What is Sitecore Stream?

Amit KumarAmit Kumar
7 min read

Sitecore introduced its latest innovation in digital experience platforms (DXP) - Sitecore Stream at the Sitecore Symposium 2024 in Nashville. This cutting-edge AI-driven marketing platform is set to transform how enterprise marketing teams boost productivity and drive growth. Let's dive into what Sitecore Stream is, its benefits, architecture, and building blocks.

🎢What is Sitecore Stream?

Sitecore Stream is a smart DXP (digital experience platform) product built with Microsoft Azure OpenAI services, developed with an AI vision, offering auto-scalable, personalized digital experiences and fast, secure content delivery across digital channels.

Source: Sitecore.com

Using Microsoft Azure AI helps Sitecore Stream understand a company's brand, campaigns, content, and data, allowing marketers to perform at their best. It means, Stream is a model tailored for each customer, trained to understand their brand using their data. It helps with creating, adjusting, and optimizing content to ensure it aligns with brand and campaign goals.

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You can also see my work on the CMSWIRE website. CMSWIRE.Com provides insights on customer and digital experiences, and shares news and trends on marketing and customer experience leadership. In the article, I talked about AI customization, security, and policies. You can find more details here.

🚀Benefits of Sitecore Stream

Please find below a list of potential Sitecore Stream benefits:

  1. Enhanced Productivity: Stream makes marketing workflows easier and increases productivity with AI-driven management, content intelligence, and automated help, saving time.

  2. Brand Consistency: The Sitecore Stream platform's brand-aware AI helps ensure all marketing actions, recommendations, and experiences match the organization's brand identity, values, and guidelines.

  3. Streamlined Workflows: AI-enhanced workflows automate repetitive tasks, making things faster and improving teamwork.

  4. Interoperability: Using Sitecore's flexible product design, Sitecore Stream works seamlessly with a brand's current marketing technology stack, including Sitecore tools like XM Cloud, Content Hub, and Experience Platform XP. 🔝

Source: Sitecore - Stream is a Composable Product

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Brand-Aware AI: From what I understand, being Brand-Aware AI means you are sending your brand or organization-specific data to Azure AI Search for indexing. Azure OpenAI will then provide responses that align with your brand's identity, values, and guidelines. Sitecore Stream does not use your content to train the underlying AI models.

✨Sitecore Stream Features

Sitecore Stream uses Generative AI features to assist team members in:

  • Create and manage the content - AI Capabilities to auto generate the content based on the prompts

  • Create Campaign - GenAI powered Copilot auto generate the campaign aligned with brand identity

  • Create AI Brand Assistant (Automated Assistance or Generative Copilots) - quickly find, organize, and summarize information about your brands, giving users easy access to knowledge

  • Create AI-enhanced workflows - this means using software to automate repetitive tasks, making workflows smoother, reducing manual work, and cutting down on mistakes. Some content tasks can include creating item content, building a website page, or A/B testing specific items (provide data point to choose the most popular or liked item - data driven decision). 🔝

Source: Sitecore - Stream Capabilities

🔐Sitecore Stream Security

  • Sitecore Stream built on Azure infrastructure which provide enterprise-level security to protect your data.

  • The data ingested to Sitecore Stream not used by the Sitecore Stream underlying AI models so your data is secured and not shared. 🔝

As per my understanding, the security of client’s data being implemented using the concept of Securely use Azure OpenAI On Your Data and Azure OpenAI On Your Data

💸Cost Saving with Sitecore Stream

Sitecore Stream helps organizations save money in these ways:

  • Content Authoring

  • Campaigns Creation

  • Summarize the brand's objective

  • Metadata Creation

  • Check if brand policies are being followed

  • Implementation of AI based Search to find the specific Content items from different sources including other Sitecore’s Composable DXP products

  • Identify the Data points for Personalized Experience

  • Building of Copilots with Generative AI (GenAI)

You can find more information about Sitecore’s SaaS CMS XM Cloud here.

🧠Sitecore Stream Architecture and Building Blocks

Please find below the high-level indicative key components and architecture of Sitecore Stream, based on the information available on the internet:

  1. Composable Architecture: Allows easy integration with current marketing technology stacks and tools.

  2. Generative Copilots: Dedicated AI assistants for brand, brief, content, and experience creation and optimization.

  3. Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service: The underlying AI technology powering Stream's capabilities. 🔝

  4. Microsoft Azure AI Search: Azure AI Search (formerly known as "Azure Cognitive Search") allows users to safely find information across large amounts of their own content in both traditional and AI-powered search applications.

  5. Cloud-Native Infrastructure: Sitecore Stream operates on a cloud-based infrastructure, offering businesses the flexibility to scale their content delivery based on demand.

  6. Integration with Sitecore Products: Stream orchestrates experiences across Sitecore solutions, including XM Cloud, Content Hub, and Experience Platform (XP).

  7. API-First Approach: Sitecore Stream follows an API-first approach, which makes it highly flexible and adaptable to different digital ecosystems.

  8. Microservices Architecture: At the heart of Sitecore Stream is a microservices-based architecture, which breaks down content delivery into smaller, independent services.

🌏Real-World Application

Major brands like Nestlé have already embraced Sitecore Stream. Nestlé uses the platform to manage thousands of brand documents efficiently, demonstrating its effectiveness in large-scale enterprise environments. 🔝

💡Conclusion

Sitecore Stream is a big step forward in AI-powered marketing platforms. It uses brand-aware AI, automated workflows, and easy integration to help marketers create more engaging, consistent, and personalized customer experiences. This boosts productivity and keeps brand integrity. As digital marketing changes, platforms like Sitecore Stream will be important for helping businesses manage modern customer engagement and achieve marketing success.

PS: The details in this blog, including the example architecture, are based on information found online and my knowledge of Azure OpenAI, Modularity, Maintainability, Extensibility, Separation of Concerns (SoC), and Client Data Protection.

🙏Credit/References

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Written by

Amit Kumar
Amit Kumar

My name is Amit Kumar. I work as a hands-on Solution Architect. My experience allows me to provide valuable insights and guidance to organizations looking to leverage cutting edge technologies for their digital solutions.As a Solution Architect, I have extensive experience in designing and implementing robust and scalable solutions using server-side and client-side technologies. My expertise lies in architecting complex systems, integrating various modules, and optimizing performance to deliver exceptional user experiences. Additionally, I stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices to ensure that my solutions are always cutting-edge and aligned with business objectives.