Today’s most innovative companies assemble their DXP, rather than buying a one-size-fits-all suite

Contentful, the global leader in headless content management, announced its App Framework — the new standard for companies to build a best-in-class digital experience stack, as opposed to buying a monolithic suite. This approach has been validated by Gartner, which found a 28-point preference for a stack over an integrated suite. Brands that assemble their own stacks maximize flexibility and agility to deliver digital experiences across channels while leveraging their existing investments.

The App Framework builds on Contentful’s market-leading extensibility, which champions the “modern tech stack,” an approach to assembling a group of best-in-class services, seamlessly integrated with open APIs. This approach also enables brands to evolve their tech stacks to incorporate new tools. Thousands of brands are moving from legacy suites to modern platform architectures.

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“We’re in a new era of digital experiences, where customers expect unique brand experiences across an increasing number of channels,” said Steve Sloan, CEO of Contentful. “Brands can’t keep up with this demand using monolithic, legacy CMS suites. Contentful’s App Framework enables businesses to build connected experiences with scalable apps on a unified content platform.”

When customers connect their growing portfolio of digital experience services such as optimization, analytics, collaboration, translation, and deployment and delivery to Contentful’s content platform, they make more of both content and technology investments. That’s because the App Framework lets businesses scale services programmatically, instead of one-off integrations that are hard to maintain and upgrade. This gives Contentful customers and its partner ecosystem more agility and flexibility, while strengthening governance for customers’ global content operations.

“We are happy to team up with Contentful on our quest to enable our customers to create seamless commerce experiences,” says Dirk Weckerlei, Global Head of Partner Management at Commercetools. “Our microservices approach, combined with Contentful’s API-first App Framework, enables brands such as Bang & Olufsen to unify content across all their channels.”

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A set of new API endpoints, libraries and blueprints make up the App Framework. These tools are designed to help developers quickly build custom apps and integrate existing services. Developing apps is made easier because customers can use the open source code to build integrations and deliver digital experiences faster. Plus, more than a dozen independent software vendors, including Optimizely, Netlify and Commercetools, now offer apps on Contentful to help customers to apply these services across their entire organization in just a few clicks.

The number of companies using this technology is growing rapidly — Contentful has the largest technology and solutions partner ecosystem among headless CMS providers. In addition to technology partners including leading third-party SaaS companies, Contentful partners with top global agencies such as EPAM, AKQA and Publicis Sapient. With the App Framework, tech partners can more easily connect their services with the Contentful platform and equip customers with new capabilities; meanwhile, solution partners can build richer digital experiences for brands by creating custom apps to service or resell to their clients.

“Global brands like Bang & Olufsen need to maintain a luxury digital experience across numerous channels, which is only possible with a content platform that’s extensible and modular,” said Om Singh, Head of Engineering, Nordic at Publicis Sapient. “We confidently recommend Contentful to our clients because we know it will easily integrate with commerce solutions, digital displays or any future customer touchpoint.”

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