Sitecore at Scale: Enterprise Survival Tactics from SUGCON Europe 2025

How do you survive (and thrive) when you're running 250+ enterprise Sitecore sites delivering over 2.5 billion pageviews a year?

Our CTO, Piers Matthews, just returned from SUGCON Europe in Antwerp, where he shared the practical truths of scaling Sitecore for real-world enterprise demands.

If you missed the session, here's a taste of what he unpacked (and why you’ll want to watch the full recording).

Security + Scale = No Compromises

Enterprise customers don’t just want uptime, they expect zero downtime and airtight security. Piers showed how to deliver:

• 99.99% uptime with active-active Azure architectures
• Layered defense-in-depth, from edge protection (Cloudflare/Akamai) to internal network isolation with NSGs and private endpoints
• Patching-as-code pipelines that eliminate manual config drift and accelerate recovery

“Everything we patch gets deployed through code. If it’s not automated, it’s not secure at scale.”

Lessons from the Frontlines of Sitecore Ops

This wasn’t theory, it’s the hard-won playbook our platform team uses daily:

• Zero-downtime deployments with production validation, rollback strategies, and integrated security testing (SAST + DAST)
• Log streaming to SIEMs for full-stack observability across multi-region platforms
• Smart use of CDN and Azure Front Door to reduce compute costs and simplify global delivery

Headless on Your Terms

Enterprises aren’t going all-in on headless overnight, and they shouldn’t have to.

• Hybrid rollout strategies using intelligent routing to phase in headless apps path-by-path or host-by-host
• Self-hosted rendering for customers with compliance-heavy environments
• Tailored caching strategies using ISR, SSG, and cache control for near-instant content freshness

“When your customers rely on published content to make financial decisions, latency is not optional.”

DevOps that Delivers at Enterprise Velocity

Piers closed with a DevOps reality check:

Tooling isn’t the hard part, orchestration, compliance, and release predictability are where most platforms fall down.

He shared how Dataweavers enables:

• Unified XM Cloud + Next.js deployments
• Real-time deployment validation with preview domains and pipeline-driven cache clearing
• Version-aware deployment tracking to mitigate surprises from Sitecore SaaS image updates

Want the Full Recording?

Piers' full presentation is packed with architecture diagrams, pipeline demos, and hard-earned advice from the trenches of enterprise Sitecore delivery.

Enter your details below to access the recording, or reach out to us to get a tailored walkthrough for your team.