Planning for Sitecore SaaS
Announced at this mornings 2019 Sitecore Symposium is the option to move to SaaS for Sitecore. While the plan is to make an initial iteration available in Summer 2020, now is the time to start planning for the considerations this move could bring.
With the promise of continual updates of the base Sitecore platform, which is compelling by itself, there are some key questions that can only be answered with hands on keyboard testing. Mainly:
- Having continual updates means less control of the environment, so what is the level of control you will have?
- How will code be deployed if you can’t alter the base? Will it be more akin to SharePoint Online with a Sandbox…
- What if you need to change the configurations to adjust your needs (i.e. tuning Sitecore)
- How will external integrations function?
- What about scalability… vertical and horizontal?
Given the questions above, the primary evaluation needs to be on intended use. From some organizations who desire isolation and control over more of the OS, IaaS with SIF is the right choice, while for those who desire less overhead PaaS/MCP is a fit… which leaves SaaS… with the automatic updates and likely less control of the environment may be a good fit for organizations of smaller scale/less intensive development requirements.
Whatever the case, once we get closer to release we will find out who SaaS is best suited for.