New platform feature automates end-to-end updates across WordPress and Drupal CMS solutions, giving developers time to focus on customer experience and higher-value initiatives

Pantheon, the website operations (WebOps) platform for developers and marketers, today announced Pantheon Autopilot released for Limited Availability. Autopilot keeps sites up-to-date by automatically detecting, performing, testing, and deploying updates for WordPress and Drupal CMS solutions in a single, fast workspace environment. It allows organizations to easily visualize and manage sites, users, traffic, and metrics, to keep website management smooth, scalable, and built to craft digital experiences.

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“Site upkeep can be tedious. Autopilot streamlines routine maintenance by detecting any defects before they go live via automated quality assurance. This enables the efficient release of trouble-free updates at scale, freeing up developers and marketers to focus on creativity and innovation, and delivering the great digital experiences that ultimately move the needle,” said Pantheon Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Josh Koenig. “This feature is the first of its kind on the market and further supports our mission to make the web a best-in-class platform that drives results.”

The Pantheon WebOps Platform brings value to organizations by utilizing open source CMS to deliver on digital experiences with confidence. Introducing collaborative agile workflows enables digital marketing teams to rapidly build, test, and deploy unique web experiences. Pantheon’s customers will access enhanced value by keeping backend systems up-to-date. Autopilot will automatically detect when new updates across a large portfolio of sites are available and perform the updates in an isolated multidev environment, testing the updates with automated visual regression testing (VRT) and optionally deploying the updates. Since each site has its own unique critical dependencies, Autopilot will maintain these all while keeping a site secure and performing efficiently.

Enterprises will increasingly adopt automated IT operations practices to support the greater scale required for digitally-driven enterprises, according to the IDC IT outlook for 2021¹. In its report, IDC predicts that by 2023, 75 percent of Global 2000 IT organizations will adopt automated operations practices to transform their IT workforce to support unprecedented scale. With the release of Autopilot, Pantheon is staying ahead of the curve when it comes to automation technology, including with roadmap features of AI and machine learning.

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“Smart automation tools will play an important role in helping organizations fortify their competitiveness and cultivate exemplary digital experiences for their customers,” said Marci Maddox, research director, digital experience strategies at IDC. “With the introduction of Autopilot on Pantheon, organizations can boost productivity by automating routine updates across large portfolios of sites, supporting online collaboration across hybrid working environments and reducing time for developers and digital experience managers.”

Pantheon invited a number of early users to test Autopilot, including DigiSavvy, a boutique digital marketing agency focusing on custom WordPress development and marketing automation based in Los Angeles. DigiSavvy principal and co-founder Alex Vasquez reported saving more than 50 hours over the course of one month by using Autopilot.

“As someone who is juggling multiple projects it’s difficult to prioritize doing updates and maintenance work when you have fires to put out or important business development tasks to tend to,” said Vasquez. “Autopilot has allowed me to refocus my time on higher value tasks and critical production work that produces more billable hours and income for the agency.”

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