is blown. I can just tell you that the product team, engineering team, design team – all the folks over here on our side – are doing some very, very cool stuff that will hopefully hit the market in the near future.”
I inquired about the expanding landscape of JS frameworks and how that might influence the Launch vector. “Right now, [Launch] has auto-detection for Gatsby and Next.js because those are two very, very popular frameworks that a lot of our customers and community work with. And there’s also the option to put your own custom build commands in the workflow. But you know, there are a couple dozen plus really popular frameworks out there and new ones every single day. So we'll be adding support for more of those.”
I also probed a bit more about the composable nature of their new multi-product approach and how this all fits with Contentstack’s commitment to MACH. It's worth noting that the company is a founding member of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH Alliance</a>.
“Fundamentally, we are staying in the composable space, and it is extremely important for us. It’s a core value of Contentstack that you want to use our CMS and go omnichannel across lots of different screens and ways of delivering your content. This [Launch] is just one new tool in a toolbox to deliver your end-to-end digital experience. So if you don't want to use Launch, that's totally fine. You can bring your own front-end hosting service, build custom in AWS, or however you want to do it.”
With so much DIY in the equation, it's also good to see the presence of human service in the digital DNA. Case in point: Contentstack's <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/customer-success/" target="_blank">Care Without Compromise Program,</a> which establishes an agreement to work with other vendors with like-minded technologies to provide solutions to customers. 
One thing Dean said that really resonated with me was how Contentstack’s multiple offerings represent a “supply chain” for your digital experiences. He mentioned it several times, and it really spoke to the idea of interdependence on the parts to deliver the whole. At the same time, the pieces can be interchanged in a composable way. But Launch – and its other products – are built with Contentstack in mind, which provides more features and flexibility.
“You can plug and play with other tools as you need them – or as you want to,” he said. “The fact of the matter is there are lots of different front-end hosting services out there, including the ones that you could build yourself. This one is designed to play very, very well with Contentstack specifically.”
And that’s what makes a composable DXP.
<h3>The countdown to Launch</h3>
If you’re interested in joining the mission, Contentstack Launch is in pre-GA and should be generally available in the next few months. According to Dean, they’re in an early adopter phase, and interested parties can request a demo or apply for early access on the <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/launch/?creative=651180332057&amp;keyword=contentstack%20launch&amp;matchtype=p&amp;network=g&amp;device=c&amp;campaign=19806932844&amp;adgroup=146548710469&amp;placement=&amp;utm_campaign=fy24-glob-dg-launch-us-ca&amp;utm_medium=paid_search&amp;utm_source=google&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjwzuqgBhAcEiwAdj5dRrCGvcWB6oY89DiyAitLebtNklaEF5zT2t22x2RXcJYxcqSUG8ZZSBoCx64QAvD_BwE" target="_blank">Contentstack Launch product page</a>.
“If you’re a good candidate for our program, we’ll bring you in, give you a nice bear hug of support, and make sure you have a really good experience.”
Sounds a bit like astronaut training. With "bear hug" service to boot.

Contentstack Launch Aims to Simplify Front-End Hosting: Interview with Dean Haddock, Senior Product Manager

