Imprivata is a global leader in digital identity and access management for healthcare and mission-critical industries. With a rapidly growing portfolio through acquisitions and evolving market reach, Imprivata required a robust digital platform capable of scaling with their expanding enterprise footprint. They partnered with Chromatic to pull off this modernization and the future-proofing of their platform. Through phased Drupal upgrades, the consolidation and migration of multiple acquired sites, a complete overhaul of their design and authoring systems, and streamlining the site into multilingual architecture, Chromatic empowered Imprivata with the aid of Drupal’s highly flexible, scalable, and secure platform.
Project Goals
Imprivata’s primary goals for their digital transformation were to:
- Modernize their platform from Drupal 7 to a sustainable and maintainable version of modern Drupal.
- Consolidate content and codebases from multiple acquired companies and legacy systems into a unified site architecture.
- Improve authoring workflows for marketing teams by replacing rigid, code-heavy tools with a more flexible, user-friendly experience.
- Enable global growth through multilingual support, translation workflows, and region-based personalization.
- Enhance performance, security, and developer experience across front-end and back-end operations.
Solution
Phased Modernization and Migration
- Incremental upgrades from Drupal 7 to 8, 9, 10.3.x, and ultimately modern Drupal (11 in Spring 2025), minimizing downtime and risk.
- Replaced underused Paragraphs with Layout Builder, allowing authors to build pages with reusable components and proper structure — without reliance on developer intervention.
Content Consolidation and Regionalization
- Merged content from multiple acquisitions (e.g., GroundControl, SecureLink, FairWarning, Ogitix, and more) into a single Drupal instance while preserving SEO and historical assets.
- Transitioned from a multi-site model to a unified site with language and regional configuration using Fastly’s VCL-based logic for geo-detection and content targeting.
Translation and Personalization Strategy
- Consulted on vendor evaluation and setup for automated and manual translation workflows across thousands of nodes in multiple languages.
- Enabled regional product segmentation through configuration and scripting—tailoring content and messaging per market.
With a small dash of theming Drupal's core Language Switcher is employed in the header and footer to allow end users to control their translation layer. Handling of language can also be cookied so that users do not have to reset their preferred language on reload.
Authoring and Editorial Enhancements
- Customized Layout Builder to support language-specific layout variations.
- Delivered training sessions and editorial best practices for marketing teams, empowering them to create dynamic content with no-code components such as inline Views blocks and embeddable media.
Layout Builder inline block showing the ability for content editors to create dynamic listings from a custom module
Design System Integration
- After maintaining dual theme systems via Pattern Lab and Drupal, Chromatic led a “recoupling” effort, bringing component logic and presentation back into the Drupal theme layer.
- This eliminated data mapping redundancy, improved cache performance, and reduced the front-end codebase by 50%.
Security, DevOps, and Collaboration
- Delivered zero-downtime deployments for routine updates and contributed module patches.
- Integrated StackHawk and Sentry for application scanning and error monitoring.
- Provided monthly security reports summarizing vulnerabilities, patches, and triage in business-friendly terms.
- Supported Imprivata’s IT and security teams with vulnerability analysis and community-reported issue reviews.
Front-End Enablement and Transition
- Transitioned day-to-day front-end development to an in-house engineer in 2024.
- Continued to provide mentorship, code review, and architectural guidance while maintaining core back-end and DevOps operations.
Results
- 40% reduction in build times and halved theme file footprint, reducing technical debt and accelerating delivery.
- Weeks-to-days release cycle improvements thanks to streamlined authoring tools and integrated layout components.
- Global launch readiness: New regions and languages can now be rolled out in days, not months.
- Zero critical security incidents in 2024, with enhanced transparency and trust through monthly IT reporting.
Summary
Through a thoughtful, phased migration and modernization strategy, Chromatic helped Imprivata unify its digital presence, improve editorial agility, and build a scalable platform ready for future acquisitions, global expansion, and continuous evolution all thanks to the super powerful Drupal platform.
Back to topDrupal was chosen due to its:
- Proven support for enterprise-scale multilingual websites.
- Flexible content architecture and layout systems (Layout Builder).
- Active open source community and long-term roadmap.
- Compatibility with DevOps automation, security tooling, and modular theming.
- Strong SEO and accessibility capabilities, critical for global digital marketing.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Layout Builder Asymmetric Translation is particularly important as it allows the content editorial team to have a unique site building page for each translation layer of a node. Without this, translations in Layout Builder would be vastly more limited.
