Editorial
The Gist
- AI becomes the foundation. SitecoreAI unifies content, data, personalization and analytics into a single AI-first suite designed to support discovery-driven customer journeys.
- Migration and extensibility get practical. New AI-enabled migration pathways and Sitecore Studio aim to reduce technical debt and shorten the path to value for customers and partners.
- Partners drive the ecosystem forward. More than 70 real-world submissions in the Partner Challenge showed that Sitecore’s community is not just implementing — it’s co-creating the platform’s future.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Sitecore Symposium 2025, held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort here in the Sunshine State, served as the launchpad for Sitecore’s reinvention of its product suite, aligned with its “AI-First Era” vision for the future of marketing.
The centerpiece of the event was the announcement of SitecoreAI, a comprehensive digital experience platform designed to address the fundamental shift in customer journeys—moving from static search to AI-driven discovery.
“We have to adapt again, as we always have,” said Sitecore CEO Eric Stine, in his first Symposium since starting in the role, as he opened the event at the Day 1 keynote, acknowledging the massive and rapid changes that marketers have been facing, as much as the large-scale changes that incorporating AI at a foundational level means for a platform like Sitecore. “And we need to build for the world beyond the website.”
This also acknowledges the growing adoption of AI both internally by its direct customers as well as by consumers that are increasingly using tools beyond Google to search and find things.
The updates introduced at Symposium position Sitecore as fully embracing AI across their product suite and unifying their offering in ways that make it easier to adopt, migrate, and extend.
Let’s explore some of the big announcements and what they mean for marketers.
Table of Contents
- SitecoreAI Brings Everything Together
- Solving For Migration, Extensibility and Technical Debt
- Sitecore’s Take on Agentic AI
- Key Takeaway: Where AI Meets Real-World Marketing Workflows
SitecoreAI Brings Everything Together
The biggest announcement of the conference was that of SitecoreAI, which combines its XM Cloud DXP offering, Customer Data Platform, Asset Management, Personalization and Analytics into a single suite, all promising a composable, AI-based foundation. Based on the demonstrations onstage, the seamless integration across these elements promises to meaningfully deliver on the promise of real-time personalized digital experiences where an insight from analytics can lead to an idea that can be realized at the right time for the right customer.
While there is plenty of impressive AI-enhanced functionality within SitecoreAI, one of the biggest enhancements has more to do with easing friction than new tech. Within the SitecoreAI suite, access to all products is available, rather than requiring separate licensing, which can often impede users of similar suites with multiple components from benefiting from all the potential features.
Solving For Migration, Extensibility and Technical Debt
While SitecoreAI was the highlight, a different announcement might have a bigger and more immediate in the short term. In his keynote address on Day 2, Sitecore COO Dave Tilbury asked the question, “If I can personalize every customer experience, why can’t I personalize the platform delivering those experiences?”
As good as a DXP or martech suite may be, the cost and time involved in switching can be prohibitive to the extent that many organizations stay on platforms that don’t serve them well just to avoid months of scoping and migration. With the announcement of SitecoreAI Pathway, a way to migrate not only from other Sitecore instance, but also from other DXP platforms altogether, the company has a way to, according to Tilbury, “cut down content migration time by 2/3,” including from Adobe, Optimizely, Contentful or others.
Another pain point with migrations can be the customized elements and code that cannot always be reused. To solve for this, Sitecore Studio was unveiled, as an “open, composed ecosystem” that offers customers flexibility and the ability to build private or public apps natively on the platform. This means that platforms can be repurposed for multiple sites, which could be a benefit to agencies working with multiple Sitecore customers.
The ability to create public apps and publish them to a marketplace also opens up new revenue and exposure channels. Several agency-created Sitecore Studio apps were showcased onstage, including Horizontal Digital’s Sense Agent, Altudo's Content Personalization Designer and Onenorth's FigCore Agent, just a few of the 130 apps created in a recent "Partner Challenge."
Related Article: Sitecore Unveils SitecoreAI, Ushering in the AI-First Era of Digital Experience
Sitecore’s Take on Agentic AI
Finally, with all the industry focus on agentic AI approaches, there was certainly some pressure on Sitecore to deliver here as well. The team seemed up to the challenge, rolling out a comprehensive system of intelligent agents that automate and connect workflows (such as Content Agents for targeted content generation or Migration Agents for rapid property consolidation).
Their Agentic Studio offers a workspace to plan and create agents, and their Agentic Flows take the ideas to reality with multi-step workflows and includes 20 pre-built agents that can do everything from campaign planning to content migration to testing. And to reassure those concerned about agents running amok, Sitecore Chief Product Officer Roger Connolly stated that “this is a purpose-built approach. Every agent maintains a complete audit trail.” The best showcase for this agentic approach was from the partner examples in the showcase, which demonstrated a wide range of possible applications.
Related Article: Sitecore Unveils Sitecore Studio to Redefine Customize and Co-Innovation in SitecoreAI Platform
Key Takeaway: Where AI Meets Real-World Marketing Workflows
Perhaps the most unique aspects unveiled at the event were the AI-enabled migration pathways, and Sitecore’s take on reducing technical debt through their Sitecore Studio and Marketplace. While less dazzling than some of the other features showcased, they stand to have a real and practical immediate to many customers and partners.
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Another unmistakable takeaway from the event is the strength of Sitecore’s partner community. The strong showing in the Partner Challenge, where submissions from over 70 partners demonstrated practical use cases in a variety of areas, highlights that the Sitecore community is an active participant in the evolution of the product suite as well.
Sitecore Symposium 2025, which brought together over 1,500 marketing and digital leaders from around the world, underscored a clear message: the future of brand connection and discovery is being redefined by AI. The launch of SitecoreAI signaled to customers and the competition that AI is much more than a peripheral part of the marketers’ workflow and the platforms they use.
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