My SUGCON 2022 highlights

SUGCON in Budapest got delayed multiple times, but in 2022 it finally happened! Sitecore is moving to Composable DXP and they have a lot of new features to show. In this blogpost I will talk about some of my personal highlights.

Keynote & XM cloud

The keynote started with Steve Tzikaki talking about the direction that Sitecore is heading. Instead of one big monolith Sitecore will become more modular. This became clear when Sitecore XM Cloud was announced. It will not have Sitecore XP because those features are moved to composable DXP. Elastic scale, upgrades and compatibility issues become a thing of the past.

Sitecore XM Cloud

Flexible Static: Static Site Personalization at the Edge

Most Sitecore developers are still building applications in a more traditional way. On a request there is Server-side rendering (SSR) and after that the browser can do some optional Client-side rendering (CSR). With the introduction of Next.js in Sitecore 10 it became possible to use Static-site generation (SSG). Applications that are using SSG are known for being fast, but lack flexibility and personalization. In this session we got a demonstration how it's now possible to run middleware on a CDN to generate personalized content using Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR). This got me really excited because it's the best of both worlds.

Generate static page at request time

So you want to be a Sitecore MVP

Becoming a Sitecore MVP can be hard if you don't know what the qualifications are. This session was full of useful tips and also had some do's and don'ts.

Sitecore MVP

The Architect’s Guide to SaaS Migration

Sitecore is moving towards composable DXP, but many existing solutions still run on XP. The session started with the differences between a platform and being composable. It went through different scenarios from a simple migration to a big solution that needs many changes. If your current solution is only using XM and is already headless the upgrade should be simple. Your main concern will be a content migration. It was a interesting session, but it also became clear that it can be a lot of work and won't be easy if you use a lot of XP features. Developers should consider carefully if they want to make the switch.

Moving to composable DXP

Frontend First Architecture for Headless CMS

Most Next.js related sessions were also about Sitecore. But this session focused more on an approach that was CMS independent. It started with a JSON server which gave a full fake REST API. By using TypeScript an interface was returned which contained the consumed JSON. After that a CMS could be added by writing multiple implementations of that interface. With dependency injection the implementations could be switched. It was a clear example and showed how easy it was to switch CMS.

Frontend first

Blazing fast web experience at your finger tips with Experience Edge, JSS for Next.js and Vercel

This was another session about Next.js, but it covered all the basics. Jamstack, Experience Edge, Next.js and Vercel. How all of these are working together to make the web faster, more secure and easier to scale. There was a lot of information for a lighting talk, but I learned a lot from it!

Blazing fast

Roadmap

The roadmap showed what was coming up for all composable DXP options that Sitecore has right now. Beside the existing options it also showed some new ones. I was most excited about Frontend as a Service. Everything that they learned from building Horizon will be used in this new service. It's the most advanced builder on Earth with the most powerful drag and drop builder ever built. And it will be composable from any dataset. So content doesn't need to come from Sitecore, but it's also possible to get content from Contentful and Kontent by Kentico. It might even be possible to add content from Umbraco. I really like how you can combine all composable DXP options in this builder.

Blazing fast

Conclusion

There were a lot of other great sessions too, but for me the sessions about composable DXP and Next.js were the most interesting. This is truly the future of Sitecore and the future looks bright! Besides the sessions I met a lot of great people and also gave some demos of the Hybrid Placeholder. I would like to thank iO for allowing me to go. Budapest is an awesome city and the beers are good too. Cheers!

SUGCON 2022