A 5-yr Insight to Sitecore Partnership

Yes, it’s been 5 years.  I still remember the day when I first looked at Sitecore in our previous office.  It was for a prospect that wanted a CMS.  During that time, the CMS market was dominated by Interwoven, Stellent, MS CMS, Documentum, Sharepoint and Vignette.  None of those fit my criteria:

• .NET-based
• Less than $20k
• Open-architecture
• Strict separation of content from presentation
• Visual Studio-friendly

So, I started looking deeper in the market and found Sitecore.  At that time, Sitecore USA just opened its doors in California.  We didn’t get the prospect but I saw such potential in the technology that I decided to go for training and become a partner.  Needless to say, we became one and I couldn’t be happier with my decision.  Here is our 5-yr timeline with respect to Sitecore:

Year One (2005)

becomes a Sitecore Certified Partner with 1 developer using Sitecore v4 trained internal developers on Sitecore v4 signed our first Sitecore customer ended up with 4 Sitecore customers integrated Sitecore with AS/400 and JD Edwards thru a SOA middle-tier

Year Two (2006)

developed a mySQL data provider before it became available developed a Sitecore-generated site scraper to LAMP-friendly site full AD integration complete with biographies and documents more than 12 implementations by this time (including v5.1 and v5.2) real-time integration for up-to-date scoring

Year Three (2007)

iMIS integration Community Server integration TIMSS (Personify) integration multi-language with fallback implementation Omniture analytics integration multiple v5.3 implementations and upgrades embraced the “partner for partners” philosophy

Year Four (2008)

more v5.3 implementations integration with iMIS for more detailed information on events, members, and others migrated several sites to Sitecore single-sign on with membership system, Sitecore, and Community Server several Sitecore architectural consulting

Year Five (2009)

SaaS integrations such as Google Maps, calendars and events, and others several v6 implementations and upgrades one of the first OMS certified partners multiple Sitecore Foundry v2 and v3 implementations 2 case studies performed by Sitecore for the government and faith-based markets

It’s already the 2nd quarter of 2010 and yes we’ve already done some special things this year such as hosting Sitecore training, more OMS certifications, additional Foundry implementations, and recognized as one of the Outstanding CMS Projects.  After attending Dreamcore, we have a renewed excitement towards what Sitecore is doing.  I’d like to be able to update this blog post and let you know what we’ve done again.  With the upcoming release Sitecore and OMS, Intranet Portal, and Foundry, we’re sure to make more history.