The composable revolution is upon us – and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/contentstack-raises-57-5-million-in-series-b-round-qa-with-ceo-neha-sampat/">Contentstack</a> is establishing its position as a frontline innovator.
Last week, the Content Experience Platform (CXP) category leader and composable architecture pioneer announced $80 million in Series C funding. <a href="https://georgian.io/" target="_blank">Georgian</a> and <a href="https://www.insightpartners.com/" target="_blank">Insight Partners</a> co-led the round with participation from <a href="https://illuminate.com/" target="_blank">Illuminate Ventures</a>. Georgian’s Lead Investor Emily Walsh will join the Contentstack board along with Contentstack CFO David Overmyer.
“We look for high-growth companies with great leadership and a strong work culture," said Walsh. "We also love to help disruptors do what they do best. For all these reasons, we chose to double down on our investment. Contentstack’s ability to ensure customers are successful while also innovating at record speeds positions them as the leader in the CMS market. We are proud to co-lead this round and provide the Company with the support required for true category leadership.”
All three companies continue to grow their investment with Contentstack, contributing to a whopping $169 million raised thus far.
<h2>Powering the composable future with headless CMS</h2>
According to Contentstack, the company will use the infusion to support enterprise companies on their path to composable, helping them meet consumer demand for omnichannel and personalized experiences.
As the only <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-free-headless-cms-platforms/">headless CMS</a> offering a solution to “integration hell” with <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/contentstack-launches-first-ever-no-code-automation-hub-making-composable-content-experiences-easy-for-everyone/" target="_self">Automation Hub</a>, Contentstack delivers a viable path to composable for enterprises. By automating and streamlining hundreds of activities across technologies and vendors in real-time, enterprises can now more aggressively retire costly legacy content management systems (CMS). This also allows them to unlock digital experience innovation more broadly and realize a significantly greater return on investment (ROI).  
"We started Contentstack years ago because other solutions in the market did not meet the growing demand for cloud, omnichannel, and ease of working with other technologies," said Neha Sampat, Contentstack’s founder and CEO. "Embracing composable means embracing change, empowering teams, getting more bang for your buck, and continuing to win in a tough economic environment. With the best composable content platform and the industry's best customer care, Contentstack is determined to help companies on their path. For enterprises ready to challenge the status quo, Contentstack will not only be your ally every step of the way. We go beyond that – we won’t let you fail.”
The Company’s flagship <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/contentstack-expands-customer-support-launch-industry-first-cross-vendor-service-commitment-program/" target="_self">Care Without Compromise</a> program ensures cross-vendor support in composable environments. With Automation Hub and Care Without Compromise, Contentstack is again at the forefront of the composable movement, which strives to set customers up for success in today’s rapidly changing business and technology landscape.
Reinforcing its commitment to composable, Contentstack is also a founding member of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/the-future-is-composable-a-conversation-with-new-mach-alliance-president-casper-rasmussen/">MACH Alliance</a>. Now with over 70 members, the independent non-profit organization helps enterprises understand, select, and evolve with best-of-breed technologies – so they can leave slow and expensive “monoliths” behind.
<h2>A growth streak built on composable</h2>
Since Contentstack’s Series B in June of 2021, it has seen explosive growth as more enterprises have adopted composable architectures at the center of their digital strategies. The company has grown to more than 400 employees and is approaching over 50,000 users in over 70 global markets. In the same timeframe, Contentstack also delivered a cloud-agnostic solution supporting both AWS and Microsoft Azure in the US and Europe.
Contentstack has also doubled the number of customers they serve and nearly tripled ARR, all while maintaining a 97% customer retention rate. Additionally, Contentstack has scaled its book of business with some of the world's largest brands. According to its press release, 42% of its new customers claim revenues greater than $1B, and 35% of them are publicly traded.
Contentstack also won six 2022 Comparably "Best Places to Work" Awards and was honored as an Inc. "Best Workplaces" in 2021. <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/" target="_blank">Austin Business Journal </a>also named Neha Sampat one of Austin’s Best CEOs in 2022.
<h2>About Contentstack</h2>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_self">Contentstack</a> – the Content Experience Platform (CXP) category leader – empowers marketers and developers to deliver composable digital experiences at the speed of their imagination. Companies such as ASICS, Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences with uncompromising scale and dependability. Famous for its Care without Compromise™, Contentstack has achieved the industry's highest customer satisfaction rating. Contentstack is also a founder of the MACH Alliance, setting the industry agenda for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. Learn more at <a href="http://www.contentstack.com/" target="_self">http://www.contentstack.com</a>.

Contentstack Raises $80 Million Series C, Focuses on Accelerating the Path to Composable for Enterprises

