Sitecore makes its CDP move

With today’s announcement that it has entered a definitive agreement to acquire Dublin-based Boxever, Sitecore will become the latest ecommerce and CMS provider to include an integrated CDP as part of its offering. The news comes some fourteen months after Sitecore competitor Acquia picked up enterprise CDP AgilOne.

As part of the same announcement, Sitecore will also acquire Minneapolis-based ecommerce platform Four51. Four51’s API-driven, headless solution, which can deliver customer experience direct to a range of channels and devices. Sitecore is describing this as complementary to their existing solutions.

Where Four51 fits. Given that Sitecore provides hybrid or headless CMS options, we asked how Four51 enhances the offering. CEO Steve Tzikakis told us: “Sitecore’s current CMS platform is headless. Four51 will add a composable, headless commerce solution that will be quickly and seamlessly integrate into our product portfolio. Four51’s highly flexible solution tailors to the unique needs of business buyers.”

Starting to spend. These acquisitions follow on the heels of Sitecore’s attention-grabbing $1.2 billion funding round in January, which suggests that Tzikakis had a wish-list clearly in mind.

The moves certainly reflect Tzikakis’ belief that: “Sitecore is a category leader that hasn’t had the opportunity to take the next step. We now need to become a ‘billion-dollar company.’ That’s not so much a financial objective, it’s more a behavioral change. The pace with which we release products, the integration of our products, the level of service we provide to our customers, how we operate with our partners and taking advantage of our biggest asset, our own employees.”

The cost of the acquisitions, which are expected to close by end of March, has not been disclosed.

Why we care. As we’ve said before, with adoption of digital commerce expanding, even among verticals never considered digital-first, the race between ecommerce vendors is white hot, with Episerver acquiring (and then re-branding as) Optimizely, and now these moves by Sitecore.

About The Author

Kim Davis

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech Today. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.