Feature
The Gist
- No single center. The DX stack in 2025 has no fixed hub; orchestration, AI, and composable architectures define agility and adaptability.
- Traditional anchors shifting. CMS, CRM, and CDP once dominated, but orchestration layers now connect data, content, and personalization in real time.
- AI as orchestrator. AI powers real-time personalization, predictive analytics, and agentic workflows—making intelligence a new anchor for DX.
- Composable trade-offs. Composable stacks deliver flexibility and speed but require strong governance, integration strategies, and data trust to avoid sprawl.
In 2025, the digital experience (DX) stack no longer resembles a neatly layered architecture. It has evolved into a dynamic framework—expanding outward, integrating in real-time and increasingly guided by AI.
As businesses aim to unify digital touchpoints under one cohesive experience, a deeper question is being asked: what truly sits at the core of the DX stack today—and should anything at all? Is it the content management system (CMS)? The customer data platform (CDP)? Or is the real center now the orchestration layer that connects them all?
What is the true center of the digital experience software stack? It seems, ultimately, it's what works for your brand, and digital customer experience.
That's not to say we won't analyze what could possibly be at the center. And this article examines how the structure of DX is evolving, the platforms emerging as the new center of gravity and why agility—rather than architecture—is becoming the defining feature of modern customer experience delivery.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: How Has the DX Stack Evolved?
- Traditional Anchors: CMS, CRM and CDP
- Strengths and Weaknesses of CMS, CRM and CDP
- The Rise of the Orchestration Layer
- Digital Experience Stack Centers on Flexible DXP Hubs
- DXP Evolution Beyond Content Management
- Strategic Platform Selection Criteria
- DXP Market Outlook and Vendor Landscape
- AI and Real-Time Personalization as New Anchors
- Cloud-Native and Composable Architectures
- Composable Architecture Gains Ground
- Does the Digital Experience Stack Center on Customer Screen?
- What Defines the Core of Digital Experience in 2025?
- Core Questions About the 2025 DX Stack
Introduction: How Has the DX Stack Evolved?
Today’s DX environment is more fragmented, dynamic and fast-evolving than ever before. Businesses now juggle an ever-growing assortment of tools—CMSes, CDPs, Digital Asset Management platforms (DAMs), analytics platforms, journey orchestration engines and personalization engines that tailor content and experiences in real time—all while striving to meet rising customer expectations for relevance, speed and consistency across channels.
Rather than operating within a neatly-layered stack, these systems now function as interconnected services, stitched together through APIs, cloud-based integrations and real-time decisioning engines. As personalization demands intensify, orchestration has shifted from a supporting role to a strategic one—guiding how customer journeys unfold and how customer experiences are delivered.
Traditional Anchors: CMS, CRM and CDP
For years, the heart of the digital experience stack was relatively easy to identify. The content management system served as the foundation—controlling how content was created, stored, and published across websites and digital channels. Meanwhile, CRM platforms tracked interactions and transactions, and later, CDPs emerged to unify fragmented data sources for more targeted engagement.
Unified customer data has evolved from a static asset into a dynamic driver of personalization and real-time experiences. Fergal Glynn, CMO at Mindgard, an automated AI red teaming and security provider, told CMSWire that "Today, the Customer Data Platform (CDP) is at the heart of most digital experience stacks...now, they drive personalization, marketing automation, and help deliver real-time experiences." Glynn noted that CDPs are no longer just passive data collectors but now fuel the broader personalization and orchestration engines powering DX stacks.
Related Article: Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs): What to Know in 2025
Strengths and Weaknesses of CMS, CRM and CDP
Each of these systems brought clear strengths. CMSs empowered marketing teams to rapidly publish content and manage brand messaging. CRMs centralized sales and service history. CDPs promised a 360-degree view of the customer by integrating data from multiple sources. In many businesses, these tools became the de facto anchors of the digital experience stack.
But each also came with limitations. CMSs weren’t designed for true omnichannel orchestration. CRMs often skewed toward sales-centric data, leaving marketing and service teams underserved. And while CDPs aimed to unify data, they frequently sat in silos of their own—detached from the content and orchestration tools needed to act on that data in real time.
Traditional DX Anchors and Their Limitations
How CMS, CRM and CDP served as the original core of DX stacks—and why they no longer suffice alone.
| Platform | Traditional Role | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| CMS | Created and published content across digital channels | Not built for true omnichannel orchestration |
| CRM | Tracked customer interactions, sales and service history | Skewed toward sales data, often leaving marketing/service underserved |
| CDP | Unified fragmented data sources for 360-degree customer view | Frequently became siloed from content and orchestration tools |
Even with middleware and API-based integrations, the result was often a loosely connected system of record-keeping tools, rather than a truly cohesive platform for delivering consistent, personalized digital experiences. As DX needs have grown more complex and real-time personalization more critical, these traditional anchors are no longer sufficient on their own.