Contentstack logo against purple background

The month of May is a wrap, and it was in full bloom with events – both live and virtual. In the last 30 days, we saw a bevy of industry meetings, product user groups, and lively sessions that seemed to coordinate around the same four-week period.
Talk about spring conference fever. 
In the mele, there were two that really stood out for our staff. The first was <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/netlify-to-host-headless-commerce-summit-for-talks-on-building-world-class-e-commerce-experiences/">Netlify's Headless Commerce Summit</a>, where e-Commerce on the Jamstack was front and center.
We also took in a few sessions from Sanity's new <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/sanity-to-host-structured-content-2022-conference-in-u-s-europe-and-online/">Structured Content 2022 Conference</a>, where a few thousand content fans assembled across the globe to discuss... well, content. Structured Content was particularly interesting as it positioned itself as a "movement" within the industry, intently focused on educating and inspiring the cross-disciplinary community of people who work on digital experiences. 
Elsewhere, we tracked a story from <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/amplitude-announces-new-testing-and-analytics-tools-for-making-smarter-product-decisions-at-scale/">Amplitude</a> as they announced new testing and analytics tools for making smarter product decisions at scale. Spoiler alert: we have some additional news from Amplitude in this recap, as they seem to be on a roll. 
We also tracked a big <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/civicplus-enters-into-agreement-to-acquire-optimere/">announcement from CivicPlus</a> – an integrated tech platform that powers websites for local governments. In a stunning move, the company announced an agreement to buy Optimere, the parent company of Monsido (among others). The purchase will expand CivicPlus' capabilities by adding Monsido's accessibility scanning resources to its ecosystem. The added suite of features should provide public sector organizations with a one-stop solution for managing ADA-compliant web experiences. 
Before you turn your spring fever into summer blues, check out a few other stories we noted from across the digital experience landscape.
<h2>Contentstack launches its no-code Automation Hub, making composable content experiences easier to build</h2>
<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a>, a leader in the new headless CMS Content Experience Platform (CXP) category, unveiled its industry-first Automation Hub. Aimed at simplifying the deployment of composable architectures at any scale, Automation Hub allows marketing and IT to overcome the technical and operational hurdles of adopting a composable architecture. 
Contentstack launched the new capability on stage at its inaugural customer conference, <a href="https://info.contentstack.com/online-registration-contentcon-2022.html" target="_blank">ContentCon</a>, which featured presentations from Levi’s, Dawn Foods, Golfbreaks, and other leading brands. Automation Hub is available now as part of Contentstack’s Platform Beta Program, with General Availability scheduled for late Summer 2022.
Composable architectures (or stacks) are emerging as the next evolutionary step for enterprises, allowing companies to create digital experiences faster while responding to rapidly-changing market demands and business threats. In a <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3994550" target="_blank">recent report by Gartner,</a> the analyst firm predicted that by 2023, organizations that adopt an intelligent, composable approach will outpace competitors by 80 percent when it comes to new feature implementation. 
Moving away from legacy monolithic systems often introduces technical complexity and operational challenges. Contentstack’s Automation Hub addresses both of these issues head-on by infusing simple, no-code business logic into the front-end of a composable stack.
“Using best-in-breed technologies is the only way to stay competitive, but enterprises often end up bogged down in integration hell," said Conor Egan, VP of product and engineering at Contentstack. "Implementing business logic today involves writing code that is often slow, brittle, and requires constant maintenance. Our Automation Hub solves this by allowing teams to build complex, cross-vendor connections visually without code. It is a true game-changer.” 
Contentstack is also championing the mantra of  "Connect without Compromise." This has become the centerpiece of a new program that combines Automation Hub with Contentstack’s Blueprints – a library of best practices and expert guides for composable experiences – and its recently launched <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/contentstack-launches-new-marketplace-to-accelerate-composable-digital-experience-innovation-from-weeks-to-minutes-301492844.html" target="_blank">Marketplace</a>. Now, businesses of all sizes can fully embrace composable architectures at any scale with confidence, choosing either a ready-made composable solution based on industry best practices or leveraging the foundation to easily customize to their unique business needs. 
Contentstack's "Connect without Compromise" program is also a complement to its "<a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/contentstack-expands-customer-support-launch-industry-first-cross-vendor-service-commitment-program/" target="_blank">Care Without Compromise</a>" program – a multi-vendor ecosystem designed to ensure cross-vendor support in composable environments. Through "Care without Compromise," Contentstack and its Catalyst partners cooperate, communicate, and cross-train support staff to ensure seamless delivery of joint solutions to customers globally. Now with both programs, businesses of all sizes can move to composable architectures at scale and with ease.
"At Contentstack, we are committed to organizations who choose to challenge the status quo and adopt a modern, composable approach to power their digital experiences," said Neha Sampat, founder and CEO of Contentstack. "Combining 'Connect without Compromise' and 'Care without Compromise' embodies this commitment. We take on the burden of making it easy to work across multiple vendors – from both a support and integration perspective – so you don't have to."
<h2>Amplitude announces new customer data platform, industry’s first "insights-driven CDP"</h2>
<a href="https://amplitude.com/" target="_blank">Amplitude</a>, Inc., a leader in digital optimization, announced the launch of Amplitude CDP, the first insights-driven customer data platform (CDP). Unlike other CDPs that require connecting to third-party analytics solutions, Amplitude CDP both collects and analyzes event data with its natively integrated industry-leading product analytics solution. 
