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Many organizations find themselves at a technological crossroads: update or change and evolve their CMS?
On one hand, in our work with public and private organizations, we often encounter legacy platforms like Drupal 7 – now end-of-life – that can no longer keep pace and represent a growing risk in terms of security and support. On the other hand, proprietary solutions with high license costs and limited customization capabilities drain organizations' budgets without offering the flexibility and speed needed to respond to market challenges.
But abandoning your "legacy" platform isn't just a technical matter. Given the central role of a CMS in an organization, it's also the best opportunity to rethink the entire digital strategy. In this context, migration to Drupal CMS is a strategic opportunity evaluated by many decision makers.
In previous articles in our series on Drupal CMS, we explored the innovative features of the platform and how it compares favorably with alternatives on the market. In this third article of the series, we guide you through an essential practical aspect, starting from our field experience: how to effectively plan and implement migration to Drupal CMS, minimizing risks and maximizing return on investment.
Assessing the current situation: the initial assessment is key
A successful migration project always begins with an in-depth discovery and assessment phase.
The assessment of the existing platform is not simply a technical exercise, but a 360-degree evaluation that involves technological, organizational, and business aspects.
This step, too often underestimated, allows you to avoid surprises and define clear objectives.
Technical audit and migration objectives
The first dimension of the assessment concerns the technical analysis of the current implementation.
A complete overview must involve all aspects: system architecture, content structure, custom functionality and modules in use, integrations with external systems, and performance and security of the implementation.
In parallel, it's essential to clearly define the migration objectives, so that efforts are aligned with actual needs, articulated on three levels:
- Technical objectives: improvement of platform performance, security, and maintainability, but also particular integrations or functionalities.
- Business objectives: reduction of TCO (the total cost of a solution), increase in conversions, or ability to launch new initiatives in reduced timeframes. It's clear that there will be needs to harmonize and prioritize.
- Organizational objectives: greater autonomy for non-technical teams, more efficient workflows, or better collaboration between teams.
Our free tool for migrating from Drupal 7
Based on our experience, we've developed a free assessment tool specifically designed for organizations using Drupal 7 that need to plan migration to Drupal CMS.
This tool analyzes your Drupal 7 installation according to various parameters: content structure, active modules, frontend implementation complexity, and configured integrations.
The result is a report that provides a snapshot of the current situation and personalized indications on the most relevant aspects of migration to the latest version of Drupal.
This tool obviously doesn't replace a thorough professional analysis, necessary to obtain accurate estimates, but it represents a good starting point to begin internal reasoning and evaluations.
In a recent assessment case for an organization in the financial sector, the tool helped identify optimization areas, such as unused modules and redundant content structures, providing an initial information base for subsequent detailed analysis conducted by our experts.
Migration strategies compared: choosing the right approach
There is no universal approach to migration to Drupal CMS. Each project has its unique story. In our experience, however, we can identify three main migration strategies, each with distinctive characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages.
Complete migration: the "Big Bang"
Complete migration involves transferring the entire digital ecosystem in a single phase. In this scenario, the new Drupal CMS platform is fully developed in parallel with the existing system. At the predetermined moment, the new system is ready and the switch is made.
When it's the ideal approach: This strategy is effective for organizations with small to medium-sized sites. It's valid when there's urgency for complete renewal and where potential temporary downtime is a manageable critical issue.
As an example, one of our clients in the manufacturing sector opted for this approach, migrating a site of about 200 pages and a product catalog. The development of the new Drupal platform took place over about three months, with an effective "Big Bang" transition occurring over a weekend with just 6 hours of downtime.
Advantages and challenges:
- ✓ Faster and more concentrated implementation
- ✓ Generally more contained costs
- ✓ Immediately coherent user experience
- ✗ Risk concentrated at the moment of switch
- ✗ Significant organizational impact
- ✗ Need for particularly thorough testing
Progressive migration: the gradual path
Migration occurs progressively, with the new site growing through the transfer of sections or functionalities in successive phases. The existing system and the new one are kept active simultaneously during migration, which can require an extended period. This approach requires effective routing mechanisms to direct users to the appropriate platform based on the requested section.
When it's the ideal approach: A gradual path is suitable for complex digital ecosystems, where operational continuity is an absolute priority and risk must be distributed over time. Even in the presence of many stakeholders, a progressive migration helps mediate diverse needs and reach an effective compromise.