In many businesses, the CRM remains the default center of record, particularly in omnichannel environments. Melissa Copeland, founder of consulting firm Blue Orbit Consulting, told CMSWire that "The CRM has tended to maintain the most information for an ‘almost 360-degree’ view of the customer." Copeland explained that while AI is influencing how these systems are used, CRMs are still a core anchor for customer-specific information.
The Rise of the Orchestration Layer
As digital experience demands have grown more complex, a new contender has emerged to unify the stack: the orchestration layer. No longer is it enough to simply collect customer data or deliver content across channels. Today’s businesses must deliver the right message, at the right time, in the right place—based on real-time behavior, not just static segments. That’s where journey orchestration engines and experience orchestration platforms come into play.
Why Orchestration Matters
Platforms such as Adobe Journey Optimizer, Salesforce Interaction Studio and Oracle Infinity have shifted the focus from managing content or data to managing the entire customer journey. These tools act as integration hubs between CMS, CDP, CRM and marketing automation systems—linking them in real time to ensure that each touchpoint feels continuous and personalized.
Orchestration layers monitor customer signals—browsing activity, email engagement, purchase behavior—and adjust the next-best action accordingly. They don’t just help brands react; they enable proactive, context-aware engagement across web, mobile, email, social and even in-person channels.
Brenda Buckman, senior director at Huntress Labs, told CMSWire, "The true center of the DX stack is the orchestration layer...it allows modern DX stacks to be intentionally composable." Buckman emphasized that orchestration enables businesses to swap out core platforms like CMSs without major disruption, hence its central role.
Orchestration as the New Center
Because of this connective power, orchestration is rapidly becoming the most critical “center” of the modern DX stack. It’s not replacing CMSes, CRMs, or CDPs—but it is redefining how they interact. In many cases, it’s the orchestration layer that turns siloed tools into a unified customer experience engine.
Additionally, AI-powered orchestration is enabling scalable, real-time personalization across geographic locations and audiences.
Jason Ing, CMO at marketing platform provider Typeface, emphasized that "An orchestration layer connects everything—from your CDP to your CMS—and uses that data to drive real personalization and localization." Ing explained that orchestration layers now manage much more than data flow—they're critical to campaign execution and content velocity.
Finally, orchestration has become the gathering point where data, content, and analytics are brought into one layer.
Abhi Anantharaman, CTO at Syndigo, a product experience cloud provider, suggested, "The orchestration layer has become the real center of gravity... It’s where data, content, analytics and user context come together." Anantharaman emphasized how orchestration integrates disparate tools into a coherent system for delivering connected commerce experiences.
Related Article: Customer Journey Orchestration in an Open World of CX
Digital Experience Stack Centers on Flexible DXP Hubs
Digital experience practitioners now operate in a market where composable architectures, AI integration and omnichannel orchestration have become standard requirements rather than competitive advantages.
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DXP Evolution Beyond Content Management
The digital experience platform has evolved far beyond its content management system roots. According to CMSWire's 2025 market analysis, modern DXP functionality now spans authoring and modeling, experience delivery, integration capabilities and ecosystem support.
Today's platforms must provide APIs, connectors, low-code tools and integration capabilities that connect with CRM, customer data platforms, marketing automation, digital asset management, e-commerce and analytics systems.
Strategic Platform Selection Criteria
Practitioners should prioritize platforms that deliver:
- Centralized omnichannel content and experience delivery
- Deep integration and composability through APIs, connectors and low-code orchestration
- Comprehensive authoring, modeling, analytics and personalization tools
- Support for both headless and traditional implementation approaches
- Rapid prototyping capabilities and agile customer experience development
- Embedded or integrated AI for content, personalization and optimization
DXP Market Outlook and Vendor Landscape
The DXP sector maintains healthy growth with analyst forecasts predicting double-digit expansion through 2032, according to the CMSWire Digital Experience Platform (DXP) Market Guide. Vendors are investing heavily in AI capabilities, composability and integration features.
The crowded market requires careful evaluation. Organizations should seek platforms with mature APIs, active partner ecosystems and clear roadmaps for AI and composable capabilities.
No single vendor addresses every organizational need, making a mature, extensible DXP that integrates effectively with other systems the optimal strategic choice. The platform should function as the central hub for customer experience, data and content management.
