The business case for decoupled Drupal

What does the future hold for Drupal as a business solution?

The web is changing, and with it the way we deploy and organize content. User experience thinking is growing ever more central to shaping how we do business. To keep up with changing user expectations front-end technologies are developing at breakneck speed. Meanwhile on the back-end APIs, cloud solutions and big data are changing the way we store and move around information. For Drupal to remain relevant on the modern web it's role must evolve.

Until now Drupal has generally been deployed as a stand-alone solution. The content management system, and the user facing front-end. Building the next wave of content-centric applications will require Drupal play nice with other technologies while focusing only on what Drupal does best. Fortunately Drupal 8 may enable exactly that.

Drupal 8 will release complete with a suite of core modules to allow Drupal to act as RESTful web service. This will allow Drupal to be integrated in entirely new ways, as a decoupled content management solution and API to all kinds of content centric front-ends and applications. Drupal can continue to play a central role on the web, but as part of a modern solution instead of as a complete and stand-alone solution.

As agencies, development shops and developers this is a fundamental change. How will we adapt to a changing model for build content management applications? What opportunities and challenges lie ahead? Most importantly, how do we convince our teams, our partners and our clients that this is the way forward?

In my talk we'll explore the benefits, the risk, and overall the business case for using Drupal as part of a modern business communications solution.

Sean Rioux
Director of Digital Strategy and Operations
Therefore Interactive

Sean Rioux has been working with Drupal for 6 years. As Director of Digital Strategy and Operations at Therefore Interactive, Sean is responsible for implimenting user experience thinking a in architecting complex content-centric web solutions.

Therefore Interactive is a digital agency based in Toronto which designs, develops and deploys enterprise-grade communications applications for the web.