Optimizely
MSQ DX is an Optimizely Strategic Global Partner with 18 years of platform expertise.
- 18 years of expertise
- 5 OMVPS
- 50+ Implementations
We combine Platinum Partner status, Opal Specialised Partner status & Customer Choice Partner 2025 recognition with five Optimizely MVPs who actively shape platform direction through founding roles in the Strategy Working Group.
We operate at the highest tier of Optimizely partnership.
MSQ DX sits within Optimizely's Strategic Global Partnership programme—the elite tier designed for complex, large-scale digital transformation requiring global delivery capabilities. This partnership structure creates tangible advantages for clients that standard partnerships simply can't provide.
What this means for you:
Executive-level accountability: Direct access to senior Optimizely leadership when it matters
Formal quarterly governance reviews: Coordinated strategic planning that aligns both organisations around your success
Effective escalation pathways: When technical challenges arise, we have direct lines to the people who can solve them
Strategic insights into platform evolution: Your digital roadmap benefits from insider knowledge of where Optimizely is heading
Beyond operational benefits, our partnership provides genuine platform influence.
Platform Influence That Matters
Our five Most Valuable Professionals aren't just certified—they're shaping what Optimizely becomes.
As founding members of Optimizely's Strategy Working Group, our MVPs influence platform direction from inception. Through Partner Advisory Board representation, we contribute to commercial and partnership strategy, ensuring client interests remain central to platform evolution.
This insider position translates directly to client advantage:
Early access to beta features: We're developing game-changing implementations while competitors remain unaware of forthcoming innovations
Roadmap visibility: Your technology decisions benefit from understanding where the platform is going, not just where it is today
Investment protection: We know which capabilities are being enhanced, which are being retired, and what's coming next—protecting your long-term investment
The combination of formal governance structure, strategic influence, and platform roadmap visibility creates competitive advantage that extends far beyond standard agency relationships.
Andy Blyth
Technical Architect
Optimizely OMVP
Ibrar Hussain
Technical Director
Optimizely OMVP
John Prior
Principal Consultant
Optimizely OMVP
Lorna Foott
Director of Partnerships
Optimizely OMVP
Tom Robinson
Technical Analyst
Optimizely OMVP
Proven Delivery at Enterprise Scale
50+ enterprise implementations across sectors that demand excellence.
Our implementation portfolio spans healthcare, professional services, membership organisations, manufacturing, financial services, legal, and hospitality sectors. This breadth demonstrates capability to deliver excellence across diverse industries and complex organisational structures.
We don't just implement Optimizely—we transform businesses with it. Our implementations routinely tackle:
Multi-site and international rollouts: Coordinating content, governance, and workflows across markets and brands
Complex integrations: Connecting Optimizely with CRM, ERP, PIM, DAM, and marketing automation systems
Personalisation at scale: Delivering tailored experiences to millions of users based on behaviour, preferences, and business rules
Content operations transformation: Restructuring how organisations create, manage, and deploy content efficiently
Migration and platform upgrades: Moving from legacy systems or earlier Optimizely versions with zero business disruption
Each implementation is designed around measurable outcomes—revenue growth, operational efficiency, or both.
Award-Winning Recognition
Three consecutive years of UK partnership awards. Customer Choice Partner 2025 & 2024. Content Conductor Award 2025.
Gartner recognises Optimizely as a DXP leader, validating enterprise-grade platform capabilities. Our Customer Choice Partner 2024 & 2025 status provides client-voted validation of delivery excellence—recognition awarded by our clients themselves, not vendor selection.
The Content Conductor Award 2025, won with our client CIPD, demonstrates real-world innovation: delivering conversational AI that transformed 160,000+ member experiences through intelligent content discovery and personalised guidance.
These aren't vanity awards. They're proof points from independent analysts and actual clients that validate what we deliver.
Technical Excellence and Certification Depth
70+ specialist Optimizely certifications globally across our team.