Related Article: The Center of the Digital Experience Stack Is the Customer
AI and Real-Time Personalization as New Anchors
AI has moved from a peripheral enhancement to a core element of digital experience architecture. No longer limited to optimizing back-end operations, it now plays a leading role in shaping what each user sees, when they see it, and why. Real-time personalization—driven by behavioral signals, intent models, and predictive analytics—has become a baseline expectation for modern customer experiences.
AI as a Core DX Driver
Buckman explained that AI is raising the bar for both personalization speed and orchestration complexity. "AI...is reshaping how platforms interact and how complex and tailored the outputs can be—maximizing effectiveness," Buckman said, emphasizing that AI doesn’t replace platforms—it amplifies how they collaborate and scale.
AI-powered recommendation engines can analyze contextual clues like browsing patterns, purchase history and in-session behavior to dynamically create personalized experiences on the fly. These tools recommend products, tailor messaging and optimize channel selection in milliseconds, continuously adjusting based on new data.
What’s more, generative AI is redefining the content side of the stack. Instead of relying solely on pre-authored content libraries, businesses can now create dynamic, hyper-personalized messaging at scale—created for each individual customer or segment. This has shifted the balance of power: content is no longer just housed in a CMS, nor driven purely by human marketers. AI is now both the generator and the guide.
Agentic AI compresses multi-step workflows into minutes.
Ted Sfikas, field chief technology officer at analytics and event tracking platform Amplitude, told CMSWire that in his business, "agentic AI has reduced that whole process to literally minutes." Sfikas described how AI is transforming experimentation and personalization workflows—boosting team output and shortening delivery timelines dramatically.
Even minimal LLMs can deliver impactful personalization at the edge.
Gray Reinhard, CTO at Energea, told CMSWire, "A lightweight LLM runs at the edge... picks one of three pre-approved copy blocks...and spares marketing the 3 a.m. text edits." Reinhard reiterated that even lightweight AI models can drive real-time, front-end personalization and reduce marketing workload.
AI as the New Orchestrator
As a result, the lines between delivery, content and intelligence are rapidly dissolving. Platforms that once served narrow functions—like email delivery or web content management—are being augmented (or even eclipsed) by AI layers that coordinate, create, and personalize experiences in real time. This positions AI not just as a tool, but as a new kind of orchestrator—anchoring the stack through constant, adaptive decision-making.
Related Article: Inside the AI Engines Powering Digital Experience Platforms
AI’s Role in Modern DX Stacks
Ways AI is shifting from support function to orchestrator and anchor for digital experiences.
| AI Capability | Impact on DX | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time personalization | Delivers adaptive content and messaging in milliseconds | AI-driven product recommendations on ecommerce sites |
| Generative AI | Creates hyper-personalized content at scale | Dynamic copy variations for localized campaigns |
| Agentic AI | Automates multi-step workflows in minutes | AI-run experimentation cycles and campaign optimization |
| Lightweight LLMs at the edge | Enable low-latency personalization with minimal resources | On-device copy block selection for faster campaign edits |
Cloud-Native and Composable Architectures
As digital experience needs grow more complex, rigid all-in-one suites are giving way to flexible, cloud-native architectures grounded in MACH principles—microservices, API-first, cloud-native, and headless. These composable systems enable businesses to build best-of-breed stacks by selecting and integrating specialized tools for content, commerce, personalization, search, and more—rather than relying on a single monolithic (and now archaic) platform.
Why Composable DX Matters
While tools and platforms continue to evolve, the one enduring element in any DX stack is how well a business understands its customers—and whether that understanding translates into coordinated action across teams.
Christina Garnett, chief customer and communications officer at advertising agency neuemotion, told CMSWire, "The true center of the digital experience stack is customer understanding. Whether through data, qualitative feedback, or social signals, it all starts with knowing your customer deeply. But knowing isn’t enough. The tools you choose should help teams across departments actually act on that insight. If it only serves one silo, it’s not the center of anything." Garnett suggested that without cross-departmental alignment, even the best tools fail to unify the customer experience.
In a composable model, there is no single “center” in the traditional sense. Instead, orchestration, data flow, and logic are distributed across modular services that communicate via APIs. This decentralization unlocks tremendous agility: teams can swap out outdated services without migrating to a new platform, respond to new channels or customer needs faster, and scale components independently.
In decentralized stacks, orchestration becomes the operational heartbeat.
Roman Rylko, CTO at Python development company Pynest, told CMSWire, “If that feed dies, pages stop breathing…The minute that topic stalls, nobody cares which platform was ‘central.'” Rylko explained that real-time event streams—not platforms—are now the lifeblood of digital stacks.
