Upgrade to Sitecore 9: Why, When, What and How

transcript

Upgrade to Sitecore 9:

Why, What and How

LET’S TALK

THE WHAT – Strategic & technical components

THE HOW – The most efficient way to upgrade

Q & As

THE WHY - Under the hood of Sitecore 9

We are a global digital marketing and technology agency focused on customer engagement.

• Sitecore Gold Partner, since 2003

• Over 200 Sitecore projects successfully delivered

• 150+ trained Sitecore resources

• 4 Sitecore MVP’s

• Reusable Sitecore connectors built to extend the ecosystem

• Industry accelerators and reusable frameworks

SITECORE SPECIALISTS AN INCH WIDE, A MILE DEEP

SITECORE 9 THE WHY…

CX drives revenue.

CX leaders’ average revenue outgrows

laggards by more than double digits.

89% of businesses now expect to compete

mostly on the basis of customer experience.89%

Now to be truly competitive your company

must become customer obsessed, which

means you need to have deep knowledge

of, and engagement with your customers.

Be Relevant or Lose CustomersThere is no middle ground.

70% of business buyers says it’s absolutely critical for companies to provide a personalized experience.

74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their

research online before making an offline purchase.

75% of B2B buyers would purchase again from suppliers that

offered omni-channel capabilities.

The Sitecore 9

SingularityCMS + EXM/MAP + xConnect

COLD LEAD

WARM LEAD

HOT LEAD

Read Testimonial

Download Whitepaper

Access Gated Content

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Quote Calculator

Top of Funnel Nurture

Middle of Funnel

Bottom of Funnel

Watching Brief

Influence

Marketing Automation/EXM Sitecore Engagement Value xDB/xConnect/BI

Contact Sales

DRIVE LEADS CONVERT LEADS MANAGE LEADS

Connected Connected

Sitecore xConnect™

Integrate 3rd party customer data systems to/from xDB

• Set of APIs and services to integrate data from 3rd party systems

• Easy extract or stream using the OData industry standard

• Model definition and deployment to a centralized configuration server.

• Push and pull operations on contacts and interactions.

• Automatic indexing of any contact, facet, interaction, or event

• Operates across all Sitecore Experience deployment options

• Sitecore Connect™ for Microsoft Dynamics 365

• Sitecore Connect™ for Salesforce CRM

Sitecore Email

Tailor precision email marketing informed by

the customer’s entire cross-channel experience

Harness the insight of the entire customer journey,

beginning with email open and click-through

to website behavior and engagement,

to goals and conversions

Test every single component of a campaign

to establish and optimize customer

engagement A/B test, etc.

Sitecore Marketing Automation

Enroll and evaluate in session and in real

Make decisions based on any data point,

behaviour or time

Perform visible and backstage

marketing actions

True omnichannel orchestration

Automate repeated activities to free up

Needs ImageDuplicated icons

Sitecore Forms

Forms that are reusable, and re-skinnable

so can be made available across sites and

devices

Designed for marketers, enables easy Drag

and Drop of fields onto the canvas to design

for sites and devices

Forms data helps to surface when

your prospect starts looking like a

customer

Have a single view of your

customers

Collect data of the highest quality at the

right time and in the right context

Sitecore Cortex™

Combine advanced machine learning algorithms and an innovative machine learning engine to deliver real-time insights across both native and 3rd party customer data.

•Decision tree learning - Sitecore Path Analyzer

•Generic Algorithms learning

•Personalization - measure outcome effect.

•Cluster Analysis and Similarity Learning

•Pattern Matching

•Optimization (AB and Multivariate testing)

Sitecore Cortex™Dedicated engine for

processing Sitecore ML

algorithms at scale

Segment/Audience

Discovery

Attribution

Analysis

Automated

Personalization

Send time

optimizationOther ML

Processors

The Sitecore 9

Singularity

2 Week Outcome

60% Increase in Sales40,000 New EDM Names37K Completed Surveys1.25 Million Facebook Hits 1.75 Million Facebook VotesMore Likes than Major Banks

#SitecoreSYM

Flying Blind Quick Business Wins 1:1 Marketing

Revenue Engine Roadmap

Engagement Analytics

Easy Personalization

Real Time Profiling

AB Testing

xDB Enabled

CMS Updates

Traffic Analytics

Spray and Pray

Ad Hoc Social

Landing Pages

SXCCore Contact DataCustomer Behavior

Funnel Stage and Lead Score

SITECORE UPGRADE - THE

WHAT…

SITECORE INSTALLATIONS

• Developer Workstations

• Development Server

• QA

• UAT/Staging

• Production CMS

• Production CD

• Prod Licenses

• Non Prod Licenses

• Temp Licenses during upgrade process

SITECORE DEPENDENCIES

• Sitecore Modules

• WFFM

• GeoIP Location Service

• Marketplace Modules

• Are they compatible with the version you are upgrading to?

