Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network solution designed to simplify and optimize enterprise network connectivity in complex digital landscapes. It enables organizations to connect any user to any application, whether on-premises, in data centers, or across multiple clouds, with integrated capabilities for multicloud support, security, predictive automation, and enhanced network visibility—all built on a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE)-enabled…
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Sitecore Digital Experience Platform
Score 8.7 out of 10
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The Sitecore Experience Platform (Sitecore XP) is a digital experience platform used to build websites and create customer experiences online. The solution boasts fast content authoring, built-in personalization features, testing and other optimizations, as well as analytics and marketing features.
The best case, what I recommend to others and to clients to use is Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN one for is the case when you have a huge number of branches or small offices or remote offices, you name it. Even home offices, you have a large number and you want this whole infrastructure to be extremely easy to set up and also to have everything almost the same, not to have deviations from the standard configuration. This is the sweet spot for introducing Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN.
Sitecore offers Content Hub with Product Content Management and Content Management Platform. The Digital Experience Platform and Content Hub can both host structured content and publish the finalized version to Experience Edge. Both platforms offer different ways to manage content. During a technical and business evaluation, the evaluation panel must understand the difference between a Content Modelling focused approach, or a layout management focused approach. Sitecore Digital Experience Platform is also best not to be used to host many files and images in the Media Library. That responsibility should be offloaded to a digital asset management company like Sitecore Content Hub DAM. The technology evaluation panel must also understand how to work with a Headless CMS, where the HEAD needs to be hosted, and the costs associated with the HEAD. Composable DXP is fantastic, but everyone must understand the various cost components. Marketers and the data team will need to go into the CDP and Personalize the platform with an excellent understanding of how a composable "installation" works. All the Martech vendors have similar challenges that data and development teams need to work through with a full experience. Any CDP/analytics platform will, at some stage, require further data enrichment from other sources. Understanding the Sitecore Search features and limitations is also essential.
We are able to use a multiple different circuits to go into the cloud, so we are not relying on just one particular private wireless. We're relying on wine circuits, ethernet, ethernet out. So it provides us that flexibility where we didn't have that before. Provides security that is very robust and flexible and scalable and it provides us with, the biggest thing is redundancy, where we have backup. For example, we have a Starlink for nuclear power plants. If our main circuits go down, we have that. And without Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN it would be very hard to actually achieve, to accomplish true redundancy. So we're happy with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN in that regard.
Comprehensive Solution: Sitecore offers a fully integrated suite of products that cover the full spectrum of DXP capabilities, including search, personalization experimentation and more, delivering a complete composable DXP solution for customers.
Beyond Headless: XM Cloud provides more than just headless capabilities, featuring in-built tools like authoring host, page editor, etc., enabling faster and more powerful implementations.
Focus on AI: Sitecore has now got an excellent AI offering called Stream; it looks promising; however, it would be too early to give feedback on the same.
Customization: Sitecore's backend is highly customizable, allowing for deep modifications through pipelines and patch configurations.
I will say the way we use it now, and I think what happened was the way it was deployed, it was fine, but unfortunately over the course of the years we've gotten a little out of hand with our device templates and feature templates. I think if there's any form of feedback that I would give to Cisco is how do we find ways to improve the environment as it stands so we get to a certain point with the environment and then we don't know how to undo it or fix it or optimize the environment. Because right now we're in a position where we're playing a lot of catch up and clean up and if there was a way or some tool or feature that we can take advantage of that would allow us to optimize that environment where we will kind of corner ourselves into a lot of problems in the future. There's some feature or something that we could take advantage of that will allow us to optimize that environment and not let it get out of control pretty easily. That would be my suggestion.
Experience Editor is a little old fashioned and sometimes slow to use.
Bulk operations in the Content Editor
Sitecore serialization is should be part of the Content Editor to provide visual reference for items which are serialized and will be overwritten by future deployments similar to what Unicorn does so well
I would rate SD-WAN highly because it has significantly improved network performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency for my organization. Its ability to optimize traffic dynamically, enhance security, and simplify management across multiple locations has been invaluable. With SD-WAN, we’ve reduced dependency on costly MPLS, improved cloud application performance, and gained greater control over our network infrastructure.
