Published on the 03/06/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

The impending arrival of Drupal 8 should deliver functions that make the open source content management platform easier to deploy, and potentially suited to smaller organisations…

The latest version of the software is expected to bring into the core functions such as Drupal Views which provides flexibility about the way content is presented, deploy object oriented programming techniques through Symfony, and allow Drupal to be deployed across a range of web services to support different user experiences on a range of devices.

According to Bryan House, vice president of global accounts for Acquia, which sells a Drupal solution based on Amazon’s cloud, the open source community is now working on driving bugs out of Drupal 8 prior to release.

While there is no official timeline for the launch of Drupal 8, there are hopes that it may become generally available by the year’s end.

House acknowledged that there was a perception that Drupal was large and unwieldy, and most suited to only the very largest organisations. Despite that it has offered some stiff competition to proprietary content management systems which can be more expensive than the open source alternative.

To tackle the complexity perception, House said that the open source community supporting Drupal had put effort into changing the content creation experience for users.

Compared to the situation three or four years ago, when Drupal “struggled with complexity” he said that the platform was “more approachable for the content creator.”

House said that new version; “Should be less ‘Drupally’ and more like straightforward programming,” though he acknowledged programmers would still need some object oriented programming capability.

The new software will also still require users to apply software or security updates manually unless they use a hosted version, such as that offered by Acquia, which provides automatic updates through remote administration services.

Acquia is also considering creating narrow use case templates which could be harnessed, for example, to handle corporate communications content, said House.

“If you download Drupal today you get a blank slate,” he said. Acquia’s Project Lightning, however, had been conceived to provide a content framework for users. In the future, he said it might extend to offering sector-specific content frameworks.

House is meeting this week with a series of Australian organisations which are using the Acquia systems already including Flight Centre, Foxtel and the Federal Government which last year selected Acquia for its govCMS in a four year $24 million deal.