Sitecore Upgrade and DevOps Modernization for a Leading Rare Disease Biopharmaceutical Company
A leading global rare disease biopharmaceutical company partnered with Konabos to modernize its large scale Sitecore ecosystem supporting hundreds of international websites. Konabos delivered a full Sitecore upgrade, automated DevOps pipelines, and a new governance framework that significantly improved stability, deployment speed, operational efficiency, and long term digital agility.
250+
Websites upgraded across the global Sitecore ecosystem.
0
Downtime maintained during the comprehensive platform upgrade.
75%
Cost reduction achieved by the client on their next independent Sitecore upgrade.
100%
Automation of deployment workflows eliminating manual package handling.
Project Brief
Konabos partnered with a leading global rare disease biopharmaceutical company to modernize and stabilize its enterprise Sitecore ecosystem, which powers hundreds of international websites supporting healthcare providers, patients, and regulatory stakeholders. The organization needed a more reliable platform, faster release cycles, consistent environment governance, and a secure foundation capable of scaling across therapeutic and geographic portfolios.
To meet these needs, Konabos upgraded the entire Sitecore platform and implemented a modern DevOps architecture built on Jenkins, Nexus Repository Manager, automated blue green deployments, and custom QA automation tooling. This included full regression validation across ~250 websites, governance restructuring to eliminate manual environment changes, and the development of a visual regression comparison utility to streamline quality assurance for complex, content heavy pages.
The transformation dramatically improved operational stability, reduced deployment risk, and accelerated delivery timelines across all global sites. Most impressively, the client’s internal engineering team was later able to complete the next Sitecore upgrade independently at nearly 75 percent lower cost, demonstrating the long term sustainability and efficiency of the platform and processes Konabos established.
Details:
Sector:
Pharmaceutical
Region:
Global
Challenges
The organization’s legacy Sitecore environment faced several operational constraints:
- Manual deployments that frequently introduced defects
- Dev, QA, Staging, and Production environments that regularly fell out of alignment
- Limited visibility into the state of each environment
- Slow, unpredictable release cycles
- Repetitive manual Sitecore package handling
- Complex, component driven pages that required lengthy QA cycles
- The need to upgrade more than 200 global websites without impacting availability or compliance
The scale and criticality of the ecosystem demanded a strategic upgrade and a major modernization of deployment and governance processes.
Our Approach
Comprehensive Sitecore Upgrade and Migration
- Upgraded the platform and migrated approximately 250 websites
- Maintained parallel environments to ensure zero downtime
- Conducted full regression testing across integrations, forms, personalization, and compliance workflows
- Identified and resolved hidden privacy and regulatory issues previously
- Rolled out updates page by page with precise validation
End to End DevOps Automation with Jenkins and Nexus
- Implemented Jenkins pipelines for all build and deployment workflows
- Centralized all artifacts in Nexus Repository Manager
- Automated deployments across all environments
- Introduced a custom blue green deployment model for pre-production and production
Governance Improvements
- Restricted direct environment access to a small authorized group
- Required all deployments to run through Jenkins pipelines
- Eliminated ad hoc manual changes that historically caused outages
Automated Visual Regression and Environment Comparison Tool
To accelerate QA on high volume, component dense pages, Konabos developed a custom utility powered by Jenkins and tailored comparison scripts:
Key capabilities include:
- Dev vs Production or QA vs Dev comparisons at any time
- Full sitemap or single URL validation
- Interactive scrubber UI for precise visual analysis
- Automated pass or fail reports for each test run
Results
Operational Efficiency
- Deployment speed increased significantly, enabling multiple daily releases
- Automated regression testing reduced QA effort across complex pages
- Environments remained consistently aligned end to end
Reliability and Stability
- Manual package related errors were eliminated
- Blue green deployments ensured safer releases with minimal downtime
- Platform stability improved for all global sites
Cost Savings
Although exact numbers remain confidential, the organization realized substantial savings through:
- Reduced manual labor
- Faster, automated deployments
- Fewer post release issues requiring rework
- More efficient QA and governance practices
Long Term Benefit: A 75 Percent Reduction in the Next Upgrade’s Cost
Because Konabos modernized the architecture, pipelines, testing, and governance to enterprise standards, the client’s internal team successfully executed the next Sitecore upgrade themselves at nearly 75 percent lower cost, a testament to the sustainability and rigor of the solution implemented.
Customer Testimonials
Konabos’ recommendations and detailed documents helped us with the cultural shift to make the next moves toward a robust digital future.
John Lurquin
Chief Marketing and Development Officer
Customer Testimonials
Konabos is like an extension of ABG's team. They are honest and trustworthy in highlighting ways we can better utilize our resources to save money.
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Director Of Web Technology
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Konabos’ recommendations and detailed documents helped us with the cultural shift to make the next moves toward a robust digital future.
John Lurquin
Chief Marketing and Development Officer
Customer Testimonials
Konabos is like an extension of ABG's team. They are honest and trustworthy in highlighting ways we can better utilize our resources to save money.
Marc Lamothe
Director Of Web Technology