Tuesday 2¢: Is DXP a Thing?

Today’s rant is not really my rant at all, as a couple of the grand dukes of our industry have had already had a tilt at the Digital Experience Platform (DXP) space this week. Specifically Forrester’s coverage concerning its latest Wave has been asking is it really a thing? I thought I might add a couple of thoughts.

  1. chevron left iconTuesday 2¢: Is DXP a Thing?
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Ian TruscottOctober 24, 2017
  • Technology

Welcome to the Tuesday 2¢. It’s Tuesday, the weekend is a distant memory and it’s time to let off some steam and give our 2 cents on a hot industry topic. This week, Ian Truscott discusses some strong opinions on Digital Experience Platforms.


Today’s rant is not really my rant at all, as a couple of the grand dukes of our industry have already had a tilt at the Digital Experience Platform (DXP) space this week. Specifically, Forrester’s coverage concerning its latest Wave has been asking is it really a thing? I thought I might add a couple of thoughts.

By ‘thing’ I mean a software category, and one that (if you are Forrester) you can build a Wave report on. Now normally when industry chums take to commenting about analysts’ rankings of vendors it’s normally to question the precise positing of vendor X over vendor Y, and why Big Company Inc. is always on top.

But over the last week, industry chum, Co-Founder/CEO of Digital Clarity Groupand former brother in arms of mine at Gilbane Group,Scott Liewher, and Tony Byrne, professional cynic, Founder of Real Story Groupand the thorn in the side of vendors for as long as I’ve been in this industry, have both questioned not just whether vendor x deserves a bigger blob or a wavier wave, but whether this category should exist in its own right at all.

Tony is the most adroit with his "There is no such thing as DXP", describing in a short pithy post the work of some very esteemed Forrester analysts as “dumb” in their consideration of the leaders. Scott is only ever so slightly more considered in his blog post which presents the report as ‘nonsensical’ (although at some point he does refer to ‘poo’).

Both articles are a super read – Tony plucks at my old school CMS heart strings with his reference to the folly that was ECM suites back in the day – a strategic direction which, as he points out, failed the customer. From my recollection, however, it was also analyst contrivance which failed the vendors and effectively killed WCM leaders like Vignette and Interwoven as they chased ECM fool’s gold.

Scott smartly justifies his ire at this report by chucking some of Forrester’s own analysis back at it, asking:

Haven’t they heard that enterprises are not afraid of integration? Don’t they know that customers don’t buy, much less implement, all the parts of these “platforms” that they’re rating? Don’t they remember that they told us four years ago that organizations that are most mature when it comes to digital experience delivery, 'have best-of-breed tools in place and clear provisioning policies open to cloud and open solutions and third parties when appropriate'?

From my industry and agency experience, despite how much I respect Forrester’s perspective, both Tony and Scott have a point. DXP is clearly not so easy to pin down and define, it’s not an off the rail item. It’s a bespoke suit, cut and sewn to fit the enterprise buying it. And as I ranted about on CMSWire recently, some of the suits being considered by Forrester are not so neatly sewn together.

It is more of a customer led initiative, like digital transformation, creating a digital customer experience solution architecture that always has elements of their own legacy software inventory tightly integrated with new shiny bits.

As a vendor, we certainly play a role in this space. On this website we describe our own product in the context of a client implementing a Digital Experience Platform. I know there are analysts that look kindly upon our capabilities there.

Its beholden on us to be clear about the value of our software for the clients building these solutions, to emphasize that we offer broad functionality (of course) but also that we can be stitched seamlessly into the fabric of a client’s existing infrastructure.

So, is DXP a thing? Yes. But it’s the client’s thing, not the vendor’s.

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Ian Truscott
Ian Truscott has a passion for creating ART (Awareness, Revenue and Trust) for B2B software companies as a marketing leader and is a censhare alumni. Wanting to connect a like minded community and share something useful, he founded Rockstar CMO, a monthly digital publication, and is currently helping B2B companies create ART at appropingo.

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