Business challenge
Our client has built a stack of legacy applications and invested heavily in hardware licenses for establishing an enterprise web content management (EWCM) platform for managing its business-critical content assets. Over the years the legacy EWCM proved to be a wise investment and it looked like a viable CMS moving forward. The client was reviewing a possible upgrade as suggested by the current CMS vendor. With the vendor hinting about some major change to its platform, there was an uncertainty towards making any substantial investments. Yet, there is a pressing need for improving the current Enterprise Web Content Management platform in terms of reducing dependency on developers and improving application performance.
To address these challenges, the client would need a strategic partner who has rich experience in handling complex CMS projects. As a trusted partner working with the client right from the beginning of their EWCM journey, HGS Digital was approached to handle the project and provide technical guidance for a successful transformation.
- The current CMS vendor is targeting major API enhancements and programming model improvements. This will not benefit the client as they are looking to significantly reduce dependency on internal teams for development.
- Apache Tomcat will no longer be supported by the current vendor.
- The upgrade will need further infrastructure enhancements, which means an additional cost for acquiring new licenses.
The solution
HGS Solution’s team of CMS experts has reviewed multiple scenarios and recommended the client continue as is with their current EWCM application and consider a partial move to a headless CMS delivery. This approach will help realize the advantages of decreasing vendor dependency in addition to reducing software license costs. With the current vendor extending support till 2021, the client has ample time to explore migration options and benefit from savings on upgrade license costs. HGS Digital helped the client on the successful transformation toward a headless CMS model by defining an accurate roadmap and executing a proof-of-concept for the proposed model.
Results
Smarter Publishing: Content authors gain more control with the UI/UX decoupled from the CMS. This helps authors control the look and feel of the content without coding work from designers and developers.
Better Scalability: The entire CMS application will be hosted on a cloud platform, which scales up or down automatically based based on business needs.
Zero Downtime: The entire application build will be completely automated with Jenkins. This will ensure no downtime during new deployments.
Anticipated Cost Savings:
- No additional costs on application servers
- Eliminating annual maintenance costs
- Minimizing the dependencies for on-premises servers