With Amplitude CDP, product and marketing teams can proactively improve data quality, analyze and discover new audiences, and sync data across their marketing and data stack. Amplitude’s CDP – coupled with analytics – helps customers become more operationally efficient and enables better, faster decision-making to increase customer engagement.
The goal of a CDP is to collect data that lead to insights – and ultimately enable data-driven decision-making that improves customer experiences. After working with thousands of companies and analyzing over 1 trillion customer data points per month, Amplitude discovered critical unsolved challenges in the CDP market, which is currently estimated to reach $20.5 billion by 2027. 
Data that is not proactively managed reduces the quality of insights. The various teams that collect, analyze, and take action on customer data struggle to collaborate across multiple solutions – and maintaining both a CDP and Product Analytics solution leads to duplicative costs and implementations. With Amplitude CDP, customers now have an integrated suite to turn high-quality data into actionable insights.
Key benefits of Amplitude’s insights-driven CDP include:
<ul>
<li>Improved data quality: Data planning and governance are built-in to help data and engineering teams proactively maintain trust and quality.</li>
<li>Better audience discovery: Many CDPs move right from data collection to activation, offering segmentation but assuming companies know what audiences to target. Now, deep segmentation combined with analytics helps teams discover audiences based on insights, putting audience discovery before audience activation for maximum engagement.</li>
<li>Reduced costs and redundancies: With analytics natively integrated within Amplitude CDP, Amplitude eliminates duplicative costs for customers by providing a single platform that serves as the foundation for data, the engine for insights, and the driver for action.</li>
<li>Accelerated time-to-insights: Built-in analytics unites product, growth, and marketing around shared data to unlock insights and actions anywhere in the stack.</li>
</ul>
“Customer data platforms entered the market with the promise of making personalization a reality, but aggregating data is only step one," said Spenser Skates, CEO, and co-founder of Amplitude. "As companies look to provide tailored product experiences, they need trusted data that provides insights about their existing audiences and helps them identify new ones, all without unnecessary costs for their business. At Amplitude, we have spent the last few years helping customers solve the problems that existing CDPs in the market were unable to. With the launch of Amplitude CDP, we are now providing customers with the ability to provide meaningful, personalized experiences all from a single platform.”
For years, Amplitude has been introducing capabilities that help teams collect, manage, and activate customer data. More than 50% of Amplitude customers currently send data from Amplitude to other tools in their stack and Amplitude’s integration ecosystem has grown to more than 65 out-of-the-box connectors. Today, customers like Kahoot!, Hex, InvoiceSimple, Marco Polo, and Thrive Market are already using Amplitude CDP and have access to expanded capabilities to drive accurate, actionable insights.
Key innovations include:
<ul>
<li>Unified user interface (UI): Create a single taxonomy for all digital analytics use cases to collect and capture consistent data in one UI.</li>
<li>Event streaming: Federate data to martech, ad, and attribution vendors as well as data pipelines like Amazon Kinesis and Google Pub/Sub through a no-code configurable UI in the Data Connections catalog.</li>
<li>Real-time audience syncing: Match the cadence of marketing campaigns and use customer behavior to drive in-the-moment engagement with real-time syncs that refresh audience lists every minute.</li>
<li>Developer toolkit: Proactively collaborate with developers to define tracking plans with a best-in-class developer toolkit that saves engineers time and helps automate data validation with tracking libraries – no more typos, forgotten properties, or inconsistent naming conventions.</li>
</ul>
A <a href="https://www.cdpinstitute.org/learning-center/what-is-a-realcdp/" target="_blank">RealCDP-certified</a> solution, Amplitude CDP is available to Amplitude customers in the early access program today and will be generally available later this year. Amplitude CDP will be free of charge for customers streaming fewer than 10 million events per month, an offer more than 10 times better than some of the leading CDPs in the market. 
<h2>Agility CMS expands composability through its marketplace</h2>
<a href="https://agilitycms.com/" target="_blank">Agility CMS</a>, a headless content management platform for creating powerful Enterprise ready digital experiences, has announced the expansion of its composability offerings – specifically through the launch of its new marketplace and the redevelopment of its app framework to support its marketplace applications.
By introducing these changes, the headless platform aims to simplify how users integrate with third-party APIs and how developers build new applications. Agility has also enhanced the user interface and editor experience of its CMS and added several new integrations, APIs, and pre-built models – all designed to help enterprises get up and running faster than ever.
More than ever, organizations are moving their products and services online. However, each company has its own unique requirements. To meet these needs, Agility CMS embraces the best-of-breed concepts of <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-releases-study-on-adoption-of-mach-technologies-by-tech-leaders-qa-with-sonja-keerl/">MACH architecture and composability,</a> providing customers with a future-proof design that allows them to iterate and swap components as the customer journey evolves.
“High-growth companies rely on multiple cloud-based tools to help them solve problems quickly," said Agility CMS CTO Joel Varty. "As these businesses evolve, Agility CMS’ microservices architecture enables them to swap out the tools for what can better serve them at each new stage. We don’t want our customers to feel like they need to change how they do things. Instead, our composable approach enhances your business, helping to increase profits in the long term."
“We’ve noticed that customers are looking at their previous monolithic systems and recognizing that it can’t do everything they want it to, and it’s slow to roll out,” said Jon Voigt, CEO of Agility CMS. “We’ve always believed that customers should be able to tie together best-of-breed solutions as they see fit, and we’re happy that the industry and businesses today are recognizing the value of this approach,” he added.
Agility CMS’ long-standing position as a hybrid headless CMS with an intuitive content authoring experience has enticed forward-thinking brands from various industries, resulting in doubled sales in 2021.

