Liferay: Empowering Enterprises with Open Source Portals

Since the 1950s, the open source landscape has been seeing a tremendous growth amidst many organizations, openly opposing the concept of free software. The challenge of source codes being exercised in a free way often gives rise to numerous security issues, ownership, and various source code acquirement issues. However, today, open source has found use in enterprise networks, forming the enterprise information portal and providing a secure unified access point designed to collectively personalize information across the enterprise. Liferay, headquartered in California, is a provider of open source enterprise portal and social collaboration software solutions through its platform, Liferay portal.

Written in Java, Liferay portal is a web platform featuring means commonly required for the development of websites and portals. “It includes a built-in web content management system which permits users to build websites and portals and allows them to customize visually and devise the navigation across their clients’ enterprise access portals,” says Bryan Cheung, CEO and Founder of Liferay. The platform allows content and document management with Microsoft Office integration, web publishing and shared workspaces, and enterprise collaboration. The platform also provides social networking and mashups, and identity management. Liferay portal can run on the clients’ existing application servers, databases, and operating systems to eliminate new spending on infrastructure. “The platform adheres to open standards for content, portlets, web services, and front end technologies to reduce developmental cost,” states Cheung. One of the other most important features is its flexibility, helping enterprises to drive future strategic growth.

Liferay has assisted several organizations achieve business objectives and helped drive positive business results for their customers. A case in point would be the Allianz Group, a provider of insurance, asset management, and banking services. In the early 2008, through a series of consumer surveys, Allianz identified that its online offering was lagging in overall functionality.