For a large online publisher, with a portal managing millions of monthly visitors, we carried out the migration adopting this strategy. The migration began with less critical sections, then gradually proceeded to areas with higher traffic. The entire process lasted 8 months, always keeping the portal live without service disruptions.
Advantages and challenges:
- ✓ Risk distributed in multiple phases
- ✓ More manageable organizational impact
- ✓ Emerging problems limited to specific portions
- ✗ Longer implementation times
- ✗ Need to manage parallel systems
- ✗ Possible inconsistencies in user experience
Hybrid approach: the integration layer
The hybrid approach involves implementing an integration layer (typically an API gateway) that allows federating content and functionality, both from legacy systems and new systems. Drupal CMS thus acts as a content management layer, coexisting in parallel with other systems through an API-centric connection and orchestration.
When it's the ideal approach: This strategy is effective for organizations with multiple interconnected systems, where direct migration would be too complex or risky.
One of our clients in the financial services sector adopted this strategy, implementing Drupal CMS as a central content management hub and connecting it through APIs with legacy systems (CRM, premium calculation, policy management).
Advantages and challenges:
- ✓ Gradual renewal with full operability
- ✓ Reuse of existing functional components
- ✓ Support for long-term transformation strategies
- ✗ Requires advanced API management skills
- ✗ Typically higher initial investment
- ✗ Greater architectural complexity
It's clear that the choice of approach is not a stylistic choice, but must always be the result of an analysis conducted during the assessment phase. The evaluation must be all-encompassing, considering factors such as business criticality of the platform, ecosystem complexity, risk level, available resources, and long-term objectives.
The phases of a migration project
Once the strategy is defined, it's fundamental to structure the project in clear phases. As already emphasized, the phases are not merely technical, but also organizational and strategic. This roadmap will not only guide technical implementation but will also facilitate communication with stakeholders and expectation management.
Planning and discovery
For the success of the project, the first phase involves the detailed definition of scope, requirements, and target architecture. In this phase, strategic decisions are cemented: which content and functionality to migrate, which instead to rethink or even abandon, which architecture to implement.
During this phase, it's essential to involve not only the technical team, but also business stakeholders and end users, in order to bring out all needs, not always evident or manifest. Particularly effective in this regard are co-design workshops, as well as interviews with key users and analysis of usage data.
Development and configuration
The development phase is the heart of technical implementation, where the new Drupal CMS platform takes shape. This phase is broad and depends on the specific project: indeed, it includes the implementation of the data structure, development of custom functionality, configuration of workflows and permissions, and creation of the user interface.
An agile approach is now essential, with 2-3 week sprints and regular demos to stakeholders. This allows sharing timely feedback and making incremental adjustments.
Content migration
Parallel to development, it's necessary to plan and implement the migration of content from the existing system to the new one under construction. Unfortunately, it's never as simple as copy-paste, quite the opposite! This phase includes defining a mapping between old and new structures, developing migration scripts, executing test migrations, and managing special cases.
One of the most complex aspects concerns precisely these special contents and those that require substantial transformations, for example when the data structure is significantly reconceived. In these cases, a hybrid approach that combines automation and manual interventions is often the most effective solution.
Testing, go-live and post-launch
Before launch, a thorough testing phase is essential to ensure quality and performance, both in the case of complete migration and progressive migration. The moment of cutover requires detailed planning, with a rollback plan in case of critical problems.
The first 48-72 hours after go-live are particularly critical: a dedicated team should be available to monitor the platform and respond quickly to any problems. After the initial stabilization, the post-launch support phase begins, which includes training for users and collecting feedback.
How long does a CMS migration take?
Timelines for a migration, both to Drupal CMS and to any other system, can vary significantly based on the specifics of your project. Based on our experience, however, we can share some indicative time frameworks.
Small projects (low complexity, few integrations):
These projects can require indicatively some weeks or some months, divided into assessment, development, content migration, and post-launch support phases. The actual duration will depend on numerous specific factors that only a professional analysis can determine with precision. Indicatively, we're talking about 6-12 weeks.
Medium projects (medium complexity, various integrations):
For projects of medium complexity, the migration path generally requires a more substantial commitment, typically 3-6 months. It's fundamental to emphasize that each project presents unique characteristics that significantly influence timelines, making a personalized assessment essential.
Large projects (high complexity, numerous integrations)
High-complexity migrations represent strategic projects that require in-depth analysis and detailed planning. For projects of such size and complexity, an accurate estimate is very difficult, indicating at least 6-12 months. In these cases, an adequate preliminary assessment phase is indispensable to establish realistic timelines and plan necessary resources.
