DXC vs. DXP? 🤷

They are often mixed up but in reality, they are no more than second cousins. At best 🍏🍊

What is the difference between DXC and DXP – or between Digital Experience Composition and a Digital Experience Platform?

It was Gartner, who coined the term DXC during 2022, but the space existed before then, however under various other terms. In Enterspeed, we like to call it orchestration, but the naming is not really all that important.

So, DXC is still rather new to the market, and it seems like some people might be a bit puzzled about the difference between DXC and DXP, which is a more established term. But using the terms synonymously is an unfortunate oversimplification of two different architectures.    

What does it mean?

DXP and DXC both exist within the space of digital experience – they are both created to orchestrate multi-experience customer journeys. But their outset differs a lot.

Digital Experience Platforms arose when multiple CMSs began to expand with features that’s outside the conventional realms of CMS.

A Digital Experience Platform – DXP – is typically a CMS with added functionality to make it a commerce engine, a personalisation system, an email platform, and perhaps even a PIM, a DAM and a CDP too.

Thus, a DXP is a fully integrated and all-in-one solution that provides you with the resources to create multiple tailored customers journeys using the same monolithic architecture.

Digital Experience Composition – DXC – has a lot of the same capabilities but solves them in a composable architecture.

With DXC you choose different unconnected services – a best of breed product stack – allowing you to use the services that matches your business goals best. Furthermore, a DXC strategy lets you change out the underlying services when your business requirements change.

DXC is not born out of a specific CMS or another particular source system but functions as an independent (and in our case, tech agnostic) composition engine.     

Should I choose a DXP or a DXC?

So, what to choose? Well, it depends on your organisational needs, really.

If you expect your system needs to remain stable, you can build a great digital experience using a good DXP. In other words – if you don’t anticipate adding to your infrastructure, it can be cost effective to choose a unified platform of technologies. DXPs are great for perfect, thoroughly planned architectures that are not set to undergo much change.  

If you, instead, are expecting changes to your organisation or your business space, or if you can’t find a DXP to suit your needs, choosing a DXC might be the way to go. DXCs encompass a more composable suite, which allows you the flexibility to funnel both your decoupled legacy tech suite and your newer data sources towards your headless customer experiences.

Check out more on orchestration and composable data 👉 Content Federation: How to manage your composable stack