Umbraco Universe

After an eventful 2021, Umbraco CEO Kim Sneum Madsen announced the realignment of the vision for 2022 to 2027 and the goals for the coming 12 months. A summary of the most important contents.

2021 brought big changes for Umbraco. With the aim of remaining relevant in the light of its fast-changing environment, Umbraco headquarters announced drastic changes in August, starting with the entry of Swedish investor Moterro. At the same time, founder Niels Hartvig decided to retire from Umbraco for good, having already stepped down from operational activities at the beginning of last year. Despite these changes and the uncertainties caused by the pandemic, 2021 was a successful year for Umbraco: 25% growth in revenue and 40 new hires form the basis for future development.

A lot has also happened from a technological point of view in 2021: Version 9 was released with great participation from the community and the Unicore team. With the switch to ASP.NET Core, a more modern and scalable infrastructure for the CMS was created. A special experience for the community was the first virtual event of the HQ: 20,400 Umbracians from more than 160 countries took part in Codegarden 2021.

Although many things will change in the coming years, Umbraco's mission to create engaging digital experiences by making Umbraco simpler, friendlier and more social will remain. The values of trust, respect, openness, hunger and friendliness will also be maintained.

Having successfully completed the previous vision - to have one million websites running on Umbraco - in 2021, a new vision has been designed:

• Umbraco Cloud, including the Headless offering, is set to become the CMS of choice for partners and small and medium business customers due to its high editability and popularity with developers.
• Customers and partners will be able to build their preferred tech stack by simplifying integration through a Digital Experience Platform (Composable DXP).
• Umbraco's evolution will be driven together with a growing community to ensure a true outside-in perspective. The goal is to have more than two million websites running on Umbraco.
• Global coverage (24/7/365) will be achieved with national/regional offices in key markets.

In addition to these long-term plans, Madsen also announced concrete goals for 2022. In order to truly realise the numerous planned activities, a sustained 25% growth in revenue is targeted. With the alignment to the new vision, Umbraco TV will be discontinued as a subscription product. However, free tutorials will continue to support users in learning Umbraco.

On the community side, the focus is on expanding activities in the USA. At the same time, the existing core markets such as the UK, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries will be further expanded. The Codegarden will also take place again in 2022 in a format that allows as many Umbracians as possible to participate. In order to involve the community even more in the further development of the CMS, it is also planned to further break down possible barriers and collect more feedback. To this end, the HQ will make greater use of current and previous MVPs.

On the product and service side, the basis for releasing further major versions more quickly was created in 2021 with V9. Therefore, users can expect version 10 before next summer and V11 before the end of the year. The idea behind this: If major versions are released more frequently, it is easier to migrate and provide all users with the latest features. For Umbraco Cloud, the focus in 2022 is on the developer experience. The cloud should become the best place to host Umbraco - easy, scalable, productive and fun. Umbraco Heartcore is currently experiencing a huge increase in demand. Therefore, it is not surprising that many new features, such as multi-factor authentication, are planned and will be released this year. The introduction of a digital experience platform is also on the to-do list for 2022. This will create a tech ecosystem around Umbraco that will ensure that the needs of users are met. As with the community, the focus in the area of products and services is also on the US market, which is why a first data centre is to be set up and further investments made.