Deane Barker Joins Episerver Amid Rapid Growth, Recurring Product Upgrades

Fresh off its fifth-consecutive Leader position in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management, Episerver announced longtime partner and leading industry author and speaker Deane Barker has joined the organisation as its senior director of content management strategy. Barker brings decades of CMS implementation experience to the role, most notably as the chief strategy officer and founding partner of Blend Interactive, Episerver’s longest-tenured North American partner and continued Gold-level partner.

As part of his responsibilities, Barker will plan for the strategic direction of CMS, through development and acquisition, and continued thought leadership in the CMS industry – continuing Episerver’s digital experience platform leadership. The newly created Sr. Director of CMS Strategy position reports to chief product officer Justin Anovick and complements existing product evangelism roles at Episerver. These individuals focus on empowering business users with the tactics and tools they need to continuously deliver a better digital experience for their customers as well as ensuring Episerver’s product suite strategically evolves. Barker is no stranger to Episerver evangelism. As the first U.S.-based Episerver Most Valuable Professional (EMVP) he took an early and often role in promoting the platform and sharing his extensive knowledge.

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“We’ve hit the lottery with Deane coming onboard to oversee CMS strategy,” said Anovick. “Barker will bring fanatic energy to our concentration on content as the foundation of all digital experiences. Regardless of a company’s size or sophistication, content is what gets people to interact the first time and the next time. Orders, omnichannel, one-to-one personalisation, optimisation – you name it are all supported by well-managed content. Deane won’t let us forget it as he lives and breathes CMS.”

Barker joins Episerver following the key hires of Nate Barad, senior director of product marketing, and John Field, director of strategy and evangelism. Both bring 15-plus years of CMS and digital experience platform experience, often which overlapped at the same companies. The product team’s extensive expertise will help Episerver continue to innovate for its customers.

“I’ve been working with CMS for 24 years now, and 11 of those years have been as an Episerver partner,” said Barker. “I’ve used and evangelised Episerver all that time for one reason – I think it’s the best content management system on the market. After recommending and implementing it for over a decade, it’s time I help manage and develop it. I’m looking forward to doing some amazing things with my new team.”

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To do so, Episerver is on a continuous release cycle, which ensures customers never wait for promised features. This summer, the product team launched enhanced support for multichannel experiences.

• Enhanced Progressive Web App (PWA) and Single-Page Application (SPA) Support: Customers seek zero-friction experiences and PWAs and SPAs help provide them light, sometimes offline versions of app-like sites to avoid interruptions. A new reference architecture delivers more of the Episerver features with less configuration for these environments. Testing, optimisation and reporting are all configured for mobile devices and operating systems. Highlights of this update include: Advanced reference CMS architecture, upgraded optimisation for campaigns, image and media optimisation and improved headless deliver application program interface (API).
• Azure Applications Insights: Performance issues cost companies customer satisfaction and conversions. Organisations running on Episerver Digital Experience Cloud service can now connect it to Azure Application Insights to monitor live web applications with insights and tips from Azure. It optimises the experience for business users while allowing them to block, report or act on performance anomalies to optimize the experience for their end-users.

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