Sun International has moved its websites from Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) to Umbraco, and the Cape Town agency that did the work says the lesson is that the operating model matters more than the software. The account comes from Bluegrass Digital itself, published on Bizcommunity on 28 September 2026, so the claims about results are the agency’s own and not an independent assessment.
## What was built
The new setup uses Umbraco Cloud for the content layer and a Next.js front end hosted on Azure. Next.js is an open-source React framework maintained by Vercel, which handles routing, rendering and data fetching for the pages visitors see. Splitting the content system from the front end this way is the composable approach that Bluegrass lists among its specialities. It covers a digital estate that spans hospitality, gaming, entertainment, loyalty and self-service journeys. Sun International’s public site lists its casinos and resorts, including Sun City, GrandWest and Sibaya, along with hotels, the Sunbet online gaming platform and the Sun MVG loyalty programme, which gives a sense of how many separate audiences one content system has to serve.
In a separate write-up on its own site, dated 22 September 2026, Bluegrass says the platform now manages roughly 2,000 content items organised through about 240 document types. These cover templates, components and reusable content blocks across several websites. It also supports integrations for member accounts and online timeshare booking.
## How the migration was run
Bluegrass began with a technical audit of the existing platform before choosing what to move. Rather than copy everything across, the team decided which parts of the old build deserved rebuilding and which should be left behind. The agency says the aim was to simplify a complex digital estate, improve content operations and leave a more maintainable foundation, not to swap one product for another.
Two safeguards are singled out. The first is search visibility: the agency says the new platform was built so that it does not disrupt discoverability, transactions or service continuity. The second is testing of the customer journeys that matter commercially, which Bluegrass describes as brand discovery, booking intent, customer support and member self-service.
Matt Edwards, head of product at Bluegrass Digital, put the philosophy this way: “The platform choice matters, but the operating model matters more.” The article argues that a migration should be judged by what happens after launch, such as faster publishing and easier changes to customer journeys, and not by the launch date. It also says the issue was never whether AEM is better or worse than Umbraco, but whether a different platform and delivery model could serve Sun International’s governance, marketing and customer-journey needs.
## What marketing gets
According to Bluegrass, marketing teams now have “greater day-to-day autonomy” and “a more practical way to manage content”, while enterprise-level governance stays in place. Governance here means the rules that keep brand, security and compliance consistent across several sites. The agency argues that a new CMS cannot make up for weak content foundations and will expose them faster, and that content which is structured, governed and reusable is what later features such as personalised search depend on.
## The two vendors
Umbraco describes itself as an open-source .NET content management system and also offers managed cloud hosting. According to Umbraco’s partner listing, Bluegrass is a Gold Partner, has been a partner since 2012, and is based in Claremont, Cape Town. The listing says the agency has worked on replatforming and ongoing optimisation since 2008, and that it won the “Best Professional Services Sector Solution” award at the 2022 Umbraco Awards. Its listed services include composable (MACH) architecture, digital experience platforms and personalisation, enterprise integration, legacy modernisation and API engineering.
Businesses weighing a similar move can find related coverage under tech and telecoms, SME and entrepreneurship coverage and the profile of Umbraco.
