Autopilot by Pantheon Delivers Enterprise Security to Open Web Digital Platforms

SAN FRANCISCO (September 21, 2021) — Pantheon, the SaaS-based website operations (WebOps) platform for developers, designers, and marketers, today announced the general release of Autopilot within a suite of new features available in its WebOps platform. Autopilot provides groundbreaking automation that reduces human error and protects against website vulnerabilities by enabling enterprises, local governments and regulated organizations to find, apply and test open web CMS, plug-ins and themes quickly and easily. 

Keeping websites reliable and secure is non-negotiable in today’s world, but maintaining the necessary updates is time-consuming, labor-intensive, and fraught with risk. Having a tool like Pantheon’s Autopilot can be game changing. WordPress developer and digital marketing agency DigiSavvy, an LA-based digital, creative, and web services agency specializing in custom WordPress development, leverages Autopilot to automate maintenance tasks for WordPress upgrades, plug-in integration and security. This has eliminated the nearly 50 monthly labor hours previously spent on maintaining more than 100 WordPress sites. The DigiSavvy team can now maintain service levels without hiring additional developers or contractors and capitalize on new business opportunities to grow the agency. 

"When I think about what we get out of Autopilot, it's really time,” remarked Alex Vasquez, Principal and Co-Founder of DigiSavvy. “Time back as an agency owner, [time] to focus on new priorities for my customers, [time] to build on my portfolio of services I can offer, and time back to my employees so they can focus on initiatives that matter to them.”

Software automation continues to be top of mind for business leaders. In fact, according to IDC, intelligent automation ranked among the top three business benefits cited by companies using a modern SaaS WebOps CMS solution.1 Autopilot delivers on this market need by applying visual regression testing (VRT) to test updated web pages and alert website developers to errors before site updates go live, freeing developers and marketers to focus on delivering innovative and compelling digital experiences. 

Visual regression Testing (VRT) allows web teams to automate testing of changes to web pages for errors before going live.

“Autopilot gives me peace of mind. As a lean agency with contracted developers, I need to be sure to protect the security and quality of my customers' websites. Autopilot helps me be sure I apply updates fast and have thoroughly tested them before they go live," said Rob Watson, CEO at Webidextrous. "Autopilot also makes me more efficient, giving me time back to do strategic work. This helps me to focus on top strategic priorities for my customers.”

More and more businesses are turning to the open web for the speed-of-innovation, flexibility and freedom to create digital experiences that deliver results. To fully realize the potential of the open web, however, they need a platform that provides governance, security and collaboration tools that make it easy for multiple teams to work together to provide a consistently engaging website visitor experience. According to a recent study by IDC, nearly one in four companies that leverage integrated SaaS solutions to manage their digital initiatives see more than 50% increase in productivity.1 

“Packing critical elements of website operations into unified systems, SaaS WebOps solutions let teams manage sites at scale with agility. Our recent IDC CMS Technology and Use Cases Survey found that SaaS WebOps users achieve up to two times faster publishing speed and three times lower content creation costs,” said Marci Maddox, Research Director, Digital Experience Strategies, IDC. “As today's product announcement highlights, Pantheon is building on these benefits with new features, including Autopilot for CMS management automation, a seamless Drupal 9 experience, an update to Global CDN that protects digital experiences, and revamped Workspaces for efficient collaboration.”

In addition to Autopilot, Pantheon’s latest releases include new features designed to increase web team productivity by simplifying and automating work and enabling digital and web teams to collaborate seamlessly:

• Drupal 9: Teams working in Drupal can take advantage of the fastest WebOps platform in the industry, along with powerful developer tools, automated workflows, and enterprise-grade security measures. With Pantheon and Drupal 9, developers can move faster, iterate easily, and deliver high quality digital experiences.

• Global CDN now with Experience Protection: Pantheon delivers seamless digital experiences by serving cached content to provide sub-second page loads for site visitors, even in the event of an outage. 

• New Pantheon Dashboard with Workspaces: An all-new user experience for the Pantheon Platform is now available, delivering an intuitive user experience and making website collaboration across developer, IT and marketing teams easy. With the introduction of Workspaces in the Dashboard, developers can form new workspaces for their agencies or organizations.  Workspaces enable agencies and organizations with multiple teams and multiple sites to organize their work efficiently. 

Hypergrowth companies choose Pantheon for its innovative WebOps software that enables their teams to rapidly scale digital experiences that make an impact on their top line business results. 

“Qumulo achieved a $1.2 billion valuation in 2020, and we’re growing the business even more — Pantheon and WordPress support our massive growth by enabling us to create a world-class website and extremely successful digital campaigns,” said Adriana Gil Miner, Chief Marketing Officer at Qumulo.

To learn more about Pantheon, please visit www.pantheon.io.

1 Leveraging a SaaS WebOps Platform to Make Your Digital Strategy a Business Advantage Infographic by IDC. September 2021.