Drupal as a Backend for Large-Scale Mobile Applications

As the idea of leveraging a decoupled Drupal implementation to drive a custom front-end continues to gain popularity, the breadth of opportunities and possibilities for Drupal-based applications multiplies dramatically. Drupal has made great strides in recent years, firmly establishing itself as an Enterprise-grade CMS and powering many large and high profile websites, but what about scenarios in which more than a website is required? What if the content must be shared across multiple systems, or the target form factor doesn’t involve a website at all?

This session will delve into the details of some interesting current and potential uses of Drupal as a platform powering large-scale mobile and IoT apps, grounded in studies of two such applications we built over this past year. We will examine architectural considerations and lessons learned from our experiences building the official app for the US Catholic Church (covering the Pope’s historic visit to the United States), as well as the official native mobile app for New York Fashion Week, which includes several IoT integrations and peaked at the #2 spot on iTunes in free Entertainment apps (nestled in between Netflix and Hulu).

Some of the topics covered will include:

• Using Drupal as a central source for delivering multiple content streams (automated imports from social + rss feeds, manual content entry, editor curation, CRM integration)
• Drupal as a user hub with Federated login
• How to use Drupal as an ESB for multiple IoT sources
• Simplifying the management experience for multi-channel content
• Design considerations when building RESTful APIs
• Working with diverse and globally-distributed technology teams on an abbreviated schedule
• How to survive a Kardashian-bomb of your app (https://www.instagram.com/p/BBvIzFjuSzv/)  Alternatively: how to serve thousands of requests per second without breaking a sweat!