CMS Monthly Recap: Contenstack Launches No-Code Hub for Composable Content Experiences, Agility CMS Expands Composability, and More

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Introducing the Winners of the 2021 CMS Critic's Choice Awards

Featured image of the 2021 CMS Critic Critic's Choice Awards badge with text that reads "2021 WInners"

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It's hard to follow an act like the <a href="https://www.oscars.org/" target="_blank">Academy Awards</a>, especially after Sunday's "<a href="https://pagesix.com/2022/03/27/will-smith-chris-rock-to-work-out-slap-incident-after-oscars-2022/" target="_blank">slap heard 'round the world.</a>"
But hey, we'll give it a shot – and do it with decidedly less controversy and no long-winded speeches:
Today, we're proud to announce the winners of the 2021 CMS Critic People's Choice Awards!
From our entire editorial staff, we'd like to start with a big THANK YOU to our amazing community of CMS vendors and their incredibly passionate users. We had some, shall we say, "colorful" conversations across social media during the nomination period, and we enjoyed every opportunity to engage with our readers.
It was incredible to see the outpouring of love from people around the globe for their products of choice. That kind of brand loyalty seems increasingly rare. It says a lot about the people using these technologies, and the investment that CMS and DXP platforms are making to really listen to users – and bring them together. 
Before we announce the winners, let's do a quick review of the rules so you know how we got here:
<ul>
<li>First, our annual People's Choice Awards celebrate the top platforms that YOU – our readers – select. As they say, we have no dog in this race.</li>
<li>In late December of 2020, we invited everyone to nominate their favorite platforms across a set of categories on our website. </li>
<li>The top three nominees were selected and featured for general voting in each category.</li>
<li>Participants were able to vote only once, and companies that offered incentives of any kind were disqualified (there were no such shenanigans, BTW). </li>
<li>While we don't offer any golden statues, we do feature the winners on our website for posterity. And of course, you always have bragging rights. </li>
</ul>
We had a fantastic response to the People's Choice Awards this year, and participation has been off the charts since we released the final nominee list. It's always great to see this level of community engagement, and because this is a democratized experience, you never know what to expect from voting – so be prepared for some surprises.
Enough rambling, right? Let's draw back the curtain and proudly present the winners of the 2021 CMS Critic People's Choice Awards!
 
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<img style="max-width:600px;max-height:156px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/contentstack-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Contentstack logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best Enterprise CMS: Contentstack</h2>
This year's "Best Enterprise CMS" award goes to <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a>, a leader in headless and agile content management. Contentstack has huge momentum, and it's great to see emphatic support from its community of users. 
 
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<img style="max-width:600px;max-height:156px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/adobe-experience-manager-logo-1.webp" alt="Adobe Experience Manager logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best DXP: Adobe Experience Manager</h2>
Given that <a href="https://www.adobe.com/cy_en/marketing/experience-manager.html" target="_blank">Adobe</a> has been the undisputed leader in <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/key-takeaways-from-gartners-2021-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms/">Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a> for the fifth year in a row, winning our "Best DXP" honors wasn't a shocker. The Adobe brand is ubiquitous and recognized as a top contender across multiple technology categories. It also has a deep ecosystem of tools and partners. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:90px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/joomla-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Joomla logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Free CMS: Joomla</h2>
Surprised that <a href="https://www.joomla.org/" target="_blank">Joomla</a> carried this category? Don't be. They've cultivated an enthusiastic fan base with a rising fervor for their favorite platform. Joomla continues to have a strong community of open source users, making it one of the top three most popular content management systems in the world - and winner of our "Best Free CMS" category. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/grav-logo-smallsvg.webp" alt="Grav logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Flat File CMS: Grav</h2>
This was a tight race with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-flat-file-cms-platforms-for-building-simple-websites-fast/" target="_blank">Kirby</a>, but in the end, <a href="https://getgrav.org/" target="_blank">Grav</a> took top honors. A consistent winner of our People's Choice Award for "Best Flat File CMS," Grav is also featured in our <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-flat-file-cms-platforms-for-building-simple-websites-fast/">Top Flat File CMS Platforms</a> article.
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:90px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/joomla-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Joomla logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Open Source CMS: Joomla</h2>
Despite the far-casting shadow of WordPress, <a href="https://www.joomla.org/" target="_blank">Joomla</a> won big with its community – in no small part to its continued investment in innovation. In fact, 2021 saw a host of new features added to the "Best Open Source CMS" platform, including the <a href="https://www.joomla.org/4/" target="_blank">Joomla! 4.0</a> release with notable improvements. We would like to congratulate the Joomla development team on their win in two categories.
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/alfresco-logo.webp" alt="Alfresco logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best ECM (Enterprise Content Management): Alfresco</h2>
<a href="https://www.alfresco.com/" target="_blank">Alfresco</a> took home the gold for the "Best Enterprise Content Management" solution, proving its continued authority in the ECM space. Alfresco has enjoyed a successful run over the last few years, including <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/hyland-acquires-alfresco-focuses-on-cloud-and-global-expansion-of-enterprise-cms/">an acquisition by competitor Hyland in 2020</a>. Despite being under the Hyland umbrella, the company still maintains its brand identity. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/hikashop-logo-resized.png" alt="HikaShop logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best E-Commerce Solution: Hikashop</h2>
This was an interesting one, but the people have spoken: <a href="https://www.hikashop.com/" target="_blank">HikaShop</a>, the e-commerce solution for Joomla, was triumphant over two worthy competitors – <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-10-open-source-ecommerce-platforms/">WooCommerce</a> and PrestaShop. While the competition was tight, there were surprisingly more fans from the Joomla community throwing their support in the ring. 
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:90px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/shopify-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Shopify logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Headless Commerce: Shopify</h2>
<a href="https://www.shopify.com/" target="_blank">Shopify</a> has been giving Amazon a run for its money and earning loyal fans along the way. As the leading platform for building e-Commerce solutions – and doing it headlessly – Shopify has become one of the strongest and most trusted brands on the planet for creating online stores and digital commerce experiences.
 