Sitecore has proven that it can deliver on its promise of a robust, reliable enterprise CMS solution with plenty of features. Also, they keep updating it with more and better features. Now that we are highly trained on it we have started on getting the most out of it and we plan to keep doing more of that in the future.
The niche configurations are given equal focus as the standard use cases, which can make onboarding difficult in the beginning (ie why am I not using an entire tab of the portal), but aside from that part, the dashboard is relatively easy to navigate and apply the configuration. The metrics and analytics available are also nice to have in a single pane.
Once you learn how to use the platform and can put a solid strategy in place to manage it long-term, it becomes a lot easier to use. The tricky part is working with resources who are familiar with the platform to navigate some of the common implementation and configuration pitfalls. Although Sitecore has worked very hard to overcome some of these from their earlier product versions by creating wizards and improving their support documentation, at the end of the day it is still a very complex and powerful system that needs to be implemented carefully in order to foster the best possible user experience for authors. So it could be rated very usable or not usable at all based on how much planning took place and the quality of the implementation.
Al ser soluciones integradas del portafolio de soluciones de Cisco, el soporte es transversal a cada uno de los componentes implementados, teniendo el cliente la capacidad de resolver sus inconvenientes bajo una misma infraestructura que está totalmente homologada, satisfacciendo de esta manera, las necesidades del cliente asi como permitiendo, que este se concentre en su negocio. Since the Cisco SD-WAN tools are a part of Cisco’s broader portfolio of solutions, support cross-cuts to each of our deployed components, with our company as the customer having the ability to solve our problems through the same, approved infrastructure. Their support team easily satisfies the customer’s needs so that they continue to focus on business functions.
1. Customized software development & maintenance. 2. Technology Consulting - Consulting-based services for technology solutions data engineering or cloud solutions. 3. Used for tapping into multiple data sources such as CRM and marketing automation systems and, creating automated data extracts with a high-end visual representation of data. 4. Implemented for scheduling an existing report to automatically refresh and be delivered to specific users at a specific regular interval.
Sitecore captures and remembers every single interaction your customers and prospects have in any part of the system, allowing you to build comprehensive, ever-learning profiles of each individual. From email marketing, to social media, to online shopping, Sitecore remembers where each interaction left off so you can automatically continue the conversation. Sitecore helps you manage your content for each and every experience your customers enjoy. Customize what content you want and the system will take care of how it's displayed.
Make sure you work with a partner that can help you take advantage of the entire platform. Specifically we see a lot of customers not taking advantage of Sitecore DMS and thus missing a huge opportunity. Sitecore is a platform that is meant to be constantly optimized and improved upon.
We've used the old Cisco SD-WAN, which no longer exists. It was a lot more complex to configure what is now called Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN. So they've definitely come a long way in that it is a lot less complicated to set up and template based.
Sitefinity is improving but at the time of decision making it had nothing that could compare with the A/B testing and personalisation features that Sitecore offers. This was a key differentiator and ultimately ensured Sitecore was purchased. WordPress isn't really comparable and isn't within our technology stack, which is mostly Microsoft.
Our branch offices can connect to our enterprise network and the internet quickly and securely, which has helped to increase productivity and reduce downtime.
We have been able to reduce our dependence on expensive MPLS connections, and instead utilize a combination of broadband and LTE connections, which are more cost-effective
The centralized location improves network visibility and troubleshooting process
ROI depends on what features the customer wants to leverage from Sitecore. Sitecore is not just a CMS. It's CEP platform which comes with Analytics, Personalization, A/B Testing, and Email for marketers modules etc., out of the box.
Based on my experience some of the customers lean towards third party services. This is primarily due to lack of the understanding of these features. If a customer leverages these out of the box features ROI will be high. It depends on how much is being [sent] to third parties services.
Sitecore has very good accelerators in the market. These accelerators allows you to create response sites very quickly. If a simple campaign site takes 50K to build the site may save at least 50% of that cost. Examples of site accelerators are Brainjocks, Keystone, Cognifide etc.
