Reducing TCO Through AI-Assisted Platform Upgrades

At Velir, we believe that keeping digital platforms secure, performant, and up to date shouldn’t come at the expense of time, budget, or quality. For many organizations, the cost and complexity of content management system (CMS) and platform upgrades can lead to stagnation, technical debt, and unnecessary risk. But it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Through managed, responsible use of AI with our DevOps automation practices as a foundation, we’re cutting the time and effort for platform upgrades by half or more. Recently, we completed a substantial Drupal platform upgrade in under a day, using AI-assisted code review and migration guidance, with full human oversight and verification. We had it ready for QA and regression testing the same day.

The Problem with Traditional Upgrades

Historically, CMS and platform upgrades have been resource-intensive, often requiring days or weeks of developer time, extensive planning, and labor-intensive manual testing. For enterprise organizations, the ripple effects are significant: delayed releases, increased budgets, and a growing backlog of technical debt. 

These challenges ultimately drive up the total cost of ownership (TCO) for digital platforms. Slower upgrades mean longer exposure to vulnerabilities, reduced performance, and difficulties keeping up with competitors who move faster. 

The Velir Approach: AI + DevOps + Human Oversight

At Velir, we’ve refined a pragmatic, scalable model that combines: 

• AI-enhanced code analysis to assess deprecated APIs, recommend replacements, and generate upgrade scaffolding.
• Infrastructure automation via DevOps pipelines to test and validate changes in parallel environments.
• Strategic human review to validate AI suggestions, resolve edge cases, and ensure business context isn’t lost.

We don’t just throw AI at a problem. Instead, we intelligently guide it, using it to accelerate estimation, analysis, and execution while preserving the quality, security, and stability that our clients expect. 

This blend of automation, intelligence, and human oversight turns a painful, costly upgrade cycle into a predictable, low-friction process. 

Case in Point: Accelerating a Major Drupal Upgrade

In one recent engagement, our team performed a significant upgrade of a Drupal 10.1 site to Drupal 11.2 in just under a day, including all dependency updates, custom code refactoring, and configuration validation. 

The key differentiator? We used AI to identify problem areas ahead of time, pre-generate patches and test plans, and surface likely regression points, all under the guidance of experienced engineers. The result was a stable deployment candidate that moved immediately into QA and regression testing that same day, eliminating what would typically be a multi-day or, in some cases, multi-week effort. 

What This Means for Your Business

This shift toward using AI to help guide CMS and platform upgrades has powerful implications for marketing and technology leaders alike: 

• Lower TCO: Shorter upgrade timelines mean fewer billable hours, fewer delays, and more predictable budgets.
• Better Outcomes: Faster platform agility allows content and marketing teams to adopt new features and tools sooner.
• Improved Operational Velocity: IT teams can stay current with security patches and framework changes, reducing risk and ensuring compliance.
• Archivable Intelligence: By managing and documenting AI’s use, Velir creates a referenceable knowledge base that enhances long-term maintainability and governance.

Leading with Responsibility

Our use of AI is intentional and transparent. We prioritize human-in-the-loop practices, version-controlled automation, and auditability. This positions us uniquely in the digital agency space, not just as early adopters, but as responsible leaders in practical AI augmentation. 

We arrived at this point by combining past techniques in DevOps and automation, which we’ve written about before. In case you missed it, here’s a brief recap. 

Past Success with Automation: Renovate & GitHub Actions

Our automation journey began with dependency management and core upgrade automation. 

• In our 2022 post How to Automate Dependency Updates with Renovate, we demonstrated how Velir uses Renovate to scan code repositories and automatically generate dependency update pull requests, backed by continuous integration (CI) workflows.
• A follow-up in January 2024, How to Automate Dependency Updates with GitHub Actions, shared how we integrated custom workflows to check for Drupal core updates daily, creating pull requests (PRs) in under two minutes.

These tools reduced manual overhead and reinforced our philosophy: automation at scale, but always with human oversight. 

Building on that foundation, we’ve layered in AI to slash effort and accelerate upgrades, especially major platform migrations. 

• Estimation and Code Analysis: AI rapidly identifies deprecated APIs, potential regressions, and customizations needing attention.
• Scaffolding and Change Suggestions: Automated patch generation and refactor suggestions reduce manual coding.
• Human Oversight and Adjustments: Our engineers review all AI-generated work, refine edge cases, and ensure business logic is respected.

All these factors layer into our automated continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) DevOps pipelines, enabling fully tested environments in parallel. 

We’re not simply early adopters; we’re thoughtful leaders in AI-enhanced DevOps. 

Our Approach Becomes Your Advantage

From Renovate to GitHub Actions and now AI‑accelerated upgrades, Velir has continuously evolved our practices to maintain a best-in-class approach to website and application maintenance. 

See how Velir can:

• Cut upgrade timelines by 50% or more
• Stay current with security patches and platform releases

• Reduce technical debt while improving long-term agility 

If your platform upgrades still feel slow, expensive, or painful, it’s time for a better way. Our AI-assisted, automation-driven approach is already transforming how organizations like yours manage their digital platforms — efficiently, securely, and at scale.  

Contact us today to learn how we can help your team move faster, stay current, and focus on what matters most.