Managing a managed service: – An exercise in automating the D8 to D9 upgrade for over 170 websites – How we can plan for the D9 to 10 upgrade for over 280 websites
Time: Wednesday 19th October 09:55-10:30
Room: Ballroom 1
Track: Showcases & Project Management
GovCMS is a hosting platform available for government agencies and entities across different levels of government. GovCMS offers two hosting options, a Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. GovCMS currently host over 330 websites for over 100 agencies.
A majority of the GovCMS customer base leverage the SaaS option for convenience, surety and managed services, such as site patching and updates. While this offering benefits a SaaS customer base, there’s many cogs moving behind the scenes to manage and maintain GovCMS.
In 2021, GovCMS underwent an activity to upgrade its 170+ D8 SaaS customers to Drupal 9. This presentation covers D8-D9: the initial planning and intent, the challenges faced from a technical standpoint, considerations with security needs, communications activities leading into and throughout, the balancing act of resources for GovCMS and partners. It also touches on engagement with customers and expectations of stakeholders to deliver and maintain site uptime coupled with a pandemic and the unexpected that can creep into the world of GovCMS.
Lessons learned and new activities to the GovCMS program enable continuous improvements to our processes and to our customers. GovCMS is set-up for future updates and has a lens looking towards a Drupal 9 to Drupal 10 upgrade activity for over 280 SaaS sites.
A majority of the GovCMS customer base leverage the SaaS option for convenience, surety and managed services, such as site patching and updates. While this offering benefits a SaaS customer base, there’s many cogs moving behind the scenes to manage and maintain GovCMS.
In 2021, GovCMS underwent an activity to upgrade its 170+ D8 SaaS customers to Drupal 9. This presentation covers D8-D9: the initial planning and intent, the challenges faced from a technical standpoint, considerations with security needs, communications activities leading into and throughout, the balancing act of resources for GovCMS and partners. It also touches on engagement with customers and expectations of stakeholders to deliver and maintain site uptime coupled with a pandemic and the unexpected that can creep into the world of GovCMS.
Lessons learned and new activities to the GovCMS program enable continuous improvements to our processes and to our customers. GovCMS is set-up for future updates and has a lens looking towards a Drupal 9 to Drupal 10 upgrade activity for over 280 SaaS sites.
Alistair O’Neill
Alistair has been online since 1995 and has been building websites since 1998. Working on a 486 with Notepad, Netscape Composer and Claris Home Page to make first iterations of online content. No home internet didn’t prevent creation, with sites being copied to floppy disk and taken to the Library or local internet café for transfer to get that material onto GeoCities, which was the style at the time.
Alistair has been in the Federal Government since 2007, working in a mix of roles with supporting and building online presences across and for multiple agencies. These have covered websites, intranets, closed and business manuals to a wide variety of audiences. Throughout this time, Alistair was worked on more 35 government web products.
In 2016, Alistair was first introduced to Drupal at IP Australia with a platform shift to GovCMS. Since that time Alistair has worked on numerous GovCMS projects
In mid 2020 Alistair joined GovCMS as the Technical Product Owner. In this role Alistair engages with existing and potential new customers around the offerings of GovCMS, possible solutions to problems, leading the GovCMS backlog and considers future state of solutions for the platform.
Alistair has been in the Federal Government since 2007, working in a mix of roles with supporting and building online presences across and for multiple agencies. These have covered websites, intranets, closed and business manuals to a wide variety of audiences. Throughout this time, Alistair was worked on more 35 government web products.
In 2016, Alistair was first introduced to Drupal at IP Australia with a platform shift to GovCMS. Since that time Alistair has worked on numerous GovCMS projects
In mid 2020 Alistair joined GovCMS as the Technical Product Owner. In this role Alistair engages with existing and potential new customers around the offerings of GovCMS, possible solutions to problems, leading the GovCMS backlog and considers future state of solutions for the platform.
Additional speakersYvonne Norris, Co presenter.