Sector(s)

Team Members

salimlakhani, Amet lenis

Project Team

  • VOA Digital & Technical Leadership – Defined requirements, provided traffic and infrastructure data, and validated goals around cost savings, scalability, and compliance.

  • Prime Contractor (Government Systems Integrator) – Partnered with VOA and DevPanel to oversee analysis and ensure alignment with federal standards.

  • DevPanel Engineering & DevOps Team – Replicated VOA’s infrastructure on AWS, conducted automation and performance tests, and delivered the comprehensive migration feasibility analysis
     

Learn more https://tidycal.com/devpanel

Visit the site

Visit the site

Organizations Involved

Community contributions

This project highlights how DevPanel extends Drupal’s value for large-scale, mission-critical use cases:

  • Proof of Drupal at Global Scale: Demonstrates Drupal’s ability to power one of the world’s largest multilingual news platforms, handling 1–2 billion monthly pageviews.

  • Model for Government Agencies: Provides a roadmap showing how Drupal can be deployed in HIPAA/FedRAMP-ready, AWS-native environments—helping other agencies adopt Drupal confidently.

  • Reusable Best Practices: The Infrastructure-as-Code templates, CI/CD pipelines, and compliance frameworks validated through this analysis can be reused across other Drupal projects.

  • Community Enablement: By documenting and sharing VOA’s projected $800K savings, DevPanel lowers barriers for nonprofits, NGOs, and government organizations evaluating Drupal as a sustainable, enterprise-grade CMS.

  • Event & Knowledge Sharing: DevPanel supports DrupalCamps, DrupalCons, and training days, often providing instant DevPanel-powered environments to encourage contribution and learning

Voice of America (VOA), one of the world’s largest international news broadcasters, was spending nearly $1 million annually to host just four Drupal sites on Acquia. With 43 additional language sites pending, projected costs could exceed $10M per year—an unsustainable path for a government-funded organization.

VOA engaged DevPanel to conduct a comprehensive migration feasibility analysis to AWS. Using replicated infrastructure, third-party performance validation, and cost modeling, the study showed that VOA could:

  • Reduce annual hosting costs by 75–80% (≈$800K savings).

  • Gain full root access and eliminate vendor lock-in.

  • Improve site performance by 40% and scale to 1M+ hits per minute.

  • Cut support resolution times from days to hours with direct DevOps access.

The analysis demonstrated that DevPanel on AWS could deliver a modern, compliant, cost-efficient infrastructure, enabling VOA to expand from 4 to 47 multilingual Drupal sites while ensuring government-grade security

About the project

Goals
Voice of America needed to determine whether it could migrate from Acquia’s expensive hosting platform to a modern, government-compliant AWS infrastructure. The key goals were to:

  • Reduce unsustainable hosting costs (≈$1M/year for 4 sites, projected $10M+ for 47).

  • Enable expansion to 47 multilingual Drupal sites without linear cost growth.

  • Gain full infrastructure control and root-level access.

  • Improve performance, scalability, and reliability during breaking news surges.

  • Ensure government-grade security and compliance.

  • Equip developers with modern tools for faster delivery.

Requirements
The analysis required:

  • A feasibility study replicating VOA’s existing Drupal architecture in AWS.

  • Third-party performance validation using WebPageTest.org and load/stress testing.

  • Financial modeling with AWS calculators and real traffic data.

  • Proof that the platform could handle 1M+ hits/minute with automatic scaling.

  • Assurance that the solution aligned with FedRAMP and government security standards.

Outcome
The study demonstrated dramatic improvements:

  • Cost savings of 75–80% (≈$800K annually).

  • Full root access with no vendor lock-in, allowing customization and integrations.

  • 40% faster page load speeds validated by third-party testing.

  • Elastic scalability to handle over 1M hits per minute without downtime.

  • Operational efficiency – support resolutions in hours instead of days, modern CI/CD workflows, and automated backups/monitoring.

  • A roadmap enabling VOA to scale from 4 to 47 sites at predictable, optimized cost.

The analysis confirmed that DevPanel + AWS could give VOA a faster, cheaper, more secure, and future-proof Drupal infrastructure, turning what was once a financial and operational roadblock into a sustainable platform for global expansion

Why Drupal was chosen

As one of the world’s largest international broadcasters, Voice of America required a platform that could securely power 47 multilingual news sites, deliver at massive scale, and remain flexible for regional customization. Drupal was the clear choice because:

  • Multilingual capabilities – Drupal supports 47+ languages out of the box, critical for VOA’s global mission.

  • Scalability – Drupal’s architecture, combined with DevPanel and AWS auto-scaling, allows infrastructure to handle traffic surges of over 1 million hits per minute.

  • Security & Compliance – Drupal’s strong security record aligned with federal government requirements, including FedRAMP-ready infrastructure on AWS.

  • Open-source flexibility – Avoided proprietary lock-in while giving VOA the ability to customize sites for regional needs and integrate with other government systems.

  • Community support – A global ecosystem ensures long-term sustainability, innovation, and best practices.

Drupal provided VOA with the enterprise-grade foundation for global news delivery, while DevPanel and AWS modernized the infrastructure to make it faster, cheaper, and fully under VOA’s control

Technical Specifications

Drupal version:

Key modules/theme/distribution used:

Why these modules/theme/distribution were chosen

The selected modules and theme were designed to support VOA’s mission of delivering secure, multilingual news at global scale:

  • Drupal Core + Multilingual Modules – Provided enterprise-grade multilingual support out of the box, essential for running 47 language services.

  • Views – Enabled editors to build dynamic listings for news, multimedia, and regional content without custom coding.

  • Pathauto & Redirect – Simplified URL management while ensuring SEO-friendly structures across multiple languages.

  • Media/CKEditor – Allowed journalists to publish rich media content quickly, with minimal training required.

  • Webform – Provided a simple but powerful way to collect feedback, surveys, and user interactions.

  • Security Kit & reCAPTCHA – Added proactive protection against bots, spam, and common web exploits, aligning with federal security requirements.

  • Custom VOA Theme – Optimized for accessibility, responsive design, and high-traffic performance, ensuring global audiences could reliably access content.

  • Cloud/DevPanel + AWS integrations – Tight integration with CloudFront CDN, WAF, monitoring, and automated scaling ensured compliance, global performance, and resilience during high-traffic surges.

Together, these modules and configurations gave VOA the stability of Drupal’s enterprise foundation while leveraging DevPanel and AWS automation to deliver cost efficiency, compliance, and elastic scale