Optimizely’s London Partner Kick-off: Be like water – and become unstoppable

People & Culture,

Everything you need to know from Optimizely's London Partner Kickoff – and what you can expect in 2026 and beyond

Flowing with the rise of AI, the future of CMS, and shaping what the ideal, unified digital experience will look like in 2026 and beyond. If Opal is the current, and CMS 13 is the channel, Optimizely One is the ocean.

I came back from Optimizely’s Partner Kick-off in London completely refreshed. The whole event experience just put me at ease – because what Optimizely was able to convey to us as partners is that they understand where our clients are right now – and what’s coming downstream.

They’re not trying to out-swim the tide. They have a plan for moving with it, shaping it, and using it to go faster. And make no mistake, like Optimizely SSA Phil Yates mentioned we’re definitely in a rising-tide moment.

Some companies will rise with the swell that AI creates others will be left behind. There have been two other moments like this in our lifetimes, the Internet was the first, and Smart phones with Mobile Apps was the second.

— Phil Yates

Optimizely SSA

Minding the AI gap: Empowering marketers to become unstoppable and focus on what really matters

While 94% of leaders say AI is critical to business success, only 8% of marketers consider themselves advanced with AI. Most aren’t struggling because they lack ambition. They’re struggling because of capacity and complexity.

Content demand is outpacing production. Compliance requirements are tightening while teams are stretched. Reporting still means pulling data from three places, shaping it into something presentable, then spending the best hours of the week formatting slides. The work keeps piling up below the surface like an iceberg, and the strategy you actually want to launch gets pushed further down the list.

This is the reality many teams are living in – lots of investment, lots of intent, and a daily grind that keeps them operating in the shallows.

Optimizely’s message was clear here: The next wave is about changing the economics of execution. Not by replacing people, but by empowering them to become unstoppable, reclaim their time, and focus on what really matters.

Opal is at the centre of this wave as the orchestration layer for modern marketing

Opal is evolving into the orchestration layer for modern marketing. It isn’t just a pleasant assistant you ping when you’re stuck – but a system of intelligent agents that can coordinate work across the entire marketing and digital lifecycle – not just answer questions. Pre-built and custom agents can help you decide which audiences to reach, while generating and refining content, and deploying experiences across channels.

Opal also can also simplify your path from data to (the right) decision. It pulls insights from across your stack and turns them into clear analysis that helps your teams move faster on campaigns, content, and optimization.

Plus, it isn’t confined to one corner of the platform. Opal sits across the entire Optimizely ecosystem and can connect to the tools your team already relies on. And the results are already coming in. The 2025 Optimizely Opal AI Benchmark Report showed increases in engagement (+7.41), personalisation (+24.05), and win rates (+9.26%), while simultaneously reducing time per campaign by 53.75%.

Agent orchestration through Opal helps teams move from manual processes to continuous optimisation. It’s a fundamental shift in how digital platforms operate. With more than two decades of digital transformation experience, we help our clients adopt this new model in a practical and outcome-driven way.

— Elisabeth Oruba

Lead CMS Advisor, NoA Ignite

Giving you control of your direction and time

The big headline idea is simple: You stay in control of your direction, and Opal’s agent orchestration helps carry the operational load – giving you the time to focus on what really matters.

Think about the work that quietly drains teams: Content variations, metadata tagging, compliance checks, monitoring performance, producing reports, updating assets, finding and restructuring content, improving SEO and the new world of AI discovery. It’s not glamorous, but it’s constant. And it’s exactly the kind of work that compounds when nobody has time to keep up.

Opal is built for that under-the-waterline workload. The stuff you should do but never have capacity for.

But flow doesn’t happen just because you have a current. It happens because the channel is built right.

CMS 13: The channel that will get you where you want to go

For me, the talk around CMS 13 was really reassuring. I see it as Optimizely tightening the foundation so teams can actually move faster without breaking things. The push here is towards removing friction from publishing and experience delivery. Less waiting on developer queues. More working visually and confidently. More ability to connect external content and data sources so your site reflects reality, not stale copies of reality.

Many of CMS 13's new features are built on Optimizely Graph. Optimizely’s official position is that Graph isn't a nice-to-have feature add-on it's a corner stone for content delivery in the Optimizely ecosystem. And I think this is for good reason. For example, with Graph for Search & Generation, every piece of data becomes searchable and usable. Marketers can find what matters and generate new experiences instantly through semantic search and improved relevance, unified content retrieval, and smarter content delivery.

Embedded DAM capabilities are also a big deal: Faster content creation, fewer duplicate uploads, and better governance of what’s approved and current. This is also where the new CMS Core philosophy starts to show up in practice.

Another major development is that features are now being built once to evolve across both SaaS and PaaS, and Visual Builder is one of the first examples of that shift reaching PaaS CMS. With Visual Builder, marketers can edit content through an intuitive drag-and-drop interface with real-time previews, replacing the older on-page editing and “All Properties” workflows with a much smoother and more visual experience.

Visual Builder is designed to keep marketers in motion while still protecting brand consistency. And the broader theme is future-proofing: reducing the technical drag that builds up when speed is prioritized early, and maintainability is postponed.

This matters because the tide doesn’t slow down. If your CMS setup is rigid or debt-heavy, every new wave turns into turbulence.

This brings me to the wrap-up with Optimizely One.

Optimizely One is the ocean: The AI-powered digital experience platform that unifies everything

If Opal is the current, and CMS 13 is the channel, Optimizely One is the ocean.

The big promise is with Optimizely One is unification: Campaigns, content, experimentation, orchestration, delivery, and analysis coming together in one operating system. The critical point is that Opal isn’t meant to live in one corner. It’s meant to be present across the platform, and able to connect into the broader ecosystem teams already rely on.

So, what’s the big takeaway from Optimizely’s London Partner Kick-off?

Be like water.

Let the tide of AI lift you instead of overwhelming you:

Use Opal to move your icebergs of work out of the way, so your team can do the work that actually drives growth.

Use CMS 13 to create smoother flow, faster publishing, stronger discoverability, and a foundation that won’t crack under pressure.

And use Optimizely One as the connected ecosystem that keeps every drop working together.

If you’re heading into 2026 wondering how to scale output, speed, and impact without scaling headcount, let’s talk. We can help you find your flow and ride the coming waves, not chase them.

Big changes can mean bigger opportunities

With CMS 13 and Opal, Optimizely is your complete AI-infused orchestration layer for modern marketing in 2026.

It just takes the right partner to unlock its true potential.

Tobiasz Kulesza: Head of Client Growth; (+48)690806585|tobiasz.kulesza@noaignite.com

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