Spring has well and truly sprung, and that can only mean one thing for the Sitecore community in Europe – it’s time for SUGCON Europe 2025!
Antwerp, Belgium was the scene of this year’s gathering on the 3rd and 4th April and, as always, it proved to be an incredibly interesting couple of days hearing from the Sitecore team as well as partners and customers from around the world, not just Europe.
Talks about AI and Sitecore Stream in particular dominated proceedings, as well as the usual suspects like XM Cloud and Content Hub. Here are some of the Remarkable team’s highlights.
Keynote: Powering the Future of Sitecore Together
Dave O’Flanagan (Sitecore CEO), Roger Connolly (Sitecore CPO), and Danny Robinson (Sitecore CTO)
It was fitting that we were in a room called the Darwin Hall for a Keynote with a theme of evolution and adaptability. Sitecore CEO, Dave O’Flanagan kicked things off and took us through the Sitecore vision of being an “AI-first Intelligent DXP” with Sitecore Stream at the heart of things. Roger Connolly (Sitecore Chief Product Officer) touched on the changing face of Search in the zero click AI age and showed off some of the AI-powered A/B testing, personalisation, auto-tagging, and language translation tools that are now or soon will be, available to Sitecore customers. Lastly, Danny Robinson (Sitecore CTO) took us through the roadmap and some key upcoming dates to keep an eye out for (expect big things in June).
30 min of AI in Sitecore
Morten Ljungberg, Sales Engineer at Sitecore
Sitecore Sales Engineer, Morten Ljungberg, gave a cracking overview of Sitecore Stream features in a demo website, showcasing the Brand Kit and Assistant features in the Stream portal, as well as a detailed look into how Stream features work in XM Cloud, Content Hub DAM, Content Hub Operations, Search, Personalize, and CDP, including everything from content generation to translation, auto-tagging, insights, and testing.
Workshop: XM/XP to XM Cloud Best Practices
Jeroen Feyaerts and Katharina Luger, Sitecore Solution Architects
For the very first slot of the day, Jeroen Feyaerts and Katharina Luger, both Solution Architects at Sitecore, led a workshop on the best practices and considerations when undertaking a migrating from XP to XM Cloud, including topics like feature gap analysis, migration paths, hosting, personalisation, testing, and analytics, as well as the conversations that need to be had around XP-centric tools like Forms, EXM, and xDB that either don’t exist, or are completely different in XM Cloud.
Building the Future: Extending XM Cloud with Marketplace Apps
Spyros Misichronis, Architect around the Marketplace
Liz Nelson, Senior Director, Product (Product Lead of XM Cloud)
Sitecore XM Cloud Product Lead, Liz Nelson, took us on a journey through Sitecore’s Marketplace of apps, breaking down the different between the public marketplace versus private custom applications. The audience got a look into developing extensions using the Marketplace SDK and integrating them with XM Cloud’s APIs. Marketplace Architect, Spyros Misichronis, complimented the talk with a live demo.
Main stage demo by CI Hub
Andreas Michalski, CEO and Founder
CI Hub CEO and Founder, Andreas Michalski, gave the audience a first-hand look into the CI Hub’s connector ecosystem that opens up Sitecore Content Hub into over twenty corporate applications. The tool can do things like pull assets directly from Sitecore Content Hub into Photoshop, let you select assets from Content Hub in Outlook emails, and extend your Desktop to be able to pull up Content Hub assets as you would from your device’s folders. Impressive stuff.
Leading in the new era of AI
Hans Verbeeck, Technology Manager at Microsoft
Microsoft Technology Manager, Hans Verbeeck, spoke about Microsoft’s vision on the evolution of AI, from agents able to complete repetitive tasks (e.g. Input new hire information into HR system) and answer straightforward questions (“What is the dress code in the office?”) to being able to take action (“Order a laptop for a new employee”) and collaboratively solve complex tasks (“Onboard 5 employees by Monday”). Hans touched on the Copilots available in Teams, Outlook, Word, PPT, and Excel, as well as highlighting the Azure AI Foundry’s 1,800+ models, and left us with the gem that “Copilots are for humans, Agents are for processes.”
Re-inventing governance with AI: accessibility, branding, and digital right compliance
Vasiliy Fomichev, Head of Digital Solutions and Co-Founder at Zont Digital
Zont Digital Co-Founder and Head of Digital Solutions, Vasiliy Fomichev, gave a live demo on how to create a simple Agentic workflow in N8n to translate content in XM Cloud. He spoke of the importance of creating a “Clean model” for training your data and outlined the Data Learning Effect (DLE) of providing constant feedback to refine your model, as well as using a “human in the loop” for critical workflows to make sure there is a human overseeing the work at important points.
Sitecore Stream in Platform DXP (PaaS)
Vignesh Vishwanath, Product Manager at Sitecore
Sitecore Product Manager, Vignesh Vishwanath, gave the audience a look into how Sitecore Stream features work in a Platform DXP / PaaS setting with Sitecore XP. In this context, Stream is a module available on-prem and PaaS that you can download and install and is available on Sitecore XP 10.2 and above. The tool can generate content and variants based on the prompts you give it in Content Editor and can help improve writing, fix spelling and grammar, make the content shorter or longer, and even change tone.
Pairing Sitecore CDP with Salesforce Data Cloud for the Ultimate Customer 360
Emily Lord, Sitecore Account Executive at Horizontal Digital
Horizontal Digital Sitecore Account Executive, Emily Lord, spoke about how Sitecore CDP and Salesforce Data Cloud can work together despite being sometimes considered competing tools. Emily took the audience through the similarities and differences between the two, as well as looking at what each platform is best suited to doing. The talk touched on how Unified Customer Profiles can give brands a 360-degree view of their customer and the new Gensights (Generative Insights) Sitecore Stream feature for CDP.
Navigating through Sitecore’s personalization archipelago
Szymon Kuzniak, Senior Sitecore Developer at ACTUM Digital
ACTUM Digital Senior Sitecore Developer, Szymon Kuzniak, gave the audience a live demo of how personalisation works in both Sitecore XP and Sitecore Personalize. Szymon created a basic Page View personalisation in XP using Profile Cards and Pattern Cards and then created a personalized Web Experience in Sitecore Personalize that included a custom template by adding the HTML code for a component while also showcasing the Design view that marketers can use to visualize the components they wish to personalise.
