By Toby Bowers, Cloud & Enterprise Business Group Lead, Microsoft Australia
Earlier today, we announced the launch of the Microsoft Azure Geo in Australia. This is a landmark moment for Microsoft in Australia, but we’re even more excited about the difference that the new Geo will make to our customers and partners as they transform their businesses in a cloud age.
We’ve been catching up with a number of our partners ahead of the Azure Geo launch to learn how the platform is helping them to thrive in our mobile-first, cloud-first world.
For Sitecore, the term ‘customer-centric’ means more than it does to most businesses, with the company’s software helping its customers provide a better experience to their customers.
Founded in 2001 and dual headquartered in Copenhagen and San Francisco, Sitecore has over 850 employees worldwide including 40 in Australia and New Zealand. In recent months, the company has been part of the Microsoft Azure private preview program here in Australia, working closely with our engineering team to help us test key workloads, stress test the new infrastructure, and build Australia’s leading cloud services.
“The key to our software is to provide a solid foundation for the customer experience. In some customers, that may be consolidating multiple systems into a single platform, for others it might be having one content repository for different marketing channels. In others it’s to take the next step in e-commerce and provide a much more personalised experience to their customers,” Robert Holliday, Sitecore’s Managing Director for Australia and New Zealand, said.
Sitecore’s experience platform addresses a range of customer service needs and the company adopts an aggressive approach to updating its solutions, with a major release every 12 to 18 months and minor releases every four months. It also has a vibrant partner community, which builds and swaps plug-ins to the Sitecore platform.
Cool, fun and passionate
With a strong focus on the refresh cycle, innovation and collaboration is a key component of the culture at Sitecore, which was evident in a recent launch. “One of our latest releases originated in Australia and was taken back to our development center in Denmark to be turned into a product,” says Holliday.
Australia is an important market for Sitecore, which is investing to grow the business by up to 50 per cent each year. “We do have certain customers in Australia who are pushing the boundaries of what they can do with customer experience management. We think there are some really interesting opportunities to help them increase market share, and are excited to expand our offerings in the region.”
Microsoft Azure provides a dynamic foundation
A crucial component of Sitecore’s innovation and growth is its use of cloud. For example, the Microsoft Azure cloud has provided a dynamic foundation for Sitecore’s clients and marketing teams to create agile web environments and bring them to market quickly. Sitecore’s digital agencies are also taking advantage of Microsoft Azure’s platform as a service to offer solutions to customers.
“I think the trend is moving towards a digital marketing or experiential marketing platform as a service, so combining Azure and Sitecore to offer a platform that organisations can use without having to involve internal IT stakeholders,” says Holliday.
In the leadup to the launch of Microsoft Azure in Australia, Sitecore has trained its internal team and its partners on running its products on the Azure platform. The firm is also looking at how it can use Microsoft’s cloud services to help media clients rapidly scale to address fluctuations in demand.
Mr Holliday describes the opening of the Australian data centres as extremely important, particularly for financial services organisations with strict rules governing the types of data that can they can send offshore. “The nature of the Sitecore platform is that we do store a lot of user information, because we use that to provide a personalised experience,” he said. “So the ability for us to store that information locally is a big competitive advantage.”
The partnership between Sitecore and Microsoft extends well beyond the cloud and provides a range of benefits to both parties. “Microsoft and Sitecore are working closely together across a range of different verticals and Microsoft products, including Dynamics and SharePoint, as we go to market,” he said.
As we’ve built toward the launch of Microsoft Azure Geo in Australia, it’s been inspiring to see the plethora of ways our customers are using – and will use the platform – and the impact this has on their business and their customers.
Customer service is at the heart of everything we do, and as Sitecore expands its services in Australia, we are proud that Microsoft Azure will be the platform empowering it to innovate and collaborate to deliver the range of experiences its customers need to succeed in the local market.