Modern DX stacks rely on a central data layer for governance, compliance, and trust---and for some, the data cloud is the only real anchor. Sfikas said that "Being in the center means that the data is trusted and compliant...If data were decoupled and placed into multiple tools...security risks would become unacceptable." Sfikas explained that without strong data governance, decentralization becomes chaos—making centralized data platforms essential.
Balancing Agility With Complexity
However, this flexibility comes with trade-offs. While composable DXPs offer control and innovation speed, they can introduce architectural complexity, increase integration overhead, and demand more sophisticated governance and development resources. Businesses must weigh agility against operational burden—particularly when orchestration, versioning, or vendor coordination becomes a challenge.
Ultimately, for many businesses, the move to composable isn’t just about tech—it’s about future-proofing. As customer expectations evolve and channels proliferate, a modular, API-first foundation gives brands the adaptability they need to keep pace. The “center” of the stack may now be defined less by a single platform, and more by the connective tissue that allows the whole system to evolve with the business.
Composable Architecture Gains Ground
Modern stacks are moving toward composable, API-first architectures that enable rapid adaptation and deep personalization. Organizations are breaking down monolithic platforms in favor of flexible, interoperable systems orchestrated around customer journeys. Key components include robust content management, organized customer data, seamless API connectivity, feedback loops and AI-powered automation. The rise of generative AI has shifted from hype to practical use, with major vendors embedding AI to drive content creation, testing, orchestration and real-time analytics.
Benefits and Trade-Offs of Composable DX Architectures
Composable DX architectures offer unmatched flexibility and speed, but they also introduce complexity. This table highlights the key benefits and the trade-offs organizations must weigh when adopting a modular, API-first approach.
| Benefit | Description | Trade-Off |
|---|---|---|
| Modularity | Swap or update individual components without replatforming | Can create architectural sprawl if poorly governed |
| Speed | Faster to innovate, test, and launch new experiences | May require strong DevOps and governance frameworks |
| Best-of-breed tools | Select top-performing tools for each function | Increases integration complexity |
| Scalability | Scale components independently based on demand | Requires well-defined API strategies |
Does the Digital Experience Stack Center on Customer Screen?
Digital experience practitioners are shifting away from platform-centric thinking to focus on the customer's screen as the true center of their technology stack. The old debate—should a CMS, CRM, DXP or CDP anchor the stack?—is now outdated. Instead, leading experts emphasize that the customer's screen, where strategy, technology and content face real-time judgment, is the only center that matters.
What Defines the Core of Digital Experience in 2025?
When it comes to digital experience today, there’s no longer a single, clearly defined “center” to the stack. Instead, the center has evolved into a coordination layer—real-time coordination between data, content, orchestration, and intelligence that keeps everything connected. It’s less about one platform being in charge and more about how well tools work together to deliver frictionless, personalized experiences.
As the experts have reiterated, the question isn’t whether there is a new center to the DX stack—it’s whether your systems are connected well enough to act like one.
For some businesses, data is the anchor—driving decisions through real-time insights and predictive analytics. For others, content remains central, especially when storytelling and brand engagement are core to the strategy. In high-velocity environments, speed of orchestration and adaptability may take precedence. The center, then, is no longer a fixed point but a reflection of a business’s priorities and maturity.
This shift has major implications for DX teams. Rather than structuring the stack around a dominant system, teams now need to design for interoperability. That means embracing open standards, investing in orchestration capabilities, and ensuring that data and logic can flow freely across systems. It’s not about picking a new hub—it’s about building a network that adapts.
The digital experience stack is no longer defined by a central hub, but by how effectively its parts connect and respond. For DX leaders, this means shifting focus from platform consolidation to experience coordination—prioritizing flow over control, and adaptability over uniformity. The challenge isn’t picking the right system, but designing a DX stack that evolves with the customer.
Core Questions About the 2025 DX Stack
Editor's note: Key questions surrounding the role of orchestration and AI in shaping the center of the digital experience stack.
In 2025, there is no single platform at the center of the digital experience stack. Instead, businesses rely on a coordination layer—often powered by AI and journey orchestration tools—to unify content, data and channels in real time. This shift reflects a move toward flexible, composable architectures where agility and interoperability matter more than any one system.
Orchestration layers and AI are essential because they connect fragmented tools and deliver personalized experiences in real time. AI enables dynamic content creation and predictive next-best actions, while orchestration platforms ensure seamless customer journeys across channels. Together, they form the backbone of modern DX strategies.
