Decoupled for Enterprise

Penn State's public web enterprise is spread across over 1,000 unique websites and millions of pages, resulting in a disjointed and fragmented digital presence. Many sites have been produced in silos without shared architecture, brand consistency, or aligned web strategy, leading to inefficiencies and a lack of cohesion. Central IT has stepped back from overseeing the web enterprise, causing investments in labor, platforms, vendors, design, code, hosting, and content to become fragmented and managed at the unit level. This decentralization has resulted in uneven talent distribution, inconsistent outcomes, and hidden costs, with no cohesive management or common tools, increasing the risk of reputational damage.

To address these challenges, Penn State has invested in a decoupled web architecture, demonstrated by its flagship, Admissions, Financial Aid, and News websites. This platform acts as the architectural glue, binding multiple atomic service segments and allowing a lean technical team to build, test, and deploy each component as a discrete micro-service. These services are scalable across the entire Penn State web enterprise, integrating with its core Drupal CMS, Penn State branded design system themes, CRM, Google search and analytics platforms, cache delivery network, and cloud-based hosting.

Managed by a lean team of web development and strategic experts, alongside vendor partners, this architecture supports Penn State’s most visible, high-volume, mission-critical websites. The tools and strategies outlined in this report, developed by this expert unit, include platforms like Drupal, WordPress, and Gatsby/React. The next step is to scale this architecture across the entire enterprise, ensuring a more unified and efficient web presence.

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