We remind you that these frameworks have purely indicative value and that only a professional assessment can provide more accurate estimates for your specific context.
The most common challenges (and how we address them)
Each migration project presents unique challenges, but some problems recur regularly. Let's discover how to best address them.
Complexity of content migration
Content migration is often more complex than anticipated. Different data structures, unstructured content, and complex relationships typically emerge in every project.
To effectively manage these complexities, we suggest a multi-phase approach that begins with preventive content audit and granular mapping between old and new structures. We then proceed with an iterative approach to script development and automatic validation of content that is progressively migrated.
Migration of customizations
Often, it's taken for granted that custom functionalities of the previous system should be migrated in their entirety to the new platform. Effective migration management instead involves starting from needs, rather than functionalities.
By understanding the real business needs in the initial analysis, one avoids "automatically" replicating each existing feature, deciding instead whether to remake, simplify, replace, or eliminate each functionality.
In parallel, a make vs buy analysis is fundamental: rather than technically replicating the previous solution, it might be more effective to adopt another already existing solution.
Change management
The success of migration doesn't depend only on code, but also on people. For organizational change management, we've seen some approaches work very effectively, primarily the involvement of teams and other stakeholders from the initial phases. This not only helps bring out all needs, but also to build consensus around the new platform, avoiding internal resistance to change.
In this perspective, clear and transparent communication of the project, structured training, and identification of internal "champions", key users who internally facilitate change, are also effective.
What is the ROI of migrating to Drupal CMS?
A well-structured ROI analysis not only helps justify the initial investment but also provides a framework to evaluate the success of the project over time.
Short and long-term benefits
The first results of a well-executed migration are visible within 3-6 months from go-live:
- Improvement of user experience with consequent increase in engagement metrics
- Reduction in publication times thanks to more efficient workflows
- Greater responsiveness and mobile compatibility
- Improvements in security metrics and compliance
In the medium-long term (6+ months), further advantages emerge:
- Significant reduction in maintenance costs
- Greater autonomy for non-technical teams
- Acceleration of time-to-market for new initiatives
- Architectural flexibility to adapt to new needs
- Reduced overall TCO, considering the entire life cycle
In our experience, Drupal CMS migration projects offer significant potential economic advantages in the medium-long term compared to proprietary solutions.
Obviously, the effective ROI varies considerably based on the specifics of the business context, previously implemented solutions, and strategic objectives of the organization. An in-depth analysis of your specific scenario is essential to concretely evaluate potential economic benefits.
Partner selection and preparation for migration
Partner selection is a decisive factor for the success of the project. In evaluation, we invite you to consider various aspects that distinguish expert partners like SparkFabrik, in particular specific experience in Drupal migrations, portfolio and case history, methodological approach, and complementary skills such as UX/UI, DevOps, and data migration.
Furthermore, to facilitate planning we've developed a preparation checklist that covers technical aspects (platform audit, target architecture, migration strategy), organizational aspects (stakeholder identification, communication plan, training strategy), and governance aspects (definition of roles and responsibilities, risk management, KPIs).
Not least, SparkFabrik is the Italian company with the largest number of Drupal Acquia certified developers, we contribute to the community and are maintainers of various Drupal modules, an index of our passion and significant expertise in all things Drupal.
Conclusions
Migration to Drupal CMS is a strategic opportunity to evolve the organization's digital presence, not just updating the underlying technology, but rethinking processes, workflows, and content management modalities.
As we've seen in this article, the success of a migration project depends on a combination of technical, organizational, and strategic factors: a thorough assessment of the starting situation, the choice of the most suitable migration approach, detailed planning of all phases, and a focus on ROI and value creation.
With accurate planning and an expert partner like SparkFabrik, it's possible to transform a technical migration project into a digital transformation initiative with significant business impact.
Next steps
If your organization is considering a migration to Drupal CMS, we invite you to:
- Use our free assessment tool to obtain a first indicative overview
- Explore our previous articles on Drupal CMS to better understand the potential of the platform
- Contact our team for personalized professional consultation
SparkFabrik’s comprehensive suite of Drupal services offers complete support in all phases of the migration path, from initial evaluation to implementation, up to post-launch support.
This article continues our series of insights dedicated to Drupal CMS. To explore further aspects of the Drupal ecosystem, we invite you to check out all the articles on Drupal on the SparkFabrik blog.
