Sector(s)

Team Members

salimlakhani, devpanel

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
     

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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

Voice of America casestudy

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