If you are reading this you will probably have purchased or be thinking of purchasing (or perhaps upgrading) Sitecore as your MarTech platform and you are now facing a whole host of decisions on how to deploy, host and support the product.
This piece aims to de-mistify the options and give clarity to your options and talk about how the JAM Managed Sitecore service might work for you and for clarity, is mainly concerned with Sitecore 9 and above.
First and foremost there are a few things to understand:
- Sitecore no longer sells perpetual licences and sells on a consumption based model only. In a nutshell this means you pay a set monthly amount for your Sitecore platform against an anticipated monthly visitor count. These are generally 3 year periods after which you will renegotiate.
- Sitecore has built the latest version of the product with cloud in mind and in particular Microsoft Azure, albeit this is not mandatory (see myths below)
- Sitecore offer managed cloud themselves, this is selling you a subscription to Azure in a set topology on which you can run your Sitecore licence and not a hosted version of Sitecore. It is important to note Sitecore PaaS or Sitecore SaaS are not really things. Sitecore do not have a fully hosted SaaS product (you still need someone to build your custom solution and it is a separate contract and a separate install on a separate Azure tenancy which will not be supported by Sitecore cloud or product teams).
Why does this matter?
It matters because there is an expectation from using a SaaS product that you can take a subscription, you configure using a GUI and you will be supported for any issues with the platform at any-time with no distinction between an application, core product or infrastructure issue.
In reality with Sitecore you will always have multiple components supported by different parties, these are namely:
- The cloud infrastructure (supported by your Cloud vendor, your Agency, your internal infra team or Sitecore’s Azure operations team)
- The core Sitecore product (Supported by Sitecore product team)
- The application code specific to your implementation (Supported by your agency or your internal development team)
- Any 3rd parties that integrate with your Sitecore solution (Supported by the 3rd parties)
That in a nutshell is the problem, you probably want this large marketing investment proactively monitored and functioning 24 hours and just ONE SINGLE place to go to find support at any hour of the day but the reality is you will have to take a number of SLAs from a number of providers and manage them yourself to be able to get this working in practice for Sitecore.
How can JAM help?
This is why we have worked with Sitecore and with Sitecore partners to develop the JAM Sitecore Managed Cloud product and we call it JAM Advantage for Sitecore. It allows you to have one contact point and support for the entire stack round-the-clock and rest assured your customer experience investment is protected at all times.
The key benefits being:
- You can buy your Azure hosting anywhere (from Sitecore, from Microsoft directly or via Just After Midnight) and know you are going to get the best architecture design and management of the stack in the business, this ensures your Azure spend stays sensible while your performance is optimal.
- With the Just After Midnight world class 24/7 application support wrapped up in the offering you don’t need to worry about who to call in the case of an incident, we are ready to deal with any issue at any time, we will manage incident management with any other parties ton your behalf.
- We won’t need to wait for your call, we will proactively manage and monitor the solution round-the-clock.
- We will help you manage and add rigor to your DevOps process, helping with security and access management and allowing you to switch in and out contractors, agencies and tools without affecting your business and without unnecessary tie in.
- JAM effectively become the guardians of your investment and help protect your online revenue and reputation from harm.
How does that look in reality?
Here is the classic stack for Sitecore 9.x with an agency building the app, Sitecore product supporting the product and a third party on hosting:
Here is the stack using the Sitecore Managed Cloud product with Sitecore managing both the Azure and the core product and application support still DIY:
Here is the stack using Sitecore Managed Cloud with the JAM Advantage on top (JAM will liaise with all parties behalf):
Here is using JAM Advantage with our managed cloud (JAM will liaise with all parties behalf but we control more on your behalf ):
This package was designed with Sitecore clients in mind, it is no doubt a fantastic platform but getting hosting, support and deployment (whilst admittedly not the most existing part of the journey) is key to long term success and allowing you time to focus on the innovation and marketing tools not the basic functioning of the solution.
