Here are some reasons to Kentico 9 from a Brown Bag I presented a while ago

1. Brown Bag –
Reasons to upgrade to
Kentico 9
Ilesh Mistry

2. We architect, design and build
bespoke KENTICO websites that
deliver outstanding user
experiences.
“
”

3. Key features

4. Continuous Integration
Website development is now up to 30% faster
Serialises ALL most objects into XML
Serialised objects are very small in size so shouldn’t increase the
file size massively
It should pave the way for easy local database setup, which is something
not done with Kentico before
It is not recommended to be used on the Production environment
Setup seems fairly straightforward
Content Staging in conjunction with Kentico CI

5. Integrated Campaign Management
Kentico have revamped the Campaign Management section
Optimize Your Campaigns for Better Results
The time to execute cross-channel online digital marketing campaigns is
greatly reduced
Allows you to develop campaign assets, launch campaigns, and analyse
results from one location, helping optimize your campaigns for better
results
You can now build custom campaign funnels to help you analyse exactly
the steps that are important for your business

6. Web Farm Support
Scaling Environments Optimized for the Cloud
Being able to handle additional traffic to your website
Auto-scaling keeps multiple instances of your Kentico website in sync
within the environment
Self-healing Capabilities - the built-in Web Farm Support will detect the
problem, stop processing any synchronization requests for the instance,
and notify the system administrator of the issue

7. ASP.NET MVC Support
Increased Productivity with Semantic Content Editing
Provides you with a more semantic approach to content editing, without
the distraction of page settings – create content once and use it in
various locations on the live site
With a cleaner architectural layout, you increase your content editing
productivity and speed of website delivery dramatically
Doesn’t work with Kentico EMS and Ecommerce, but there can be some
work arounds/additional work
Big plans to improve this for Kentico 10!

8. Modularization
Increased Productivity with Semantic Content Editing
You can create modules to serve specific needs that can be packaged
automatically, stored, and reused in subsequent projects
Reduce your development costs by creating customized modules with all
the elements you need for current and future projects
The Modularization feature in Kentico is fully compatible with Kentico’s
Page Types, meaning you can edit a page type and include it in the
module. After this, every time the package is exported, it will contain the
module data and the specified page types, this wasn’t the case in
previous versions

9. Minor details

10. Kentico 9 – minor details
Fixed various bugs that were there in Version 8 and the admin area looks the same.
Remember Kentico only support 2 versions back, so if there are any problems,
then Kentico would not likely to help. Get your clients to Upgrade!
Have a look at the Release Notes
The minimum required version of Microsoft .NET Framework is now 4.5
Performance - Improved performance for:
- Loading of page data by listing and menu web parts.
- Displaying of data on multilingual sites that use the Combine with default culture setting.
- Other page-related operations.
Security - The system now uses security tokens to protect pages against Cross site request
forgery attacks.
No longer support for some of the web parts and widgets are no longer supported in
Kentico version 9
Remember to think about this when upgrading your sites to Kentico 9 e.g. Document Library
– it will still work, but no support!

11. Other cool features

12. Kentico 9 – other features
Default Transformations are no longer generated when Page Types or
Custom Tables are created
Form Builder status messages
How to videos in documentation
Groups can be defined to organise tasks in Staging
Web Part, Widgets and Form Controls 'Usage' tab
Bulk File Import no longer available
API Examples now moved out of Admin area
IP-based contact/visitor tracking is gone
Root template category

13. Quick demo on other features

14. Kentico 9 – demo features
There are lots of things to show and the interface is similar to Version 8
Demo features
Helpful tips panel
Pin modules
Content Only Page Types
can’t revert back
Only 1 Page alias allowed in the view

15. Hands on Kentico 9

16. Kentico 9 – hands on
Various places to get your hands on Version 9
Hosted Trial – 7 days
Trial Version – 14 days
Ask!

17. Thank you! Any questions?