Our certified experts span the full Optimizely ecosystem:
Content Cloud (CMS): Building editor-friendly content management experiences
Commerce Cloud: Delivering sophisticated B2B and B2C commerce solutions
Data Platform (CDP): Orchestrating unified customer data across touchpoints
Experimentation: Running statistically valid A/B tests that drive conversion improvements
Personalisation: Creating tailored experiences based on real-time behaviour and segmentation
This depth of certification ensures we're not just technically competent—we're pushing platform boundaries to solve problems other agencies can't tackle.
Why Strategic Partnership Matters
Most agencies can implement Optimizely. Few can influence it.
When you work with MSQ DX, you're not just getting certified developers and project managers. You're getting:
Strategic foresight: Understanding where the platform is heading before public announcements
Faster issue resolution: Direct access to Optimizely engineering teams when complex challenges arise
Innovation advantage: Early access to capabilities that give you competitive edge
Platform advocacy: Your needs and challenges being represented in product strategy discussions
Long-term investment protection: Confidence that the platform you're building on has a roadmap aligned with market evolution
This is the difference between a vendor relationship and a strategic partnership. We're not just implementing what exists today—we're helping shape what exists tomorrow, with your interests at the table.
Our Approach: Senior-Led, AI-Enabled, Outcome-Focused
We don't hide senior minds behind junior delivery.
Every Optimizely implementation is led by senior practitioners who've delivered at enterprise scale. Combined with AI-enabled acceleration through our Nimbus migration platform and DXA analytics product, we deliver faster without compromising quality.
Our implementations follow proven patterns refined across decades:
Discovery and strategy: Understanding your business challenges before touching technology
Architecture and design: Building scalable, maintainable solutions aligned to your growth trajectory
Agile delivery: Iterative implementation with continuous client collaboration and validation
Quality assurance: Rigorous testing across functionality, performance, accessibility, and security
Managed services: Ongoing support, optimisation, and evolution as your needs change
We measure our success by what we help you achieve: measurable growth, sustained efficiency, real-world outcomes.
DXP, Digital Strategy, Optimizely
Optimizely CMS 13: what it actually means for your marketing team
Event, AI, Opal, CX, Optimizely
The Connection Drift: how AI agents are changing customer acquisition for marketing leaders
Awards, Service Excellence, Optimizely
We won Optimizely’s Customer Choice Partner of the Year. For the second year running.
FAQs _
Our Most Asked Questions
What do Optimizely's partner designations mean, and where does MSQ DX sit?
Optimizely's Solution Partner Programme has five tiers: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Premier Platinum. MSQ DX holds Platinum Solution Partner status and Strategic Global Partnership status — these are distinct designations that reflect different dimensions of the relationship.
The tier structure recognises implementation volume, certifications, and client success. Platinum status requires sustained delivery across enterprise engagements and a significant base of certified professionals. Premier Platinum sits above it, recognising the largest-scale global partners.
MSQ DX also holds Opal Specialised Partner certification and has been named UK & Ireland Customer's Choice Partner of the Year in both 2024 and 2025. The combination of Platinum tier, Strategic Global Partnership, and Opal specialisation means access to Optimizely's highest levels of technical support, escalation paths, and product beta programmes.
Should we choose Optimizely SaaS CMS or PaaS CMS for a new implementation?
The right choice depends on your organisation's technical maturity, customisation requirements, and long-term hosting preferences. SaaS CMS suits teams that want Optimizely to manage infrastructure, updates, and scaling. PaaS CMS suits organisations with complex .NET estates, deep customisation needs, or existing hosting arrangements they want to maintain.
Both options now share core capabilities. CMS 13 brought Visual Builder and Optimizely Graph to PaaS, significantly narrowing the feature gap with SaaS. Optimizely has confirmed that PaaS will continue to receive investment — CMS PaaS and SaaS share the same codebase, and the company has stated publicly that it is not giving up on PaaS.
The key decision factors are: how much control your development team needs over the runtime environment, whether you want to self-host or use Optimizely's DXP Cloud, your frontend framework preferences (SaaS is more frontend-agnostic while PaaS has deeper .NET integration), and your appetite for managing upgrades. SaaS receives continuous updates automatically. PaaS upgrades are managed by your team or partner on your own timeline.