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<img style="max-width:600px;max-height:156px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/contentstack-logo-white-bg.webp" alt="Contentstack logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best Headless CMS: Contentstack</h2>
We have to hand it to the Contentstack crowd: you really brought the rain! Congratulations on cleaning up in both the "Best Enterprise CMS" and "Best Headless CMS" categories! While most notably a headless platform, Contentstack is also one of the <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/mach-alliance-releases-study-on-adoption-of-mach-technologies-by-tech-leaders-qa-with-sonja-keerl/">founding members of the MACH Alliance</a>. 
 
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<img style="max-width:200px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/yootheme-logo.webp" alt="YOOTheme logo" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Website Builder: YOOtheme</h2>
Always a perennial fan favorite, the "Best Website Builder" category has evolved to include some amazing tools that are getting progressively easier to use. This year, the crown goes to <a href="https://yootheme.com/" target="_blank">YOOtheme</a> - the popular page builder for WordPress and Joomla. While other popular platforms like Webflow and Gantry were in the running, YOOtheme won out with a sizable margin. Congrats to the community of fans that made YOOtheme a winner!
 
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<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/hugo-logo-wide.svg" alt="Hugo logo" /> 
 
<h2>Best Static Site Generator: Hugo</h2>
The battle was hard-fought – and Gatsby has certainly been a fixture in our coverage over the last few years – but <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-jamstack-static-site-generators-for-2021/">Hugo</a> brought the votes... so congratulations! As a leading static site generator, Hugo has touted its incredibly fast framework for building websites. It's clear that its community of users is continuing to grow and thrive, and showing the love for their favorite JAMstack frontend generator.  
 
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<img style="max-width:400px;max-height:100px" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2022/03/uniform-logo-white-bg.webp" width="auto" height="auto" /> 
 
<h2>Best Composable System: Uniform</h2>
We had a battle royale brewing in the newly minted "Best Composable System" category between <a href="https://uniform.dev/" target="_blank">Uniform</a>, <a href="https://www.sitecore.com/" target="_blank">Sitecore</a>, and <a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">Acquia</a> – but there can be only one! Congratulations to Uniform for taking the throne and becoming our inaugural winner in this new and exciting segment. With big wind (and big investment dollars) at their back, Uniform is already making bold moves from a hiring and acquisition perspective, and we'll be looking for big things in 2022.  
 
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<h2>And that's a wrap for the 2021 People's Choice Awards! </h2>
<div>See that? Not a single moment of uncomfortable stage antics. That's just another benefit we have over the Oscars. </div>
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<div>While the pandemic threw us all for a loop, it's great to be back to a more normal and predictable cycle with our awards program. We look forward to this event every year because it gives us an opportunity to engage with our readers and learn about what platforms are scoring high in their books. At the end of the day, it's about honoring not just the winners, but our entire CMS community. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>There were some tight races going on in the year's competition, and a few surprises that gave us a moment to pause. But that's what makes the People's Choice Awards so exciting: in any given year, fans can come out of the woodwork and elevate their platform to the top echelon. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Tomorrow, we'll be posting our Editor's Choice Awards. You're bound to see some alignment in certain categories, and you might be in for a few surprises as well. Our editorial staff made their picks based on a wide range of factors, and we're excited to share them with you. </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Thanks again to everyone for participating in the 2021 People’s Choice Awards. See you later this year!</div>

Oscar Who? We're Celebrating the Winners of the 2021 CMS Critic People’s Choice Awards 

Image of the 2021 CMS Critic People's Choice Awards logo with the Text "2021 Winners" to the right, all against a background image of fireworks.

