Shot of the outside of a grocery store called, "Champion Supermarket."
Gartner named four champions, or leaders, of Digital Experience Platforms in its new Magic Quadrant. PHOTO: Daniel Ng

Gartner named IBM, Adobe, Sitecore and Liferay as the leading vendors in its first Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms (fee charged), published today. The Digital Experience Platforms Magic Quadrant replaces Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Horizontal Portals and includes substantial changes to market definition and inclusion criteria.

Gartner defines a digital experience platform (DXP), "as an integrated set of technologies, based on a common platform, that provides a broad range of audiences with consistent, secure and personalized access to information and applications across many digital touchpoints. Organizations use DXPs to build, deploy and continually improve websites, portals, mobile and other digital experiences."

Gartner's vs. Forrester's Take on DXPs

Gartner's leaderboard represents a vastly different take than its competitor's Digital Experience Platform report. Forrester in its third Wave for Digital Experience Platforms last fall named only Oracle as a leader. Salesforce straddled the line between "leader" and a "strong performer" in Forrester's report.

Adobe's inclusion as a Gartner DXP leader is probably welcome news for the San Jose, Calif.-based digital marketing software provider. In the Forrester Wave: Digital Experience Platforms, Q3, 2017 (fee charged), Forrester analysts replaced Adobe — who previously had top position — with Oracle in its leaderboard. Gartner has a different view of Oracle: the Redwood City, Calif.-based provider is a DXP challenger, according to Gartner, sharing that title with Microsoft, Salesforce, Acquia, SAP and OpenText.

Gartner's DXP report included all but two of the vendors Forrester had: Sprinklr and Magento made the cut for Forrester, but not Gartner. Gartner included several that did not make Forrester's: GX Software, Oxcyon, censhare, Jahia, Squiz, Kentico Software, Crownpeak, CoreMedia, and, quite notably, Microsoft.

image of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms

In other digital and customer experience software news ...

Usermind Raises $23.5M

Seattle-based Usermind, which provides customer engagement hub software, announced today a $23.5 million Series C round led by Northgate Capital. Current investors Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Ventures and CRV also contributed. 

Company officials said they will use the funding to open the company's first international office in Europe, as well as scale its sales and marketing teams. Northgate Capital Managing General Partner and CEO Hosein Khajeh-Hosseiny joins Usermind’s board. 

“Customer experience is the new battleground. Customer experience leaders grow 20–30 percent faster than their peers,” Michel Feaster, co-founder and CEO of Usermind, said in a statement.

Sitecore Releases Latest Commerce Version

Sitecore, which provides experience management software, announced this week Sitecore Experience Commerce 9 at the NRF 2018: Retail's Big Show in New York City. The latest version of Sitecore's commerce solution is a cloud-enabled platform that natively integrates content and commerce. Sitecore officials said the latest version blends content, commerce and contextual intelligence and business tools in one view. The platform is built on the latest ASP.NET Core 2.0 technology.

eZ Systems Names New CEO

Web content management provider eZ Systems has announced that Morten Ingebrigtsen will serve as the new CEO. Aleksander Farstad, co-founder of the 19-year-old Porsgrunn, Norway-based company, made the CEO announcement in a blog post. Farstad called Ingebrigtsen, "a new leader as we enter the next phase of our company's lifecycle." Ingebrigtsen had served as a board member for the company.

Farstad admitted that in 2013 eZ was "not in very good shape" because the company's "ambitious expansion had been too costly." He returned at that point to eZ after a five-year hiatus to "save the company and to create a company with a future." Today, the company's subscription base is double what it was in 2013, making up more than 90 percent of revenue, according to Farstad.

"Morten is a technologist turned growth CEO, who will bring on board new energy and skills for the next growth phase," Farstad said. "His mission is growth, and I know he sees product and innovation as key drivers."