One point worth noting: SaaS CMS is headless by design and does not host your frontend by default. You need a separate hosting environment for your presentation layer. Optimizely has introduced an optional Frontend Hosting add-on, but many organisations use Vercel, Azure, or AWS for this.
MSQ DX has delivered implementations on both models and can advise based on your specific technical landscape.
What is an Optimizely OMVP and why does it matter when choosing a partner?
An OMVP (Optimizely Most Valuable Professional) is an individual recognised by Optimizely for exceptional contribution to the platform's community, codebase, and ecosystem. MSQ DX has five OMVPs on staff — one of the highest concentrations of any agency. It signals deep, sustained expertise that goes beyond standard certification.
The programme dates back to 2007, when it launched as the EPiServer MVP. Today, OMVPs span more than 50 organisations across 17 countries. Recipients are nominated and assessed annually based on community contributions, technical innovation, speaking engagements, and published expertise. Within the programme, there are Silver, Gold, and Platinum tiers reflecting sustained contribution over multiple years, and two categories: Technology and Strategy.
MSQ DX's five OMVPs are Andy Blyth (Technical Architect), Ibrar Hussain (Technical Director), John Prior (Principal Consultant), Lorna Foott (Director of Partnerships), and Tom Robinson (Technical Analyst). The breadth matters — this spans architecture, delivery, consulting, partnerships, and product strategy, which means OMVP-level knowledge informs every stage of an engagement. When evaluating partners, ask how many OMVPs are on staff and whether they will be involved in your project.
What does Opal Specialised Partner status mean for our AI-powered digital experience?
Opal is Optimizely's AI agent orchestration platform, launched in May 2025. It goes beyond content generation — Opal coordinates AI agents across the full Optimizely product suite to automate workflows, personalise experiences, and optimise campaigns. MSQ DX holds Opal Specialised Partner status, meaning our team is trained and certified to implement, configure, and extend Opal within enterprise environments.
The specialisation matters because Opal is not a bolt-on feature. It is embedded across Optimizely's CMS, commerce, experimentation, and content marketing products. Adoption has been rapid — nearly 900 companies began using Opal within its first months, making it the fastest-growing product in Optimizely's history.
Opal runs on a credit-based consumption model. Optimizely currently provides 200 complimentary monthly credits per instance (through September 2026), with paid tiers available for heavier usage. In practical terms, Opal can generate and adapt content across channels, automate A/B test creation and analysis, build audience segments from behavioural data, and orchestrate multi-step marketing workflows.
MSQ DX's approach to Opal focuses on identifying the specific workflows where AI orchestration will drive measurable impact. We help organisations establish governance frameworks, define quality thresholds for AI-generated content, and build measurement models that quantify Opal's contribution to business outcomes.
What's involved in migrating to Optimizely CMS 13, and what should we plan for?
Migrating from CMS 12 to CMS 13 is a significant but well-defined undertaking. The runtime moves to .NET 10, Visual Builder becomes the default editing surface, Opti ID replaces legacy authentication for editorial and admin users, and Search & Navigation is no longer supported — replaced by Optimizely Graph. Planning should start six to nine months before your target go-live.
The largest workstream for most organisations is the Search & Navigation to Graph migration. If your current implementation relies heavily on Search & Navigation for content delivery, filtering, or site search, this is where the bulk of development effort sits. Graph is architecturally different — it is a federated content delivery API rather than a local search index — so it is not a like-for-like swap. Optimizely has released a dedicated CMS 13 Graph SDK to support the transition.
The good news: CMS 12 to 13 is considerably lighter than the CMS 11 to 12 migration, which required a full .NET Framework to .NET Core transition. If your codebase is already on CMS 12 with .NET 8, the framework upgrade is incremental. The areas that require the most attention beyond Graph are: custom property types (which may need updating for Visual Builder compatibility), third-party integrations that depend on deprecated APIs, and any custom extensions tied to the old authentication model. Note that visitor-facing authentication can still use ASP.NET Identity — Opti ID is mandatory for CMS editorial access, not necessarily for your public-facing site.
MSQ DX has published a blog on what CMS 13 means for marketing teams, and our technical team can run a migration readiness assessment to scope the work specific to your implementation.