Optimizely a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms Report. Our POV. text
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Optimizely a leader in The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms Report

Brian Browning
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Our POV

Forrester Research just released the latest iteration of its well-regarded report, The Forrester Wave™: Digital Experience Platforms, Q4 2023. The recognition of Optimizely as a Leader designation is important for a number of reasons. The Forrester DXP report is the result of an exhaustive analysis across 24 facets of the most significant players in the DXP space and scores criteria such as practitioner tools, AI/ML, and application architecture (among others). In addition, Forrester also analyzes each company’s strategic vision, product roadmap and innovation in order to go beyond the baseline current offering review. Collectively, this provides an incredibly in-depth look at where the market is going and who are the smart bets for organizations seeking to chart their own path into the digital future.

Introducing Optimizely One

We believe Optimizely stands out in a number of key ways, notably starting with the recognition of the company’s new Optimizely One branding, which positions the platform as a digital operating system for modern marketing. Leveraging the combination of acquisitions and internally-developed capabilities, Optimizely One offers specific solutions for marketers across the content generation lifecycle, from planning and creation, to asset storage (DAM) and internationalization, to rich visual previews and delivery across multiple channels. Content is then able to be personalized, experimented with and reported on using the same, common platform.

Managing this entire process is another standout element of the Optimizely One platform. Using its content marketing platform (CMP), businesses can better understand what kind of content leads to customer engagement and conversion and can manage editorial calendars, campaigns and assignments across global teams. Most Optimizely competitors don’t offer anything comparable. This further demonstrates the uniqueness of Optimizely’s offerings as it moves into the world of governance, which enterprise customers have specialized needs for.

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A different approach to GenerativeAI

GenerativeAI is a key trend that the Forrester report notes in its report. Most DXP vendors are working to deliver GenAI in some form or another, but we believe Optimizely’s approach is different from most, leveraging multiple AI partnerships with Microsoft’s Azure and Google’s Cloud capabilities to deliver innovative solutions on a monthly basis. Internally, the company is committed to releasing GenAI-powered features and capabilities using what the Forrester report calls a “test and learn fashion”, reflecting the will of its customer base to help set the longer term direction. It’s a smart, data-driven approach to GenAI that separates Optimizely from most other vendors.

Optimizely embraces composable architecture

Another source of genuine innovation is found in Optimizely’s newly-announced support for expanded headless, composable offerings. Building upon its core strengths in CMP and CMS, Optimizely will enable expanded support for headless delivery using composable architectures where the full platform isn’t being utilized. This will allow enterprises to take advantage of the visual editing and content authoring experiences that the company is so well known for, but deliver in a MACH-aligned manner. This offering is expected to be released in early 2024 with expanded support for commerce delivery following thereafter. Importantly for businesses, this additional ability means that organizations who are interested in investing in composable architecture have flexibility that is unique to the Optimizely platform, allowing them to explore composable or hybrid solutions across their portfolios.

All of this is built upon Optimizely’s fundamental advantages around core content management and experimentation, which has been honed for years across companies large and small. As Forrester notes in the report, Optimizely is best fit for “upper-midsized enterprises that are content-focused, experiment-driven and looking for productivity and developer flexibility that doesn’t start from scratch”. Our own direct experience working to deliver Optimizely-based solutions certainly reflects that sentiment and is one of many reasons that Kin + Carta believes that Optimizely remains a standout in a crowded marketplace of DXP vendors.

Download the full report here and visit Optimizely.com to learn more.

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