April 06, 2020
Optimizely will soon go to market with a new and improved approach of enabling content management and content delivery. It is, at this time, referred to as Delivery Core, and it fundamentally changes the delivery-approach, compared to what the Optimizely stack today relies on.
Optimizely Delivery Core
Optimizely Delivery Core is the first step in enabling best-practice, and more modern, ASP.NET 5 (previously referred to as .NET Core) technology. It will, from a technologist's point of view, be the preferred path forward, as per the recommendations¹ from Microsoft. With this opportunity, Optimizely initiated a transition to this technology, by introducing the notion of Optimizely Delivery Core.
Optimizely Delivery Core is, in a few words, a new component, which will be responsible for delivery of content and functional experiences to your visitors. Think of it this way: Content delivery and content management are two separate concepts, getting Optimizely closer to a more distributed and scale-able setup.
Instead of rewriting or re-engineering the entire Optimizely product, thereby introducing trouble in upgrades and backward compatibility, Optimizely took a more nimble and respectful approach with the introduction of Optimizely Delivery Core. It introduces an optional approach to only the part of the platform that benefits the most from the power of the new technology: the experience and content delivery layer.
Comparing the Future With Today
While we all prepare for the 'new era' of Optimizely, our insights through EMVP-channels, and our close partnership with Optimizely, allows us to further share perspectives on what this shift in approach really encompasses. While this isn't a holistic representation of scope by any means, it should enable you, as an Optimizely customer or partner, to better understand the extent of Optimizely Delivery Core.
What Optimizely delivery Core Does
It allows graduate adoption
Giving you, as the customer, the opportunity to choose the right time to take on the change (based on value/opportunity/pain).
It keeps content delivery channels agonstic
Enabling your future digital channels to benefit from your content/functional evolution as well. Optimizely Delivery Core operates as a headless content consumer, natively integrated to an optimized version of the headless Content Delivery APIs supported by Optimizely.
It enables the benefits of the new .NET technology
Giving your visitors improved page-load performance (like via HTTP2.0 support)—at least on paper—and your business added simplicity with a new way of coding.
It somewhat enables a headless-first design
At least if you approach it right. If you are too single-minded in how you approach the design of your solution on this new concept, mistakes can be made, requiring rework later when you want to capitalize on the headless maturity Optimizely Delivery Core natively should enable.
It requires change to your existing solution
To migrate to Delivery Core. It is not a 'flip the switch' introduction, and it does require you to engage a partner or your digital team to get it going.
What Optimizely Delivery Core Does Not
It does not re-position Optimizely as a headless CMS
With a channel agnostic content-first model. It theoretically gets Optimizely closer to a content-as-a-service type approach, which may be the aspiration. More to come on that later.
It does not compromise future upgrades of existing solutions
Because no customer should be forced in to adopting it. Regardless of you using Optimizely Customer Centric Digital Experience Platform (formerly known as DXC-S), your own Azure subscription, or on-premise, the existing way of managing delivery of content continues to be supported.
It does not introduce twice the amount of platform maintenance
The notion of cross-cutting concern has been a fundamental thought in the architectural design-process, meaning that best practices for shared concerns, like content models and templates, exists.
It does not optimize the authoring experience for your business users
Like described above, Optimizely Delivery Core is a content delivery concept.
It does not compromise the utility you bring to your editors
Meaning on-page editing etc. remains as a key value-add within the Optimizely stack.
Said in a few words; the introduction of Optimizely Delivery Core is not a reason to have sleepless nights. Instead, you, regardless of your relation to Optimizely, should see it as an opportunity to move towards a better performing, more scale-able and more maintainable investment. It first and foremost allows you to crawl towards omni-channel maturity, while it also, secondly, allows you to excite developers and technologists with top-notch technology.
More to come - tune back in later for more in-depth thoughts on Optimizely Delivery Core.
¹ https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/net-core-is-the-future-of-net/