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For many software application vendors, the cloud ecosystem has been a bit like baseball: no matter how you're planning to play, you're often forced to pick a team and stick with your bench.
But in the world of containers, the promise of a multi-cloud strategy is creating a new market of free agency – and letting organizations choose the infrastructure that best meets their needs.
While few CMS platforms can claim to be truly "cloud-first," most are providing hosting and infrastructure services that leverage one of the major public clouds. Because of the complexity and variability in service architectures, most vendors have picked either <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/" target="_blank">Amazon Web Services (AWS)</a> or <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/" target="_blank">Microsoft Azure</a> as their "home team."
But <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/?utm_medium=press-link&amp;utm_source=prnewswire.com&amp;utm_campaign=contentstack-on-microsoft-azure-only-multi-cloud-saas-cms" target="_blank">Contentstack</a> believes you shouldn't have to compromise on which cloud you launch in. Last week, the headless CMS provider announced that it will now offer its platform on Microsoft Azure – right alongside AWS. This makes Contentstack the first multi-cloud SaaS CMS on the market, giving customers the freedom to run their omnichannel content operations on the cloud of their choice. 
Here's the real power play: whether a customer spins up on Azure or AWS, they'll receive the same functionality, pricing, and packaging structure. This gives buyers greater predictability around costs while eliminating any price-based or functional preference for a specific cloud to run their Contentstack workload. 
<h2>Expanding the value of headless CMS with Microsoft Azure</h2>
From the beginning, AWS has owned the lion's share of the cloud market. But Microsoft Azure has been steadily gaining ground – and is now the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2021/02/08/10-charts-that-will-change-your-perspective-of-microsoft-azures-growth/?sh=261f89773087" target="_blank">second-largest provider</a> of cloud infrastructure services. According to Contentstack's press release, 85% of the Fortune 100 and 63% of enterprises overall are running applications on Azure.
Until now, no agile CMS has offered Azure as an option for its customers. While many organizations are managing multi-cloud strategies, one of the most compelling reasons for offering an alternative to AWS is the "Amazon Effect" and its dominance in digital commerce. Many online retailers and e-commerce brands have deeply-held competitive concerns with Amazon – and as a result, Azure has become the preferred choice for running their cloud workloads.
“Azure is continuing to grow market share as a leading cloud provider and businesses are increasingly looking for CMS solutions that run on the platform,” said Nishant Patel, chief technology officer for Contentstack. “Contentstack already has the highest flexibility of cloud infrastructure options on AWS, offering public, dedicated, and private Cloud options in both North American and European instances."
Contentstack also says that a lack of cloud choice has limited many organizations from realizing the benefits of a <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH</a> (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/top-headless-commerce-platforms/">Headless</a>) architecture. With the addition of Azure, those companies will now have access to a MACH approach, allowing them to choose the cloud provider that best suits their business needs.
"Now with added support for Azure public cloud in North America, we are meeting the high demand from retailers and consumer brands who ask for an alternative to Amazon, and large enterprises with strategic connections to Microsoft who want to replace their old-school CMS with an agile option," said Patel. "Any company looking for a future-fit CMS that allows you to run on Azure or AWS should consider Contentstack.”
<h2>Evolving CMS with SaaS and "cloud-agnostic" solutions</h2>
Unlike many monolithic CMS platforms, Contentstack is a SaaS offering that enables users to run in a cloud-agnostic manner. The company says this validates their internal architecture as being highly sophisticated and modern. 
Being cloud-agnostic also means that customers are "inoculated" against vendor lock-in, allowing them to mitigate the risk of costly replatforming. This composable nature aligns perfectly with the core values of the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a>, of which Contentstack is a founding member. Contentstack’s platform is built on API-first principles that are developer-friendly and support a variety of content and delivery models. 
From a technical perspective, Contentstack’s Azure offering falls under ISO27001 certification and the company is working to achieve SOC2 Type II certification by mid-2022.
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<h2>Q&amp;A with Nishant Patel, CTO of Contentstack</h2>
CMS Critic had an opportunity to connect with Nishant Patel, CTO of Contentstack. He shared some of his views on the CMS market, the value of being headless, and what his company is excited about.
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CMS Critic (CC): How are customers able to deploy in Azure? Is this similar to an AWS Marketplace listing?
Nishant Patel (NP): There is no deployment needed. AWS and Azure is a multi-tenant cloud so when customers sign up with us they select the cloud provider and the account is auto-provisioned.
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CMS Critic (CC): You mention that there are no differences in price or functionality from AWS to Azure. Can you speak to any DevOps advantages that Azure might offer for running Contentstack? What services stand out?
Nishant Patel (NP): We have made all our micro-services cloud-agnostic by writing adapters for AWS and Azure. We were able to find comparable services on Azure so migration wasn’t much of a challenge. Azure has Kubernetes as well so our containers are ported very easily from AWS to Azure.
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CMS Critic (CC): Are there plans to expand to any other specific public, private, or autonomous cloud providers?
Nishant Patel (NP): We will consider setting up Contentstack on Azure in the Europe data center as well, similar to how we have two regions currently for AWS (Europe and North America). We are not considering any other cloud provider at the moment.
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CMS Critic (CC): AWS has joined the MACH Alliance as an Enabler. How do you see Microsoft supporting the tenants of MACH now and in the future?
Nishant Patel (NP): Azure is fully capable of hosting SaaS services so I am sure there are a few vendors already in the MACH that probably are fully deployed on Azure. If a MACH vendor is selling into retail companies then they probably will get requests to deploy on non-AWS cloud. Microsoft would be a good alternative solution here.
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<h3>About Contentstack</h3>
Contentstack – the pioneering Agile Content Management System (CMS) – empowers marketers and developers to collaborate around content like never before. Together, they can orchestrate superior customer journeys and deliver dynamic digital experiences across channels, audiences, brands and regions. Companies such as Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald’s, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, Sephora and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences. Famous for its Care Without Compromise™, Contentstack has the industry’s highest customer satisfaction. As a founder of the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a>, Contentstack advocates for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. Learn more at <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/?utm_medium=press-link&amp;utm_source=prnewswire.com&amp;utm_campaign=contentstack-on-microsoft-azure-only-multi-cloud-saas-cms" target="_blank">http://www.contentstack.com</a>.
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Contentstack Offers Microsoft Azure, Becomes Only Multi-Cloud SaaS CMS: Q&A with CTO Nishant Patel

