What does all that Sitecore jargon mean?

Sitecore Experience Cloud

The Sitecore Experience Cloud is an overarching term for the four main products within Sitecore's portfolio. Key elements include the CMS management tools (XM), the experience marketing features (XP) and Sitecore Commerce (XC).

Sitecore Experience Management (XM)

Experience Management is the foundational Content Management System (CMS) features of Sitecore. It includes the Content editor interface, Media Gallery and interactive Experience Editor interface to author content. Typical CMS features such as Content Workflows, Versioning and language management are included.

Sitecore Experience Platform (XP)

The Sitecore Experience Platform refers to the marketing features that can accompany the CMS capabilities, these include Personalisation, MVT and Marketing Automation. XP requires the Experience Database to store visitor behaviour so that it can be analysed and used in the marketing features.

Sitecore Experience Commerce (XC)

Sitecore’s Commerce product that allows native product and catalogue management within the platform. XC is a framework of common commerce requirements such as basket, checkout and payment methods to create enterprise grade online buying experiences. The product benefits from core XM features such as language management, editing interfaces and the marketing features of XP.

Sitecore Content Hub

The content hub connects the platform with a more advanced form of media management including Digital Asset Management (DAM), Digital Rights Management and Product Content Management. The Content Hub can help streamline the marketing operations for content and asset production by using a centralised system.

Experience Database (xDB)

xDB is the data storage for data collected about your customers and visitors. The data includes behaviour information such as pages visited, duration and goals activated. Data is stored securely and can be anonymised to remove sensitive data.

xConnect

xConnect is a collection of APIs that streamline and standardise data flow in and out of xDB. xConnect is extremely useful for connecting your digital experience with third party systems such as Salesforce.

Content Management (CM)

This is the primary Sitecore server roles that allows authors to create and edit their content. It holds all the interfaces and application s that allow marketers to create and optimise their experiences. The CM server stores all versions of content and the various languages for a complete audit trail.

Content Delivery (CD)

The Content Delivery server role is part of a scaled deployment. It serves the content to end-users (visitors). Using Content Delivery Servers helps to create a more robust infrastructure that can be optimised and scaled as required.

Email Experience Manager (EXM)

EXM provides the ability to create and manage Email marketing campaigns and subscriber management all within the central platform. Emails can be edited with the same Experience Editor interface and leverage features such as Personalisation and MVT to test the effectiveness of the email campaigns. Emails can also include existing content from the platfrom promoting re-use and connected messaging.

Federated Experience Manager (FXM)

The Federated Experience manager enables Sitecore owners to track visitor behaviour on their non-Sitecore websites (Sites that could be powered by third party platforms such as WordPress, Umbraco etc). By placing a small piece of JavaScript, the functionality is enabled along with the ability to use marketing features across the non-Sitecore site.

JavaScript Services (JSS)

The Sitecore JSS framework is a Software Development Kit (SDK) allowing JavaScript developers to use their preferred programming language to create interfaces and websites powered by Sitecore. Traditionally known as “Headless” JSS takes it one step further by having a hybrid approach that can also utilise the tracking and marketing features as well as consuming the raw content.

Print Experience Manager (PXM)

PXM enables Sitecore authors to create and manage content that can then be used in digital print documents such as Adobe InDesign. Ideal for creating dynamic and personalised brochures on the fly for customers.

Digital Asset Management (DAM)

At its simplest, a digital asset management system (DAM) stores digital assets such as images, video, sound and music etc. More advanced features include multi-format storage of assets (sizes of images or different sound formats), audit trails etc. Marketing assets can be original source files for applications such as Photoshop or Illustrator, by centralising and it allows them to be accessed by multiple users.

Product Information Management (PIM)

A PIM system is a single source of truth for your catalogue of product information. A PIM allows multiple sources to consume all the production information such as technical sheets, images, descriptions etc. A PIM is essential for omni-channel commerce.