This is the first post in a series on Sitecore XM Cloud and the pivot to headless decoupled delivery:

1. Sitecore XM Cloud's headless content delivery is good for Sitecore
2. Sitecore XM Cloud's headless content delivery is good for developers
3. Sitecore XM Cloud's headless content delivery is good for Sitecore partners
4. Sitecore XM Cloud's headless content delivery is good for customers

Sitecore is currently going through a major transformation of its product suite into a composable DXP. One major component of the DXP, the CMS at the core, is also going through a massive re-architecture. The new CMS, XM Cloud, will offer a completely headless delivery model on top of a SaaS product. Let's learn why this shift to a headless-only model is good for Sitecore sthe product innovator.

Headless Delivery is Good for Sitecore

As the product innovator, Sitecore greatly benefits from a headless-only delivery model for the content coming out of XM Cloud. Going headless greatly reduces the surface area Sitecore needs to consider "owning." Sitecore can now focus purely on the CMS and developer-friendly APIs/SDKs to build experience with. Yes, there's now more burden of building and supporting these SDKs (especially if they add more for languages over time), but it also allows Sitecore to shed some burden.

Sitecore is no longer in the business of hosting websites. Let that sink in. Sitecore's existing XP PaaS offering includes the option to host with Sitecore Managed Cloud (SMC). SMC provides hosting for the CM instance ("CMS") and multiple CD instances ("website delivery servers"). That means they need to worry about the performance and uptime of the authoring environment and the front-end website servers as well. This also creates a gray area of responsibility - if your website goes down but the app service on Azure is running fine, is Sitecore responsible for the resolution?

With XM Cloud, Sitecore will now focus on hosting the CMS itself as a SaaS offering. They can make the leap to SaaS now because the boundary between the CMS and the "front-end website" is completely decoupled (if you need a refresher on the decoupled model, check other my other post on the topic). The hosting of the "front-end website" is now in the hands of the customer or a partner - freeing up Sitecore to focus on DXP product innovation.