Image of Contentstack logo with headshot of Nishant Patel, CTO

Nowadays, adding a shoppable storefront of plugins and third-party integrations might not seem novel for an enterprise CMS or DXP. But <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/" target="_blank">Contentstack</a> is upping the ante by embracing a more composable posture in its new Contentstack Marketplace, which just launched yesterday.
According to the company's press release, Contentstack Marketplace will feature a hub for partners and customers to contribute to its community while providing an array of apps, extensions, and Starters – including one-click integrations for AI-powered search from <a href="https://www.algolia.com/" target="_blank">Algolia</a>, e-commerce solutions from <a href="https://www.bigcommerce.com/" target="_blank">BigCommerce</a>, and media delivery from <a href="https://cloudinary.com/" target="_blank">Cloudinary. </a>
With its Contentstack Marketplace, the company envisions an ecosystem where customers can adopt new functionality as their needs evolve, with lower investment and reduced risk.
<h2>Embracing MACH and the composable revolution</h2>
At the core of Contentstack's new Marketplace is the company's focus on composability. The headless CMS provider says that digital experience architectures require composable principles and a <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH</a> (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless) technology approach. In their press release, the company says organizations that successfully transformed their digital technology and practices are leapfrogging the competition with outstanding digital-first customer experiences. 
Contentstack also says that the move from a single-vendor platform model to a best-of-breed, composable stack requires "connective tissue" between the various products. The key in these distributed models is to enable connectivity, ensure interoperability, and harmonize customer support across the vendor ecosystem. To address these challenges, the Contentstack Marketplace will feature a multi-vendor support program called <a href="https://www.contentstack.com/company/press/contentstack-expands-customer-support-launch-industry-first-cross-vendor-service-commitment-program/?utm_medium=press-link&amp;utm_source=prnewswire.com&amp;utm_campaign=marketplace-press-release" target="_blank">Care Without Compromise</a> that helps reinforce these advantages across a composable digital experience stack.
"The monolith has shattered. The creation of this co-innovation platform facilitates the interoperability of composable digital experience stacks with Contentstack's award-winning CMS at the core," said Nishant Patel, chief technology officer for Contentstack. "Our Marketplace allows customers and partners to easily set up connectivity between adjacent technologies and share extensions and solutions across the Contentstack community; something that legacy will never allow them to do."
As a founding member of the <a href="https://machalliance.org/" target="_blank">MACH Alliance</a>, Contentstack's Marketplace strategy appears perfectly aligned with the goals of the organization. Over the last 18 months, the MACH alliance has made a significant imprint on the CMS, DXP, and digital experience industries by trumpeting the values of composable architectures and elevating the conversation around the tenants of MACH. With over 40 members in its ranks, the MACH Alliance continues to grow its influence by adding pure-play composable vendors and market enablers that support the mission of the composable community. 
<h2>Powering a true no-code marketplace experience</h2>
Along with the monolith, Contentstack is attempting to shatter the typical CMS and DXP marketplace model by equipping users with one-click capabilities that accelerate and streamline the integration experience. 
While the concept of a "marketplace" suggests off-the-shelf simplicity, it is often an illusion. In most cases, marketplaces are just repos for code and installation guidelines that still necessitate intensive integration support from an in-house IT team. Along with the additional cost and time to implement new features, many of these integrations place the burden of security on the customer – not the platform. 
According to Contentstack, its new Marketplace will provide integrations and extensions that are pre-built and follow a no-code installation process. Additionally, developers can use Contentstack's newly released design framework Venus and its library of prefab components to quickly and easily build solutions in the native Contentstack user experience. This allows customers to accelerate their integration from weeks to days – or even minutes. 
Contentstack Marketplace and its ecosystem of apps are available to all Contentstack customers at no additional cost, enabling enterprise developers and business teams to build and deploy content across multiple channels and touchpoints in their consumer journeys. With a focus on accelerating "idea-to-life," Contentstack's built-in collaboration tools also aim to help businesses keep content and customer experiences fresh. 
<h2>About Contentstack</h2>
Contentstack – the pioneering Agile Content Management System (CMS) – empowers marketers and developers to collaborate around content like never before. Together, they can orchestrate superior customer journeys and deliver dynamic digital experiences across channels, audiences, brands, and regions. Companies such as Chase, Express, Holiday Inn, Icelandair, Mattel, McDonald's, Mitsubishi, Riot Games, Sephora, and Shell trust Contentstack to power their most critical content experiences. Famous for its Care Without Compromise™, Contentstack has the industry's highest customer satisfaction. As a founder of the MACH Alliance, Contentstack advocates for open and composable technology that is Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless.

Contentstack Launches New Marketplace to Accelerate Composable Digital Experience Innovation

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