5 Ways Sitecore XP is becoming more composable

Since composable exploded into the market, our industry has referred to MarTech tools as either “monolithic” or “composable” with little in-between. I prefer to think of composability as a spectrum and place tools along that spectrum based on how easily they integrate with other tools. Historically, Sitecore XP has been completely over on the “monolithic” end of this spectrum – but this is starting to change.

Since the initital 10.4 release in April, Sitecore has introduced features that make XP a lot easier to integrate with the rest of your MarTech stack. Sitecore says in their release notes:

"Our SXP 10.4 release adds flexibility in interworking with new SaaS products across Sitecore's portfolio and with the community ecosystem, enabling our current customers to continue with existing investments in SXP, while innovating on their own pace with Sitecore's other SaaS-based products."

These five features send a clear message: Sitecore is putting their money where their mouth is when they say that XP isn't going anywhere. 

#1: xConnect Endpoint in Sitecore Connect

Sitecore Connect is a powerful integration tool that now works with xConnect. In XP setups, xConnect is used to read, write, and search contact and interaction data in xDB. Now that there is an xConnect endpoint available in Sitecore Connect, you can write recipes that will enable you to send this data to any of the MarTech platforms available in Sitecore Connect. 

#2: xDB Migration Tool

This tool extracts data from xDB, transforms it into a format that CDP can understand, and transfers that data into CDP and/or Personalize. This tool also works with other external systems via Sitecore Connect (you do have to have an active Sitecore Connect instance to use it). It contains a set of region-specific recipes and enables you to migrate known contacts, facets (built-in and custom), and lists. 

#3: XP Analytics Extractor (coming soon)

I’m excited to read the documentation on this one when it comes out. With this feature, XP users will be able to extract their data into a CSV file or SQL database. This allows you to easily combine xDB data with other data sets and create custom charts and reports in an analytics tool of your choice. It also includes a solution that creates reports derived from the extracted data in Power BI. 

#4: XP Connectors

Sitecore is continuing to release new and update existing XP connectors. These connectors enable you to sync content and/or behavioral data between XP and Content Hub, SFMC, SFDC, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. They are also continuing to update the Data Exchange Framework, which is a framework for transforming and exchanging data between Sitecore XP and external systems. 

#5: Backward Compatibility

Many of these composable-friendly updates can be applied to earlier Sitecore versions, not just 10.4. The xDB to CDP migration tool is valid all the way back to 9.0, and XP Analytics Extractor will go back to 10.0. This will enable many XP customers to do so much more with their XP installation without having to upgrade to 10.4 first.

Sitecore leadership has said for a while that XP isn’t going away, but the early focus on their SaaS products has had customers and partners wondering how long that will last. Updates like these prove that Sitecore is investing in XP’s future and allowing customers to migrate to SaaS as they feel ready.