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.

Allianz faced a new challenge of competing with younger, fast-growing insurers who were winning business with their dynamic online websites. During an extensive search for the right technology, a number of both proprietary and open source products were evaluated. Allianz even considered building an in-house proprietary solution from scratch, but ultimately found everything they needed is in Liferay Portal, the all-in-one solution that outshone all other options in terms of feature-set, ease of customization, the ability to meet time and budget constraints, and made Allianz's business requirements a reality. Liferay was recognized for its ability to provide enterprise-grade subscription and support services, hence ensuring a level of reliability and stability not available with non-commercial open source products, along with enhanced customer experience, increased sales, and added business value.

Liferay portal adheres to open standards for content, portlets, web services, and front end technologies to reduce developmental cost

Striking alliances and collaboration with organizations like Dynatrace and Red Hat, Liferay’s approach to the market is expected to grow even stronger in the near future. “This Liferay and Red Hat collaboration addresses a market need for enterprise-grade, open source options when it comes to choosing a comprehensive and scalable portal solution,” says Cheung. Furthermore, Liferay and Dynatrace intend to work towards delivering consistent stellar end-user experiences and a solution that helps them across the entire lifecycle of a project. “The desire to impact the world community is the heart of our company, and ultimately the reason why we exist,” states Cheung on an ending note.