H aving worked with Optimizely (formerly Episerver) for more than a decade, this came as no surprise for those of us at BlueBolt who have grown to appreciate everything the platform has to offer.
Gartner recently declared (again) that Optimizely is a leader in their Magic Quadrant for DXPs (digital experience platforms). Having worked with Optimizely (formerly Episerver) for more than a decade, this came as no surprise for those of us at BlueBolt who have grown to appreciate everything the platform has to offer. It does, however, serve as an opportunity to reflect on the characteristics of Optimizely that make it such a powerhouse platform.
I first started working with Episerver back in 2011, with version 6 R2 to be precise. Back then, it didn’t have eCommerce functionality and platforms like Azure and AWS were still in their infancy – but I was able to recognize the benefits of the platform. Episerver was already leading the way with innovative features like Visitor Groups, a simple and clean editor experience, and a reputation amongst the .NET developer community as being very straightforward to use, extend, and customize.
As the years have rolled on, the platform has become more mature, embraced the cloud, and really amped up its content personalization capabilities. I’ve also come to appreciate its multi-lingual abilities which are second to none. We’ve been wrapping up work on a site that offers full localization in English, Italian, French and Japanese – and again I’ve been really impressed with how easily the platform handles multiple languages – especially Asian languages.
Something else that separates Optimizely from its competitors is its flexibility. As a developer, I’ve worked with many different CMS and eCommerce platforms – but by far, Optimizely is the most versatile in terms of customization and integration capabilities. This is especially important when you consider the myriad of systems that you typically integrate with: PIMs, ERPs, CRMs, you name it.
Optimizely offers these features, while still providing a best-in-class content editor experience and cloud-based infrastructure; typically, you must sacrifice one or the other. There are many PaaS (platform as a service) vendors out there, but they typically limit your customization and integration capabilities – making them far less suitable for truly enterprise grade eCommerce applications.
So, congratulations to the team at Optimizely! We’re so happy you have again received the accolades that you deserve. We continue to look forward to working with Optimizely as a partner for many years to come!
