Drupal 8 is a transformative content management system for higher education, offering institutions a unified platform to enhance their digital strategies. It aims to integrate various campus needs while improving efficiency and reducing costs through shared resources and standardized practices. The upgrade presents both opportunities for enhanced functionality and challenges in coordination and migration from previous versions.

1. Why Drupal 8 is a Game
Changer for Higher
Education
September 9, 2015

2. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher
Education
→ Chris Hartigan, VP Higher Education, Acquia
→ John Kealy, Website Support Manager, UCSF
→ Chris Miller, Solutions Architect, Acquia

3. What is Drupal 8?
→ The next release of the most popular
content management system in higher
education
→ An evolved digital platform that institutions
can use to deliver exceptional online
experiences to all constituents
→ A reason to get really excited about the
future of digital at your school!

4. Main
.EDU
Colleges
Departments
Admissions
Alumni
Faculty
Students
Community
What Does the Institution of Tomorrow Look
Like, Digitally?
→ Integrated?
→ Branded?
→ Centralized?
→ Controlled (Governance)?
→ Optimized?
→ (More) Cost Effective?
→ Seamless experience?

5. What Does the Institution of Tomorrow Look
Like, Digitally?

6. Today’s Reality?

7. Today’s Reality?
19
Schools
&
Colleges
12
Brand
Experiences
6
CMS
SoluCons
(Integrated?
Centralized?
OpCmized?
Cost
effecCve?
Seamless
experience?)

8. Digital is the Next Enterprise Platform on
Campus
→ Payroll
→ HRM
→ Financial Aid
→ Student Information
→ Portal
→ LMS
→ CRM
→ Digital
Distributed
Enterprise
1970’s
1980’s
1990’s
1990’s
Early 2000’s
Mid / Late 2000’s
Late 2000’s
2015…

9. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher
Education
Drupal 8 represents an extraordinary opportunity for colleges and
universities. It provides institutions with the ability to drive an
enterprise digital strategy from a single, centralized
platform that can support all campus requirements.

10. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher
Education
→ John Kealy, Website Support
Manager, UCSF

11. Plan for Success and Level Up
→ Upgrade provides a clean slate
→ Improve your business process
→ Reach out to business partners to plan
→ Effective planning gains economies of scale

12. UCSF’s Drupal 6 Hosting
→ Very little community coordination
→ No cross campus sharing of code
→ All sites were custom builds
§ Costly ($15,000 -$150,000 per site build)
§ Difficult to maintain (full time employee to manage > 40 sites)
→ No hosting intake process

13. Service Improvements
→ Monthly Drupal Users Group meetings (2012)
→ Better Coordination between schools and central IT (Summer 2012)
→ Standard Install package (Winter 2013)
→ Self service site request form (Winter 2013)

14. UCSF Drupal Hosting Growth
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
(est)
Sites
Created
0
0
309
194
324
Starter
Kits
Site
Built
0
0
215
135
228
Sites
Hosted
26
59
493
609
933
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
1000

15. UCSF Drupal Hosting Costs
2011
2012
2013
2014
Number of sites
26
59
493
609
Platform Provider Cost
$34,000
$84,000
$108,500
$100,000
Approximate FTE Cost
$80,000
$160,000
$240,000
$320,000
Hosting Total
$114,000
$244,000
$348,500
$420,000
Cost/Site
$4,385
$4,136
$707
$690

16. Why Not Coordinate in Drupal 7?
→ Everyone has existing approach
§ Changes to current stack are hard
§ Creates winners and losers on decisions
→ Current sites still need TLC

17. Advantages of Planning for Drupal 8
→ We are all in planning stage for 8
→ All need to develop Drupal 8 distributions
→ Drupal 8 improvements disrupt current approaches
→ No winners and losers on architecture choices
→ Drupal 8 lifespan 6-10 years (more time for ROI)

18. Planning For Drupal 8: Goals
→ Provide a useful service
→ Save UC time and money
→ Create more secure webhosting environment
→ Standardize development practices
§ Create shared best practices
§ Create shared stack of modules/functionality
§ Develop talent pool with common skills

19. Planning For Drupal 8: Challenges
→ Cross UC coordination
→ Building scalable governance/coordination
§ Making joint decisions
§ Coming up with common funding
→ Building scalable architecture
→ Creating a flexible central “stack”

20. Why Drupal 8 is a Game Changer for Higher
Education
→ Chris Miller, Solutions
Architect, Acquia

21. Drupal 8: ~6 Critical Issues Left!

22. Drupal 8 Benefits Everyone…
→ Content Authors
→ Site Builders
→ Developers
→ Designers
→ End Users

23. Drupal8.edu/platform
→ Enable centralized development teams
§ Common features and distributions
→ Empower distributed content creation
→ Create Once, Publish Everywhere (COPE)
→ Mobile & Services
→ Multilingual & Localization
→ 508 Compliance

24. Drupal 8: Opportunities
→ Enhanced functionality included in
Drupal core
§ New theming framework
§ Mobile first
§ Improved administrative and publishing
experiences
§ Native multilingual
§ Robust configuration management
→ New innovations will occur in D8
§ New features and functionality
§ Enhancements to core
§ New modules
→ Performance improvements
§ Improved caching strategy
→ Developer resource onboarding
made easier; more accessible
§ Ability to build a team more quickly
§ New architecture allows PHP or
Object Oriented developers to learn
Drupal more easily
§ Front end development adopts a
more common standard

25. Drupal 8: Challenges
→ Rebuilt Drupal 8 codebase requires developer lead time
→ Theming, while simplified, is different
→ Waiting for “Contrib” to port modules to Drupal 8
→ Some migration required to move from Drupal 6 & 7

26. Why Drupal 8 is a Game
Changer for Higher
Education
September 9, 2015