• Other third party components

• Clay Tablet Upgrade

• .NET framework (Microsoft Identity changes)

• Marketo

• Demandbase

• Site Search

SITECORE CONFIGURATION

• Document non-Sitecore web.config changes

• Custom Setting sections

• WCF Endpoint definitions etc.

• Patch in Sitecore Configuration Changes

• Ensure that the patching places your configuration where it needs to be in the

new version

• Show config file comes very handy (/sitecore/admin/showconfig.aspx)

PERFORMANCE

• Take Baseline metrics

• Response time for top pages

• CPU

• Memory

• Validate the Current Hardware meets the Sitecore 9.0 specification

• Validate the Current Software (like Windows, SQL server etc.) meets

the Sitecore 9.0 specification

GO LIVE

• Final Database Upgrade Timing

• Content Freeze

• Code/Config Deployment

• Rollback

SITECORE UPGRADE – WHAT

GOES BEHIND…

COMPONENTS OF SITECORE UPGRADE

• Database

• Configuration

• New Sitecore Files

• DLL’s

• /sitecore directory

• Code Updates

• Experience Platform

• Processing

• Session State

• MongoDB Analytics

LOCAL UPGRADE

• On a developer workstation or sandbox environment

• Practice Upgrade Steps

• Work with Sitecore Support on any errors

• Use vanilla CM instances

• Remove customizations – especially pipelines

• Upgrade modules along with Sitecore versions

• Document steps and problems

• Upgraded database can now be used for developer changes

• Re-enable customizations and test

• Make necessary code changes

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Upgrade the databases using out-of-the-box Sitecore instances

• Sitecore files and configuration should come from the Sitecore

installer

• Custom config should be patched in!

• Don’t try to follow the pages of config changes – very error prone

• Remember to remove Sitecore support files you might have

• Typically these are hotfixes for a particular known issue

• Remember to test both content management and content delivery

• Don’t forget to review log files, both during the upgrade and after

TIPS & TRICKS

• Upgrade Sitecore regularly

• I recommend at least once every 12-18 months

• Planning is key for success

• Engage a partner for help

• Sitecore partners do upgrades all the time!

• Practice helps – often based on content freeze and time it takes to

upgrade, you will need to do the process several times

• Engage Sitecore Support for issues you can’t google

• Don’t use IE to run the upgrade

• Modify the web.config/sitecore.config to increase timeouts

SITECORE UPGRADE - THE

HOW…

Upgrade is a stepping-stone, NOT the destination

KEY PHASES OF AN UPGRADE

Pre-upgrade planning & risk-

assessment

Upgrade execution &

testing

Ecosystem upgrade and growth plan

RISK AREAS NOT TO BE IGNORED

• Deprecated assemblies/Custom Pipelines

• Difference between CM and CD instance

• Third party integrations

• Additional modules (WFFM, EXM, Commerce,

xDB etc.)

• Search

• Content Freeze availability

CONFUSION CREATORS

• Step-wise approach Vs. Direct jump

• Non-responsive to Responsive

• MVC to Helix

APPROACH OPTION 1 - MIGRATION

APPROACH OPTION 2 - UPGRADE

APPROACH OPTIONS - TOOLS

Manual Sitecore Express Migration

edynamic Auto vUpgrade

EDYNAMIC SITECORE AUTO-vUPGRADER

More than 20 successful upgrades

delivered using Auto-vUpgrader

Georgia-Pacific LLC is one of the world's leading

manufacturers & distributors of pulp, paper, tissue, toilet and

paper towel dispensers and related chemicals.

G-P struggled for over past 4 months to upgrade multiple sites

from Sitecore 6.6 to the latest version.

Objectives

• edynamic was hired by G-P to rescue its upgrade

project after undergoing delays for months by the

incumbent vendor.

• Using our upgrade utility tool edynamic upgraded 13

sites from Sitecore 6.6 to Sitecore 8.1 within a record

time of 1.5 weeks.

• Test results showed minimal errors which were easily

fixed after the upgrade.

• All existing integrations remained intact.

Outcomes

Upgrade of 13 sites from Sitecore 6.6 to 8.1 within 1.5 weeks

EDYNAMIC SITECORE AUTO-vUPGRADER - DEMO

#SitecoreSYM

Questions

Upgrade to Sitecore 9: Why, When, What and How

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