Failure, they say, is the stepping stone to success. That was certainly the case with Kentico Cloud. In 2013, when the company launched Kentico+, a content management system (CMS) hosted in Microsoft Azure, the results were far from satisfactory. Petr Palas, the founder and CEO of the company, realized that they needed to rethink the CMS architecture and build a dynamic solution from the ground up. And that’s how Kentico Cloud was born.
Simply put, it’s a cloud-first, application-programming-interface (API)-first, multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering that brings together multi-channel content management and customer engagement. What’s more, it can be easily integrated with any solution, on any platform, and on any device. In other words, enterprises can now focus on developing an active digital experience for their clients without facing the technical snags of operating a CMS. Server maintenance, software upgrades, hotfixes, backups, rewriting code, managing plugins…all that can be a thing of the past now.
In the ever-evolving world of digital transformation, what companies need are agile tools that shorten time to the market. With Kentico Cloud, there is a new element of flexibility that empowers companies – no matter how big or small – to develop unique solutions using the technology and development strategy they prefer. Whether it is getting the websites up and running faster, or simplifying the production of personalized content, enterprises now have the choice of doing it their way.
How it works:
Kentico Cloud is made up of three services:
- Kentico Draft: The first child of the Kentico Cloud family, Kentico Draft enables content managers to design, author, collaborate as well as approve and publish structured content for multi-channel delivery. You can now create content types, sitemaps and taxonomy, upload structured content and images, and manage workflows, even when your website is undergoing development. Once the site build is finished, you can import the content into the site in no time.
- Kentico Deliver: Courtesy its API-first CMS (or headless CMS), it has the ability to publish content to any website or device through a super quick content delivery network anywhere in the world. The user-centric interface integrates perfectly with “Draft for content” that has already gathered content from a range of other sources for future use.
- Kentico Engage: A truly cloud-first digital marketing platform, it enables personalization of digital experience on any channel. Engage not only gathers information on the visitors to your website, analyzing behaviors, and providing insights, it also seeks to give you an understanding of individual users (unlike traditional web analytics tools), helping you analyze and predict customer behavior.
In a nutshell, the three primary functions of Kentico Cloud include content authoring, content delivery via an API and optimization of marketing and experience. The components can be licensed either individually or as a package, and the pricing is classified based on usage, starting with a free version for micro clients and trial.
Is it for you?
Constant evolutions in the web content management system (WCMS) industry ensure that there are innumerable channels through which customers engage with brands today. There are in-store kiosks, smart watch apps, augmented reality apps and headsets, besides customary channels like print and mobile.
Kentico Cloud offers the perfect solution for companies looking to engage with customers over such diverse channels. The biggest advantages are its ease of use and ability to scale over time, reduce development time, and provide a single SaaS product with development and digital marketing services to clients.
An on-premises CMS solution may not be the ideal option for a small/medium-sized company that boasts of multiple delivery channels (say website, blogs, mobile apps) for centralized content. Or for those who need to deploy stand-alone campaigns or product sites in a jiffy. In such cases, Kentico Cloud could provide a better fit.
However, for companies looking for an all-inclusive solution that offers content management, e-commerce, marketing automation, and other digital features, a full-featured, enterprise-ready platform such as Kentico Enterprise Marketing Solution (EMS) is an apt choice.
To sum it up
Kentico Cloud is not a complete overhaul of Kentico EMS. The two are complementary platforms that are designed to meet the unique business needs of different enterprises. In today’s age of the Internet of Things and Virtual Reality, Kentico Cloud forms an absolute choice to embrace the cloud-first digital marketing. It is a focused, market-driven response to the emerging digital trend that will continue to grow. It holds the promise of changing the way companies manage and publish content, for the better.
Write to us to know more about Suyati’s expertise and services in Kentico.
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