Upgrades, updates, and staying current on Sitecore
Keep your platform up-to-date to ensure access to new features and fixes.
Plan your strategy.
Every release since Sitecore 6.0 in 2008 has built on our core strength in web content management to offer a platform that allows you to manage the entire customer experience in an omnichannel, personalised manner. But for marketers who want to take advantage of the clean design and customer data that enables context marketing, an upgrade to Sitecore® Experience Platform™ (XP) 9.0 is required. Beyond getting access to new features and ensuring that your mainstream support is still active, upgrading is a great time to think about whether your content and personalisation strategies need updates, too.
From Sitecore 6.x
If you’re still on Sitecore 6.x, your mainstream support has expired (as of December 2015). The best way to get to the current Sitecore XP release is to start with a clean install and migrate your content. What you’ll gain from upgrading:
- Renewed support
- Ease of use for content marketers
- Experience management rather than just content management
- 360-degree view of your customers, with Sitecore® Experience Database™
- Multichannel marketing apps
- Greater visitor data accuracy
From Sitecore 7.x
If you’re still on Sitecore 7.0 or 7.1, your mainstream support has expired (as of December 2016). You can upgrade to Sitecore XP 7.1, then 7.2 and then 7.5. We recommend starting with a clean install and migrating your content. If you’re on Sitecore® Experience Manager (XM) 7.2, you can benefit from the Express Migrations tool in Sitecore XP 8.2. What you’ll gain from upgrading:
- Consistent user interface across the entire platform
- New automated testing and optimisation capabilities for business users, along with engagement value analysis, without IT intervention
- Contextual intelligence on every customer
- Omnichannel automation
- Embedded device detection
- Improved email and dispatch performance and user experience
From Sitecore 7.5 and up
If you’re moving from Sitecore XP 7.5 or higher, the upgrade to Sitecore XP 9.0 is a relatively simple upgrade. You gain:
- Complete experience management capabilities
- Lower cost of ownership
- Opportunity to integrate web content with commerce and product cataloguing functionality (requires use of one of our commerce options)
- In 9.0, new Sitecore Forms, xConnect, federated authentication and marketing automation enhancements
Why upgrade to Sitecore® XP 9.0?
This white paper makes the case for moving from Sitecore 6.x, 7.x and 8.x, outlining each version’s strengths, upgrade paths, packaging and deployment options and featuring a 'Sitecore through the years' timeline.