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At Sitecore DX 2023 Sydney, Toyota Australia’s Digital Architect Mathew Archibald and Dataweavers’ Chief Technology Officer Piers Matthews took the stage to reveal how Toyota navigated their journey to a composable, headless architecture with Sitecore—laying down a rock-solid digital foundation for the road ahead!
Watch the full presentation here: https://www.dataweavers.com/watch-toyota-journey-to-composable
The Challenge
Toyota Australia’s digital journey started with an older version of Sitecore running on virtual machines. Over time, as they moved to the latest version on Microsoft Azure, they faced increasing challenges, including rising development costs, slower content publishing, and a lack of flexibility in deploying updates. Their content teams were struggling with a platform that was becoming increasingly complex, and the company had accumulated a significant amount of technical debt.
Their goal was to re-architect their entire digital environment, shifting to a composable microservices setup to take advantage of simplicity, flexibility, reusability, and speed. However, this transformation needed to be done without disrupting their ongoing digital operations. Enter a hybrid approach.
The Solution: Hybrid Shift to Composable Architecture
Toyota took a phased, hybrid approach by running their traditional system in parallel with new composable services, gradually shifting to Sitecore’s headless architecture. This approach allowed them to address multiple pain points while keeping business continuity intact.
One of the key opportunities for reimagining their architecture was the used vehicle marketplace. Toyota used this project as a sandbox for innovation, adopting Sitecore’s latest headless capabilities. They transitioned to a microservices-based model, using pure content APIs with GraphQL and building new front-end experiences with Next.js and React. This hybrid approach enabled them to independently deploy APIs and content, significantly reducing deployment times and operational complexities.
Key Benefits of the Hybrid Approach
The hybrid model brought several immediate benefits:
- Improved Speed and Efficiency: By separating content from APIs, Toyota was able to deploy changes faster and avoid the time-consuming process of deploying both simultaneously.
- Simplified Architecture: They transitioned to a clean, vanilla implementation of Sitecore, eliminating many customizations and leveraging modern best practices.
- Operational Flexibility: Independent deployment of APIs and front-end components enabled Toyota to roll out updates with minimal downtime, even in a complex, multi-site environment with distinct deployments for Toyota and Lexus.
Leveraging Sitecore's XM Cloud and Composable Tools
A major milestone in Toyota’s journey was becoming XM Cloud-ready. They worked closely with Dataweavers to prepare their digital environment for XM Cloud, ensuring a smooth transition when the time was right.
To further enhance their digital capabilities, Toyota adopted Sitecore’s SaaS products, including Sitecore AutoCloud and Discover. This enabled them to provide a sophisticated, headless, API-driven eCommerce platform for their vehicle marketplace, centralizing inventory data from 250 dealers across Australia. The move to a headless setup allowed for improved performance, personalized experiences, and better management of their vast content library.
The Road Ahead
With a solid foundation in place, Toyota is poised to continue its digital transformation journey. They are currently planning the migration of all content and sites into a fully headless setup, while still maintaining legacy MVC-based environments where needed. The next steps involve further adoption of composable services, exploring Sitecore Search, and ultimately preparing for the full integration of XM Cloud.
Contact us today to learn how Dataweavers can help you on your composable journey.
How we can help you get started
Check out our 13 Key Practice Checklist for Sitecore, to self-measure where you land in your current DevOps process:
