By Janus Boye
From the world of Kentico comes a product rebrand. Having been one of the long standing vendors with CMS roots to actually keep CMS in the product name, Kentico CMS is now rebranded as Kentico Xperience.
What does that mean to customers and the market?
In brief:
CMS is not a thing of the past, but as the term now carries quite some baggage, it’s understandable that vendors want to reposition themselves. It might be more clarity for now, but it’s also an additional brand to carry for Kentico and while the dust settles on new merchandise, the pace of innovation continues to be high, so stay tuned!
Read on for the the longer take below the image.
Kentico CEO Petr Palas presenting on stage at the Boye 19 Aarhus conference
The longer version
To better understand this and the impact, I spoke to a few partners, but let’s first look at what actually changed. Kentico remains the company name and as a customer or partner, you can work with their two products:
Kontent - the content-as-a-service offering launched in 2019
Xperience - which comes in a Business and Enterprise edition. Business is the former CMS and Enterprise is the former EMS
In the press release which is titled Accelerate your digital transformation, Kentico CEO Petr Palas cites the shifts in the marketplace and also refers to the analysts at Gartner which has recently turned their coverage to the broader scope of DXP (Digital Experience Platforms).
To be fair, according to Kentico CEO, Petr Palas, this is more than following the footsteps of the analysts:
"In the past, companies invested into digital experience to gain a competitive advantage. Today, providing a great digital experience is often a permission to play. With Kentico Xperience, we provide a solution that helps any business accelerate their digital transformation and come out as a winner."
In other words: It’s clearly more than managing pages and has been for a while. There’s no product changes for now, just a rebrand, but the wording is remarkable as it signals a broad focus on what UK-based James Bloor from Distinction calls “mid-market space, where clients still want a centralised solution to meet their needs.” Distinction is a Kentico Gold Partner.
I was actually at Kentico Connections in 2011 in Denver and Prague, when Kentico released their Enterprise Marketing Suite (EMS) to supplement Kentico CMS. This was before Digital Experience Platforms became a thing, and with customers now understanding the term and CMS carrying baggage, the rebranding is understandable.
More clarity for Kentico
According to Kentico partners, the real impact here is clarity. To James Bloor, this is welcome news and he also states the shifting client demand from CMS to DXP.
To quote:
For a long time, since Kentico released their cloud content-as-a-service offering, "Kentico" the company has been confused with "Kentico" the product(s). This rebrand of the CMS product to Xperience creates a clear brand architecture of Kentico being the company, Xperience and Kontent being their two products.
It’s also easier to navigate the Kentico product offering according to James:
“Helping a client navigate through Kentico's EMS/CMS product offering was always a challenge. The Paradox of Choice. Four or five different product tiers, with add-ons and customisations. In their desire to create a product for everyone, clients were often overwhelmed by the choice. This move to Xperience leads to fewer options and greater focus.”
In Germany, Chris Köhler is with digital agency byte5 and he echoes James Bloor with this comment:
The new approach is vastly improving the clarity in communication with potential customers. Kontent is an easy sell for more agility-oriented and technically mature customers while Xperience is a clear offer for marketing-oriented customers. Thanks Kentico for giving us this clear distinction.
byte5 is a Frankfurt-based Kentico Bronze Partner.
What’s your take? Feel free to leave a comment below and share your insights.
Learn more about Kentico
Here’s some of our recent coverage of Kentico:
SFMOMA Selected Kontent To Separate Content From Code (January 2020)
With Kontent It’s Goodbye To Legacy CMS (November 2019)
You might also enjoy these 2 posts from our CMS Expert community:
A New Grand Compromise In Content Management (May 2020)
What Got You Here, Won't Get You There (January 2020)
Full disclosure: Kentico is a member of the CMS Expert group and Boye conference partner.