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Why Catalyst? Our approach to future-proofing content management systems
19 Aug 2025, 2:08 PMWhether you're rebuilding, rethinking, or starting fresh, this blog post explores how we can support you future-proofing your content management system (CMS).
A good CMS should make managing content simple and scaling up even easier. At Catalyst, we use open source CMS solutions that give you more freedom, flexibility, and value, without vendor lock-in.
For nearly 30 years, we've helped organisations across Aotearoa New Zealand, from government to enterprise and non-profits, build CMS solutions that work for them. Whether you're rebuilding, rethinking, or starting fresh, this blog post explores how we can support you future-proofing your CMS.
Choosing the right CMS for your organisation
To begin, we prioritise a discovery phase to ensure we deeply understand your needs and customers with our business analysis team.
Developing a foundational understanding
To keep people at the centre of your CMS solution while balancing business needs, we begin by:
- understanding your team and requirements
- identifying possible friction points for your customers through user testing
- tailoring our approach based on cultural considerations
- understanding resources and regulations
- applying best practices at every stage.
Delivery with an impact
To ensure we’re on the same page and build solutions that align with current and future goals, we support our clients by:
- tailoring our project management approach to honour any cultural considerations
- using our content management systems expertise to create tailored, right-fit and high-performing solutions
- contributing features and enhancements back upstream where possible so others can benefit from them
- gaining resources and insights from a global open source community network.
Three core CMS offerings
As a trusted supplier on the Government Digital Marketplace, we can handle everything from design to deployment and ongoing support, so you can focus on impact. Depending on your requirements, we have three core CMS offerings.
Drupal
A highly flexible, enterprise-grade CMS designed for complex content management and security.
Built for high-performance and high-load, Drupal also balances easy content creation with no-code and low-code options.
Drupal is ideal for:
- Government agencies and organisations handling sensitive data
- High-traffic websites that need performance and scalability
- Complex content workflows with structured permissions and governance
- Custom integrations with third-party systems.
Silverstripe
An adaptable and user-friendly CMS that is easy to use with advanced customisation. Silverstripe has the flexibility for your team to easily create and manage content without technical knowledge, while providing developers the flexibility to build complex features.
Silverstripe is best suited for:
- Public sector and enterprise organisations needing a secure, compliant CMS
- Teams looking for an intuitive content management system that simplifies workflows
- Businesses needing a customisable CMS that integrates with existing infrastructure.
Catalyst Starter
A pre-configured, secure, and WCAG 2.2-compliant CMS that’s ready to launch quickly. Catalyst Starter is a hybrid CMS, enabling a solid foundation to build a strong user experience.
Catalyst Starter is designed for:
- Organisations needing a cost-effective, scalable CMS solution
- Teams looking for a no-code, intuitive, editor-friendly platform
- Businesses wanting a future-proof CMS without ongoing licensing costs.
Each of these solutions is tailored to your organisation’s needs, ensuring your website is accessible, secure, and easy to manage. Have questions about the differences? We match the CMS to your business goals and are happy to talk you through different approaches.
Security and compliance without the stress
To protect your data, we ensure security is built in throughout every project. Our solutions are designed for modern, scalable cloud environments, ensuring enhanced security, automatic updates, and high availability.
Our security approach includes:
- 24/7 security monitoring and proactive threat prevention
- Regular security patches and updates to keep your CMS protected
- Custom security configurations based on your organisation’s needs.
Seamless content management and integrations
Your CMS should empower your team to work efficiently, create content effortlessly, and engage with your audience without technical barriers. With your CMS, we bake in:
- Responsive design and mobile accessibility: We ensure your users can access all information regardless of device, with fully responsive layouts that adapt seamlessly regardless of screen size.
- Site reliability: We have your CMS covered even during peak usage by monitoring, alerting and a programme of software updates and upgrades to keep your CMS safe, secure and available to your users.
- Enhanced collaboration: We can support optimising workflows, integrating key systems, and share industry best practices to future-proof your systems.
- The ability to scale at ease: The flexibility of an open source enables you to grow without restraints with a cloud-native architecture
- Web accessibility at every stage: We remove complexity for users by creating simple and easy-to-navigate user experiences while aligning our development with WCAG 2.2. guidelines.
Long-term support services
To support you for the long term, we offer a range of ongoing support services to ensure your CMS remains fit for purpose. We aim to build long-term relationships by customising support solutions that work for you and your users. With many of our government clients partnering with us for over a decade, we understand the importance of balancing business goals, resource allocation, and delivering with impact.
We’re also a registered supplier of Infrastructure Managed Services, for Application Management and Administration, and Server Management and Administration on the Government Digital Marketplace.
To support our client's success, our services include:
- Continuous security updates and monitoring to prevent vulnerabilities and maintain high uptime
- Performance optimisation and regular system audits to keep your site running smoothly
- Custom development and feature enhancements as your needs evolve
- Dedicated support from our CMS specialists.
We take care of the technical complexity so you can focus on delivering great digital experiences for your users.
Building a CMS that works for you
Your CMS should help you publish content with ease, engage your audience, and stay secure. Whether you need a modernised platform, a new CMS, or ongoing support, Catalyst is here to help. With decades of CMS experience in Silverstripe and Drupal, our team creates solutions for the long term. Contact us to talk about your goals, customers, and future direction.
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